This is true and a core foundation of Roman law
Classical Antiquity (~100 BCE)
(media.piefed.social)
there's a scene from a Samuel Beckett play - one of my favorites but definitely for the hard-core Beckett fan - in which two administrators are examinaning testimonials from a man's life while he stands on a window ledge working out whether he should jump to his death or not. In it they interview someone he knows and leads to one of the administrators yelling "WHERES THE VERB?!?!!" which in a better world I could post as a Relatable Meme