The essay examines the use of Roman legal texts, regarding the mark imprinted on the body of the condemned ones, by Arnould Bonneville de Marsangy, high magistrate and eminent French criminalist of the nineteenth century, author of the first modern treatise on recidivism. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the function, primary and exclusive, of ascertaining the recidivism that Boneville attributes to the mark has no source-based evidence to support it.