at l.
i. Satir. ii. 44.) Familiae stuprandum dedit.. fraudi non fuit, (Val.
Maxim. l. vi. c. l, No. 13.)]

[Footnote 181: This law is noticed by Livy (ii. 8) and Plutarch, (in
Publiccla, tom. i. p. 187,) and it fully justifies the public opinion
on the death of Caesar which Suetonius could publish under the Imperial
government. Jure caesus existimatur, (in Julio, c. 76.) Read the letters
that passed between Cicero and Matius a few months after the ides of
March (ad Fam. xi. 27, 28.)]

[Footnote 182: Thucydid. l. i. c. 6 The historian who considers this
circumstance as the test of civilization, would disdain the barbarism of
a European court]

[Footnote 183: He first rated at millies (800,000 L.) the damages of
Sicily, (Divinatio in Caecilium, c. 5,) which he afterwards reduced to
quadringenties, (320,000 L.--1 Actio in Verrem, c. 18,) and was finally
content with tricies, (24,000l L.) Plutarch (in Ciceron. tom. iii. p.
1584) has not dissembled the popular suspicion and report.]

[Footnote 184: Verres lived near thirty years after his trial, till the
second triumvirate, when he was proscribed by the taste of Mark Antony
for the sake of his Corinthian plate, (Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxiv. 3.)]

The first imperfect attempt to restore the proportion of crimes and
punishments was made by the dictator Sylla, who, in the midst of his
sanguinary triumph, aspired to restrain the license, rather than
to oppress the liberty, of the Romans. He gloried in the arbitrary
proscription of four thousand seven hundred citizens. [185] But, in the
character of a legislator, he respected the prejudices of the times;
and, instead of pronouncing a sentence of death against the robber or
assassin, the general who betrayed an army, or the magistrate who ruined
a province, Sylla was content to aggravate the pecuniary damages by
the penalty of exile, or, in more constitutional language, by the
interdiction of fire and water. The Cornelian, and afterwards
the Pompeian and Julian, laws introduced a new system of criminal
jurisprudence; [186] and the emperors, from Augustus to Justinian,
disguised their increasing rigor under the names of the original
authors. But the invention and frequent use of extraordinary pains
proceeded from the desire to extend and conceal the progress of
despotism. In the condemnation of illustrious Romans, the senate was
always prepared to confound, at the will of their masters, the judicial
and legislative powers. It was