iminal tribunals were
merely subdivisions, or committees, of the legislature. This, at all
events, is the conclusion pointed at by the legal history of the two
great states of antiquity, with tolerable clearness in one case, and
with absolute distinctness in the other. The primitive penal law of
Athens entrusted the castigation of offences partly to the Archons,
who seem to have punished them as _torts_, and partly to the Senate of
Areopagus, which punished them as _sins_. Both jurisdictions were
substantially transferred in the end to the Heliaea, the High Court of
Popular Justice, and the functions of the Archons and of the Areopagus
became either merely ministerial or quite insignificant. But "Heliaea"
is only an old word for Assembly; the Heliaea of classical times was
simply the Popular Assembly convened for judicial purposes, and the
famous Dikasteries of Athens were only its subdivisions or panels. The
corresponding changes which occurred at Rome are still more easily
interpreted, because the Romans confined their experiments to the
penal law, and did not, like the Athenians, construct popular courts
with a civil as well as a criminal jurisdiction. The history of Roman
criminal jurisprudence begins with the old Judicia Populi, at which
the Kings are said to have presided. These were simply solemn trials
of great offenders under legislative forms. It seems, however, that
from an early period the Comitia had occasionally delegated its
criminal jurisdiction to a Quaestio or Commission, which bore much the
same relation to the Assembly as a Committee of the House of Commons
bears to the House itself, except that the Roman Commissioners or
Quaestores did not merely _report_ to the Comitia, but exercised all
powers which that body was itself in the habit of exercising, even to
the passing sentence on the Accused. A Quaestio of this sort was only
appointed to try a particular offender, but there was nothing to
prevent two or three Quaestiones sitting at the same time; and it is
probable that several of them were appointed simultaneously, when
several grave cases of wrong to the community had occurred together.
There are also indications that now and then these Quaestiones
approached the character of our _Standing_ Committees, in that they
were appointed periodically, and without waiting for occasion to arise
in the commission of some serious crime. The old Quaestores Parricidii,
who are mentioned in connection with trans