actions of very ancient
date, as being deputed to try (or, as some take it, to search out and
try) all cases of parricide and murder, seem to have been appointed
regularly every year; and the Duumviri Perduellionis, or Commission of
Two for trial of violent injury to the Commonwealth, are also believed
by most writers to have been named periodically. The delegations of
power to these latter functionaries bring us some way forwards.
Instead of being appointed _when and as_ state-offences were
committed, they had a general, though a temporary jurisdiction over
such as _might_ be perpetrated. Our proximity to a regular criminal
jurisprudence is also indicated by the general terms "Parricidium" and
"Perduellio" which mark the approach to something like a
classification of crimes.

The true criminal law did not however come into existence till the
year B.C. 149, when L. Calpurnius Piso carried the statute known as
the Lex Calpurnia de Repetundis. The law applied to cases Repetundarum
Pecuniarum, that is, claims by Provincials to recover monies
improperly received by a Governor-General, but the great and permanent
importance of this statute arose from its establishing the first
Quaestio Perpetua. A Quaestio Perpetua was a _Permanent_ Commission as
opposed to those which were occasional and to those which were
temporary. It was a regular criminal tribunal whose existence dated
from the passing of the statute creating it and continued till another
statute should pass abolishing it. Its members were not specially
nominated, as were the members of the older Quaestiones, but provision
was made in the law constituting it for selecting from particular
classes the judges who were to officiate, and for renewing them in
conformity with definite rules. The offences of which it took
cognisance were also expressly named and defined in this statute, and
the new Quaestio had authority to try and sentence all persons in
future whose acts should fall under the definitions of crime supplied
by the law. It was therefore a regular criminal judicature,
administering a true criminal jurisprudence.

The primitive history of criminal law divides itself therefore into
four stages. Understanding that the conception of _Crime_, as
distinguished from that of _Wrong_ or _Tort_ and from that of _Sin_,
involves the idea of injury to the State or collective community, we
first find that the commonwealth, in literal conformity with the
conception, itself