in the Asiatic revenues, under
which the tax-payers were the principal gainers, and the state chest
was perhaps at most no loser, as by the resumption of the Campanian
domains, to which Aenaria was now added,(33) and above all by the
abolition of the largesses of grain, which since the time of Gaius
Gracchus had eaten like a canker into the Roman finances.
Reorganization of the Judicial System.
Previous Arrangements
Ordinary Procedure
Permanent and Special -Quaestiones-
Centumviral Court
The judicial system on the other hand was essentially revolutionized,
partly from political considerations, partly with a view to
introduce greater unity and usefulness into the previous very
insufficient and unconnected legislation on the subject. According
to the arrangements hitherto subsisting, processes fell to be decided
partly by the burgesses, partly by jurymen. The judicial cases in
which the whole burgesses decided on appeal from the judgment of
the magistrate were, down to the time of Sulla, placed in the
hands primarily of the tribunes of the people, secondarily of the
aediles, inasmuch as all the processes, through which a person
entrusted with an office or commission by the community was brought
to answer for his conduct of its affairs, whether they involved
life and limb or money-fines, had to be in the first instance dealt
with by the tribunes of the people, and all the other processes in
which ultimately the people decided, were in the first instance
adjudicated on, in the second presided over, by the curule or plebeian
aediles. Sulla, if he did not directly abolish the tribunician
process of calling to account, yet made it dependent, just like
the initiative of the tribunes in legislation, on the previous
consent of the senate, and presumably also limited in like manner
the aedilician penal procedure. On the other hand he enlarged the
jurisdiction of the jury courts. There existed at that time two
sorts of procedure before jurymen. The ordinary procedure, which
was applicable in all cases adapted according to our view for a
criminal or civil process with the exception of crimes immediately
directed against the state, consisted in this, that one of the two
praetors of the capital technically adjusted the cause and a juryman
(-iudex-) nominated by him decided it on the basis of this adjustment.
The extraordinary jury-procedure again was applicable in particular
civil or criminal cases of importance, for whic
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