oney; for
adultery; for the most heinous violations of honour, particularly
for injuries to the person and disturbance of the domestic peace;
perhaps also for embezzlement of public moneys, for usury and other
crimes; and at least the greater number of these courts were either
found in existence or called into life by Sulla, and were provided
by him with special ordinances setting forth the crime and form of
criminal procedure. The government, moreover, was not deprived of
the right to appoint in case of emergency special courts for
particular groups of crimes. As a result of these arrangements,
the popular tribunals were in substance done away with, processes
of high treason in particular were consigned to the new high treason
commission, and the ordinary jury procedure was considerably
restricted, for the more serious falsifications and injuries were
withdrawn from it. Secondly, as respects the presidency of the courts,
six praetors, as we have already mentioned, were now available for
the superintendence of the different jury-courts, and to these were
added a number of other directors in the care of the commission
which was most frequently called into action--that for dealing with
murder. Thirdly, the senators were once more installed in the
office of jurymen in room of the Gracchan equites.

The political aim of these enactments--to put an end to the share
which the equites had hitherto had in the government--is clear as
day; but it as little admits of doubt, that these were not mere
measures of a political tendency, but that they formed the first
attempt to amend the Roman criminal procedure and criminal law, which
had since the struggle between the orders fallen more and more into
confusion. From this Sullan legislation dates the distinction--
substantially unknown to the earlier law--between civil and criminal
causes, in the sense which we now attach to these expressions;
henceforth a criminal cause appears as that which comes before the
bench of jurymen under the presidency of the praetor, a civil cause
as the procedure, in which the juryman or jurymen do not discharge
their duties under praetorian presidency. The whole body of the
Sullan ordinances as to the -quaestiones- may be characterized
at once as the first Roman code after the Twelve Tables, and as
the first criminal code ever specially issued at all. But in
the details also there appears a laudable and liberal spirit.
Singular as it may sound r