of the governor and his freedom from immediate
senatorial control guaranteed him a free hand.

*The quaestio rerum repetundarum: 149 B. C.* The mischief became so
serious that in 149 B. C. the public conscience awoke to the wrong and
ruin inflicted upon the provinces, and by a Calpurnian Law a standing
court was instituted for the trial of officials accused of extortion in
the provinces. This court was composed of fifty jurors drawn from the
Senate and was presided over by a praetor. From its judgment there was no
appeal. Its establishment marks an important innovation in Roman legal
procedure in criminal cases. It is possible also that the Senate was
encouraged to undertake the organization of new provinces shortly after
149 because it believed that this court would serve as an adequate means
of controlling the provincial governors. But it was useless to expect very
much from such a tribunal. The cost of a long trial at Rome, the
difficulty of securing testimony, the inadequacy of the penalty provided,
which was limited to restitution of the damage inflicted, as well as the
fear of vengeance from future governors, would deter the majority of
sufferers from seeking reparation. Nor could an impartial verdict be
expected from a jury of senators trying one of their own number for an
offense which many of them regarded as their prerogative. And so till the
end of the republic the provincials suffered from the oppression of their
governors, as well as from that of the tax-collectors.

III. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

*Outstanding characteristics of the period.* The epoch of foreign
expansion which we are considering was marked by a complete revolution in
the social and economic life of Rome and Italy. It witnessed the spread of
the slave plantations, the decline of the free Italian peasantry, the
growth of the city mob of Rome, the great increase in the power of the
commercial and capitalist class, and the introduction of a new standard of
living among the well-to-do.

*The slave **plantations.* The introduction of the plantation system, that
is, of the cultivation of large estates (_latifundia_) by slave labor, was
the result of several causes: the Roman system of administering the public
domain, the devastation of the rural districts of South Italy in the
Hannibalic War, the abundant supply of cheap slaves taken as prisoners of
war, and the inability of the small proprietors to maintain the