of the community;(2)
and thus procedure by fine acquired an importance which it was far
from originally possessing. Under the vague category of offences
against order men might include any accusations they pleased, and by
the higher grades in the scale of fines they might accomplish whatever
they desired. The dangerous character of such arbitrary procedure was
brought to light rather than obviated by the mitigating proviso, that
these property-fines, where they were not fixed by law at a definite
sum, should not amount to half the estate belonging to the person
fined. To this class belonged the police-laws, which from the earliest
times were especially abundant in the Roman community. Such were those
enactments of the Twelve Tables, which prohibited the anointing of a
dead body by persons hired for the purpose, the dressing it out with
more than one cushion or more than three purple-edged coverings, the
decorating it with gold or gaudy chaplets, the use of dressed wood for
the funeral pile, and the perfuming or sprinkling of the pyre with
frankincense or myrrh-wine; which limited the number of flute-players
in the funeral procession to ten at most; and which forbade wailing
women and funeral banquets--in a certain measure the earliest Roman
legislation against luxury. Such also were the laws--originating
in the conflicts of the orders--directed against usury as well as
against an undue use of the common pasture and a disproportionate
appropriation of the occupiable domain-land. But far more fraught
with danger than these and similar fining-laws, which at any rate
formulated once for all the trespass and often also the measure of
punishment, was the general prerogative of every magistrate who
exercised jurisdiction to inflict a fine for an offence against order,
and, if the fine reached the amount necessary to found an appeal and
the person fined did not submit to the penalty, to bring the case
before the community. Already in the course of the fifth century
quasi-criminal proceedings had been in this way instituted against
immorality of life both in men and women, against the forestalling of
grain, witchcraft, and similar matters. Closely akin to this was the
quasi-jurisdiction of the censors, which likewise sprang up at this
period. They were invested with authority to adjust the Roman budget
and the burgess-roll, and they availed themselves of it, partly to
impose of their own accord taxes on luxury which dif