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 regarding the author of the proscriptions,
it remains nevertheless true that he abolished the punishment
of death for political offences; for, as according to the Roman
custom which even Sulla retained unchanged the people only, and
not the jury-commission, could sentence to forfeiture of life or
to imprisonment,(38) the transference of processes of high treason
from the burgesses to a standing commission amounted to the abolition
of capital punishment for such offences. On the other hand, the
restriction of the pernicious special commissions for particular cases
of high treason, of which the Varian commission(39) in the Social war
had been a specimen, likewise involved an improvement. The whole
reform was of singular and lasting benefit, and a permanent monument
of the practical, moderate, statesmanly spirit, which made its author
well worthy, like the old decemvirs, to step forward between the
parties as sovereign mediator with his code of law.

Police Laws

We may regard as an appendix to these criminal laws the police
ordinances, by which Sulla, putting the law in place of the censor,
again enforced good discipline and strict manners, and, by
establishing new maximum rates instead of the old ones which
had long been antiquated, attempted to restrain luxury at banquets,
funerals, and otherwise.

The Roman Municipal System

Lastly, the development of an independent Roman municipal system
was the work, if not of Sulla, at any rate of the Sullan epoch.
The idea of organically incorporating the community as a subordinate
political unit in the higher unity of the state was originally
foreign to antiquity; the despotism of the east knew nothing of urban
commonwealths in the strict sense of the word, and city and state
were throughout the Helleno-Italic world necessarily coincident.
In so far there was no proper municipal system from the outset either
in Greece or in Italy. The Roman polity especially adhered to this
view with its peculiar tenaciou