"days of utterance" (-dies fasti-) at the "judgment platform"
(-tribunal-) in the place of public assembly, sitting on the
"chariot-seat" (-sella curulis-);(1) by his side stood his "messengers"
(-lictores-), and before him the person accused or the "parties"
(-rei-). No doubt in the case of slaves the decision lay primarily
with the master, and in the case of women with the father, husband,
or nearest male relative;(2) but slaves and women were not primarily
reckoned as members of the community. Over sons and grandsons who
were -in potestate- the power of the -pater familias- subsisted
concurrently with the royal jurisdiction; that power, however,
was not a jurisdiction in the proper sense of the term, but simply
a consequence of the father's inherent right of property in his
children. We find no traces of any jurisdiction appertaining to
the clans as such, or of any judicature at all that did not derive
its authority from the king. As regards the right of self-redress
and in particular the avenging of blood, we still find perhaps in
legends an echo of the original principle that a murderer, or any
one who should illegally protect a murderer, might justifiably be
slain by the kinsmen of the person murdered; but these very legends
characterize this principle as objectionable,(3) and from their
statements blood-revenge would appear to have been very early
suppressed in Rome through the energetic assertion of the authority
of the community. In like manner we perceive in the earliest Roman
law no trace of that influence which under the oldest Germanic
institutions the comrades of the accused and the people present
were entitled to exercise over the pronouncing of judgment; nor
do we find in the former any evidence of the usage so frequent in
the latter, by which the mere will and power to maintain a claim
with arms in hand were treated as judicially necessary or at any
rate admissible.

Crimes

Judicial procedure took the form of a public or a private process,
according as the king interposed of his own motion or only when
appealed to by the injured party. The former course was taken
only in cases which involved a breach of the public peace. First
of all, therefore, it was applicable in the case of public treason
or communion with the public enemy (-proditio-), and in that of
violent rebellion against the magistracy (-perduellio-). But the
public peace was also broken by the foul murderer (-parricida-),
the