Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/303

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 285 duct of the provincial magistrates was not, however, c H A P, regulated by the practice of the city, or the strict max- ^^^^^' ims of the civilians. They found the use of torture established not only among the slaves of oriental des- potism, but among the Macedonians, who obeyed a limited monarch; among the Rhodians, who flourished by the liberty of commerce ; and even among the sage Athenians, who had asserted and adorned the dignity of human kind ''. The acquiescence of the provincials encouraged their governors to acquire, or perhaps to usurp, a discretionary power of employing the rack, to extort from vagrants or plebeian criminals the confession of their guilt, till they insensibly proceeded to con- found the distinctions of rank, and to disregard the privileges of Roman citizens. The apprehensions of the subjects urged them to solicit, and the interest of the sovereign engaged him to grant, a variety of special exemptions, which tacitly allowed, and even authorised, the general use of torture. They protected all persons of illustrious or honourable rank, bishops and their presbyters, professors of the liberal arts, soldiers and their families, municipal officers and their posterity to the third generation, and all children under the age of puberty *'. But a fatal maxim was introduced into the new jurisprudence of the empire, that in the case of treason, which included every offence that the subtilty of lawyers could derive from an 'hostile intention' to- wards the prince or republic % all privileges were sus- pended, and all conditions were reduced to the same ignominious level. As the safety of the emperor was <= Dicendum. . . de institutis Atheniensium, Rhodiorum, dootissimoium liomiiium, apud qiios etiam (id quod aceibissimura est) liberi civesque tor- quentur. Cicero. Partit. Oral. c.34. We may learn from the trial of Phi- lotas the practice of the Macedonians. Diodor. Sicul. 1. xvii. p. 604 ; Q. Curt. 1. vi. c. 11. '1 Heineccius (Element. Jur. Civil, part vii. p. 81.) has collected these exemptions into one view. e This definition of the sage of Ulpian (Pandect. 1. xlviii. tit. iv.) seems to have been adapted to the court ofCaracalla, rather than to that of Alex- ander Severus. See the Codes of Theodosius and Justinian ad leg. Juliam majestatis.