Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/954

942  to which the provincials were put in sending embassies to Rome to praise the administration of their governors. (Cic. ad Fam. iii. 8, 10.)

With respect to the magistrates, Sulla renewed the old law, that no one should hold the praetorship before he had been quaestor, nor the consulship before he had been praetor (Appian, B. C. i. 100; Cic. Phil. xi. 5) ; nor did he allow of any deviation from this law in favour of his own party, for when Q, Lucretius Ofella, who had taken Praeneste, presuming upon his services, offered himself as a candidate for the consulship, without having previously held the offices of quaestor and praetor, he was assassinated in the forum by the order of the dictator. Sulla also re-established the ancient law, that no one should be elected to the same magistracy till after the expiration of ten years. (Appian, B. C. i. 101; comp. Liv. vii. 42, x. 31.)

Sulla increased the number of Quaestors from eight to twenty (Tac. Ann. xi. 22), and that of the Praetors from six to eight. Pomponius says (De Orig. Juris, Dig. 1. tit. 2. s. 32) that Sulla added four new praetors, but this appears to be a mistake, since Julius Caesar was the first who increased their number to ten. (Suet. Caes. 41; Dion Cass. xlii. 51.) This increase in the number of the praetors was necessary on account of the new quaestiones, established by Sulla, of which we shall speak below.

One of the most important of Sulla's reforms related to the tribunate. It is stated in general by the ancient writers, that Sulla deprived the tribunes of the plebs of all real power (Vell. Pat. ii. 30; Appian, B. C. i. 100; Cic. de Leg. iii. 9; Liv. Epit. 89); but the exact nature of his alterations is not accurately stated. It appears certain, however, that he deprived the tribunes of the right of proposing a rogation of any kind whatsoever to the tribes (Liv. Epit. 89), or of impeaching any person before them, inasmuch as he abolished altogether the legislative and judicial functions of the tribes, as has been previously stated. The tribunes also lost the right of holding conciones (Cic. pro Cluent. 40), as has likewise been shown, and thus could not influence the tribes by any speeches. The only right left to them was the Intercessio. It is, however, uncertain to what extent the right of Intercessio extended. It is hardly conceivable that Sulla would have left the tribunes to exercise this the most formidable of all their powers without any limitation; and that he did not do so is clear from the case of Q. Opimius, who was brought to trial, because, when tribune of the plebs, he had used his intercessio in violation of the Lex Cornelia (Cic. Verr. i. 60). Cicero says (de Leg. iii. 9) that Sulla left the tribunes only the potestas auxilii ferendi; and from this we may infer, in connection with the case of Opimius, that the Intercessio was confined to giving their protection to private persons against the unjust decisions of magistrates, as, for instance, in the enlisting of soldiers. Caesar, it is true, states, in general, that Sulla left to the tribunes the right of intercessio, and he leaves it to be inferred in particular that Sulla allowed them to use their intercessio in reference to senatusconsulta (Caes. B. C. i. 5, 7); but it is not impossible, as Becker has suggested, that Caesar may have given a false interpretation of the right of intercessio granted by Sulla, in order to justify the course he was himself adopting. (Becker, Handbuch der Röm. Alterthümer, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 290). To degrade the tribunate still lower, Sulla enacted, that whoever had held this office forfeited thereby all right to become a candidate for any of the higher curule offices, in order that all persons of rank, talent, and wealth, might be deterred from holding an office which would be a fatal impediment to rising any higher in the state. (Appian, B. C. i. 100; Ascon. in Cornel. p. 78, ed. Orelli.) The statement that Sulla required persons to be senators before they could become tribunes (Appian, l. c.), is explained by the circumstance that the quaestorship and the aedileship, which usually preceded the tribunate gave admission to the senate; and it would therefore appear that Sulla required all persons to hold the quaestorship before the tribunate.

II. Laws relating to the Ecclesiastical Corporations. — Sulla repealed the Lex Domitia, which gave to the comitia tributa the right of electing the members of the great ecclesiastical corporations, and restored to the latter the right of co-optatio or self-election. At the same time he increased the number of pontiffs and augurs to fifteen respectively (Dion Cass, xxxvii. 37; Liv. Epit. 89). It is commonly said that Sulla also increased the number of the keepers of the Sibylline books from 'ten to fifteen; and though we have no express authority for this statement (for the passage of Servius, ad Virg. Aen. vi. 73, does not prove it), it is probable that he did, as we read of Quindecemviri in the time of Cicero (ad Fam. viii. 4) instead of decemviri as previously.

III. Laws relating to the Administration of Justice. — Sulla established permanent courts for the trial of particular offences, in each of which a praetor presided. A precedent for this had been given by the Lex Calpurnia of the tribune L. Calpurnius Piso, in 149, by which it was enacted that a praetor should preside at all trials for repetundae during his year of office. This was called a Quaestio Perpetua, and nine such Quaestiones Perpetuae were established by Sulla, namely, De Repetundis, Majestatis, De Sicariis et Veneficis, De Parricidio, Peculatus, Ambitus, De Nummis Adulterinis, De Falsis or Testamentaria, and De Vi Publica. Jurisdiction in civil cases was left to the praetor peregrinus and the praetor urbanus as before, and the other six praetors presided in the Quaestiones; but as the latter were more in number than the praetors, some of the praetors took more than one quaestio, or a judex quaestionis was appointed. The praetors, after their election, had to draw lots for their several jurisdictions. Sulla enacted that the judices should be taken exclusively from the senators, and not from the equites, the latter of whom had possessed this privilege, with a few interruptions, from the law of C. Gracchus, in 123. This was a great gain for the aristocracy; since the offences for which they were usually brought to trial, such as bribery, malversation, and the like, were so commonly practised by the whole order, that they were, in most cases, nearly certain of acquittal from men who required similar indulgence themselves. (Tac. Ann. xi. 22; Vell. Pat. ii. 32; Cic. Verr. Act. i. 13, 16; comp. Dictionary of Antiquities, art. Judex.)

Sulla's reform in the criminal law, the greatest and most enduring part of his legislation, belongs to a history of Roman law, and cannot be given here. For further information on this subject the