Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/679

Rh P R M P R M 655 della Villa, about three-quarters of a mile from the town. Here was discovered the well-known statue of Antinous, now in the Vatican. Not far off was found in 1773 the calendar which, as Suetonius tells us, was set up by the grammarian M. Verrius Flaccus in the forum of Pneneste. Excavations made, especial!} since 1855, in the ancient necropolis, which lay on a plateau sur rounded by valleys at the foot of the hill and of the town, have yielded important results for the history of the art and manufactures of Prameste. Of the objects found in the oldest graves, and sup posed to date from about the 7th century B.C., the cups of silvei and silver gilt and most of the gold and amber jewellery are Phoeni cian (possibly Carthaginian), or at least made on Phoenician models ; but the bronzes and some of the ivory articles seem to be Etruscan. No objects have been discovered belonging to the period inter mediate between the 7th and 3d centuries B.C. ; but the graves of the 3d and 2d centuries have yielded many precious relics, bronze caskets (cistss), convex metal mirrors, strigils, &c. Among these is the famous Ficoroni casket, engraved with pictures of the arrival of the Argonauts in Bithynia and the victory of Pollux over Amycus. It was found in 1774. The inscriptions on the caskets are all Latin ; those on the mirrors are mostly Etruscan ; those on the strigils are Latin, Greek, and Etruscan. The Latin inscriptions seem to belong to the 3d century. On the whole it appears that between the 3d and 2d centuries there existed at Prrcneste a native Latin art, which was, however, beginning to be affected by Greek art. Most of the objects discovered in the necropolis are preserved in the Roman collections, especially the Kircher Museum (which possesses the Ficoroni casket) and the Barberini Library. Besides these there is preserved in the Barberini Palace at Palestrina a large mosaic,, considered one of the most important in existence. It was found on the site of the temple of Fortune and probably dates from the age of Augustus or Tiberius. It represents scenes from the Nile, with animals and figures in Egyptian and Greek costume. (&amp;lt;L G FR ) PILETOR (prx-itor, &quot; he who goes before,&quot; &quot; a leader &quot;), originally a military title, was in classical times the designa tion of the highest magistrates in the Latin towns. The Roman consuls were at first called &quot; praetors &quot;; in the early code of the Twelve Tables (450 B.C.) they appear to have had no other title. By the Licinian law of 367 B.C., which abolished the military tribunes with consular power and enacted that the supreme executive should henceforward be in the hands of the two consuls, a new magistrate was at the same time created who was to be a colleague of the consuls, though with lower rank and lesser powers. This new magistrate was entrusted with the exclusive jurisdic tion in civil cases ; in other respects his powers resembled those of the consuls. His distinctive title was the &quot; city praetor&quot; (praetor urbanus and in after time, when the num ber of praetors was increased, the city praetor always ranked first. To this new magistrate the title of &quot; praetor &quot; was thenceforward properly restricted. 1 About 242 B.C. the increase of a foreign population in Rome necessitated the creation of a second praetor for the decision of suits between foreigners (peregrini) or between citizens and foreigners. This praetor was known at a later time as the &quot; foreign praetor&quot; (prsetor peregrinus). About 227 B.C. two more praetors were added to administer the recently acquired provinces of Sicily and Sardinia. The conquest of Spain occasioned the appointment of two more in 197 B.C., of whom one governed Hither and the other Further Spain. The number of praetors, thus augmented to six, remained stationary till Sulla s time, 82 B.C. But in the interval their duties vastly multiplied. On the one hand, five new provinces were added to the Roman dominions Macedonia and Achaia in 146 B.C., Africa in the same year, Asia in 134, Gallia Narbonensis in 118, Cilicia probably in 102. On the other hand, new and permanent jury courts (quses- tiones perpetual) were instituted at Rome, over which the praetors were called on to preside. To meet this increase t business the tenure of office of the praetors and also of 1 Some writers, following Livy, vi. 42, assert that at first the pnetor- saip was open to patricians only, but Mommsen (Rom.. Staatsrecht, ii. Si! T ?7 S that this is P rob aMy a mistake. The election of a lebeian to the office for the first time in 337 B.C. was certainly opposed the consul who presided at the election, but there appears to have been no legal obstacle to it. the consuls was practically prolonged from one to two years, with the distinction that in their second year of office they bore the titles of &quot;propraetor&quot; and &quot;proconsul &quot; instead of &quot;praetor &quot;and &quot;consul.&quot; The prolongation of office, together with the participation of the proconsuls in duties which properly fell to the praetors, formed the basis of Sulla s arrangements. He increased the number of the praetors from six to eight, and ordained that henceforward all the eight should in their first year administer justice at Rome and in their second should as propraetors undertake the government of provinces. The courts over which the praetors presided, in addition to those of the city praetor and the foreign praetor, dealt with the following offences : oppression of the provincials (repetundarum), bribery (ambitus), embezzlement (peculatus), treason (majestatis), murder (de sicariis et veneficis), and probably forgery (falsi). A tenth province (Gallia Cisalpina) was added to the pre vious nine, and thus the number of judicial and provincial departments corresponded to the annual number of praetors, propraetors, and proconsuls. The proportion, however, was not long maintained : new provinces were added to the empire Bithynia in 74 B.C., Cyrene about the same time, Crete in 67, Syria in 64 and one or more new law courts were instituted. To keep pace with the increase of duties Julius Caesar increased the number of praetors successively to ten, fourteen, and sixteen ; after his time the number varied from eight to eighteen. The praetors were elected, like the consuls, by the people assembled in the comitia centuriata and with the same formalities. (See CONSUL.) They regularly held office for a year; only in the transition period between the republic and the empire was their tenure of office some times limited to a few months. The insignia of the praetor were those common to the higher Roman magis trates, the purple-edged robe (toga prsetexta) and the ivory chair (sella curulis) ; in Rome he was attended by two lictors, in the provinces by six. The praetors elect cast lots to determine the department Avhich each of them should administer. A praetor was essentially a civil judge, and as such he was accustomed at or before his entry on office to publish an edict setting forth the rules of law and pro cedure by which he intended to be guided in his decisions. As these rules were often accepted by his successors the praetor thus acquired an almost legislatorial power, and his edicts thus continued, corrected, and amplified from year to year became, under the title of the &quot;perpetual edicts,&quot; one of the most important factors in moulding Roman law. Their tendency was to smooth away the occasional harsh ness and anomalies of the civil law by substituting rules of equity for the letter of the law, and in this respect the Roman prsetor has been compared to the English chancellor. His functions were considerably modified by the introduc tion of the standing jury courts (yusestiones perpetual). Hitherto the praetor had conducted the preliminary inquiry as to whether an action would lie, and had appointed for the actual trial of the case a deputy, whom he instructed in the law applicable to the case and whose decisions he enforced. The proceedings before the praetor were tech nically known as jus in distinction from judicium, which was the actual trial before the deputy judge. But in the standing jury courts (of which the first that for repetundse was instituted in 149 B.C.), or rather in the most import ant of them, the praetors themselves presided and tried the cases. These new courts, though formally civil, were substantially criminal courts ; and thus a criminal juris diction was added to the original civil jurisdiction of the praetors. Under the empire various special functions were assigned to certain praetors, such as the two treasury praetors prsetores serarii), appointed by Augustus in 23 B.C. ; the spear praetor (praetor hostarius), who presided over the