Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/159

Rh territorial acquisitions, the state, about 166, reclaimed the public domain in Campania, and derived a considerable revenue from leasing it. The former occupants (aratores) were indemnified.

The nobles generally made money also out of the government contracts, which were often only nominally in the hands of the equestrian class, and were no longer let on the terms most favorable to the state. But as a rule they reaped their golden harvests by exacting money in innumerable ways from the provincials.

A New Criminal Court. — In important cases, especially those of a political nature, the popular assemblies formed very unsatisfactory courts of last resort, and were at times superseded. An important investigation or trial (quaestio extraordinaria) was occasionally intrusted to a consul or praetor, who then passed sentence on persons found guilty, without allowing appeal. In some cases the senate also directed provincials to accuse an official before a commission of senators.

When the praetor Servius Sulpicius Galba had induced the Lusitanians to surrender by promising them lands, and then had slaughtered or sold them into slavery, Cato and others attempted to establish by law a special commission to try him, but they were foiled by his wit and oratory, his money and friends. Such a result in so notorious a case led at last to the conviction that the old criminal procedure before a popular assembly was insufficient to check the greed and cruelty of provincial governors. Accordingly, in 149, the plebeian tribune Lucius Calpurnius Piso carried a law (lex Calpurnia de pecuniis repetundis) establishing a special court (quaestio repetundarum) for the trial of cases of extortion. The second city praetor (praetor peregrinus) was the president of this court, and selected the annual panel of jurors, from which a jury was chosen for each case. The