Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/293

Rh Public Works and Projects of Caesar. — The efficient management of the finances provided Caesar with the means for making internal improvements. His public buildings were distinguished not only for their size and magnificence, but for their utility. To relieve the old Forum, he constructed for the popular assemblies a new place of voting, the saepta Julia, in the campus Martius; he built the forum Julium, and commenced a great courthouse and exchange, the basilica Julia. He is said to have spent $8,800,000 on his buildings.

But these structures were only a beginning. He planned to build a new senate house, a theatre, and a temple to Mars, and to establish a Latin and a Greek library. He proposed to drain the Pomptine marshes and the Fucine lake, to lead the Tiber around the campus Vaticanus and to construct a harbor at Ostia. Further he intended to build a great military road from the Tiber across the Apennines to the Adriatic Sea, and to dig a canal through the isthmus of Corinth, a project finally executed a few years ago.

Judicial Reforms of Caesar. — In the department of justice Caesar retained in the main the old procedure in civil and criminal cases. He did not follow in the footsteps of Gaius Gracchus; on the contrary, he excluded the tribunes of the treasury (tribuni aerarii) from the jury panel Possibly the reason for this change was that these officials were now of no importance, and there were no other desirable representatives of the middle and lower classes.

The Criminal Law. — Caesar issued new laws in regard to the courts for cases of treason and violence. He recognized the supreme judicial authority of the people in so far as to threaten with punishment any magistrate who had killed, scourged, or otherwise done violence to a citizen appealing to the people. He abolished the lenient rule which