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 449 A third lex Valeria of 300  prohibited the execution or scourging of one who had appealed; but the weakness of former enactments was repeated in this law; it declared the magistrate's contravention of it to be improbe factum. An effective sanction seems first to have been supplied by one of the three Porcian laws; certainly at the end of the Republic a violation of the provocatio entailed a capital penalty on the magistrate.

With respect to the capital jurisdiction of the tribunes, we have seen how their tacit recognition of the appeal gave rise to this jurisdiction. But in theory the coercion of the tribune, when used in defence of the sanctity of his own person, was not subject to appeal. Here the old religious penalties remained in force, and a period as late as the year 131 witnessed the spectacle of a tribune dragging a censor, who had degraded him, to the Tarpeian rock with intent to hurl him down—a fate from which he was saved only by the veto of the tribune's colleagues.

Scourging, which is found in the early Republic as a punishment employed in the military levy, was practically abolished as a mode of coercitio by the third lex Valeria of 300 and the leges Porciae, which submitted the threat of such punishment to appeal, the latter laws imposing a heavy penalty on the magistrate who inflicted it.

Imprisonment (abductio in carcerem, in vincula), although not recognised as a penalty in Roman law, plays a double part in the coercitio. It was one of the modes by which the magistrates defended their dignity and secured obedience, not merely from private citizens, but from lower magistrates and senators; and it was adopted as a precautionary measure to secure the appearance on trial of one whom they accused. The use of this severe measure against magistrates by any power but the tribunate is