Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/449

406 is to be found, and one who can plead the cause of the ignorant nobility; it is from among the plebeians that are to be found those capable of solving the enigmas of the laws or unravelling the knotty points. The 'ignorant nobleman' may sit on the bench and receive all the honors of the position, but it is the 'togated plebeian' at his side, or sitting as 'town-clerk' beneath, who unravels for the 'county magistrate' the weighty problems or knotty questions of the law. But," adds our poet, in a line which has caused much dispute, "common-sense is very rare in the class blessed with Fortune's goods,"—

Cataline and Cethegus, though among the noblest, were yet prepared to lay Rome waste with sword and fire, but were restrained by Cicero, "hic novus Arpinas," who, though only a municipal knight, placed his guards so as to defend the city. The toga was the cause of his attaining to honors as great as were those gained by Octavius at Lencas or on the plains of Thessaly. Therefore Rome, being free, hailed Cicero father of his country.

But these sentiments were not always felt for those who were so well versed in law. The Romans experienced that the law cut both ways, and that often by the skilled quibbling of the clever lawyer a case was carried on, or perhaps given against the innocent party; and thus, according to Orelli, we find that inscriptions bore the engraved wish that "deceit and law might be far from this grave." The dying man felt that if his will was disputed little but the shells would be left; the lawyer would swallow the oyster.

The powerful invectives of Cicero against the judicial corruptions of his time display a condition of affairs which has found a parallel in more modern times. He says: "I will demonstrate by positive proofs the guilty intrigues, the infamies which have sullied the judicial powers for the years that they have been intrusted to the Senate. The Roman people shall learn from me how the equestrian order administered justice for nearly fifty consecutive years, without the faintest suspicion of having received money for a judgment delivered; how since Senators alone have composed our tribunals, since the people have been despoiled of the right which they had over each of us, Q. Claudius has been able to say, after his condemnation, that they could not honestly require less than three hundred thousaudthousand [sic] sestertii to condemn a prætor; how when the Senator P. Septimius was found guilty of embezzlement before the prætor Hortensius, the money he had received as a judge was included in the fine; how C. Herennius and C. Popilius, both Senators, having been convicted of the crime of peculation, and M. Atilius of high treason, it was proved that they had received money as the price of one of their sentences; how it was found that certain Senators, when their names were taken from the urn by C. Verres, then prætor urbanus, instantly went to vote against the accused without having heard the suit; how, finally, we have seen a senator-judge in this same suit receive money from the accused to distribute to the other judges, and money from the accuser to condemn the accused. Can I then sufficiently deplore this blot, this shame, this calamity which weighs on the whole order?"

Many causes could be pointed to,—luxury, sensuality, intemperance, great ignorance,—which combined to lower the standard of Roman morality; and it is, perhaps, looking back to those days that we tremble the more for our own. The history of a country once so great as to govern the then known world must ever be scanned with interest, the more so as we see our own short-comings as in a glass before us. Only by avoiding these crimes which have dragged down great empires, can other empires hope to leave behind them, when they have fulfilled the rôle expected from them, an example worthy of being followed in ages to come?—(Dublin University Magazine.)