502
THE DECLINE AND FALL
Revival of capital punishments The first imperfect attempt to restore the proportion of crimes and punishments was made by the dictator Sylla, who, in the midst of his sanguinary triumph, aspired to restrain the licence, rather than to oppress the liberty, of the Romans. He gloried in the arbitrary proscription of four thousand seven hundred citizens.[1] But in the character of a legislator he respected the prejudices of the times; and, instead of pronouncing a sentence of death against the robber or assassin, the general who betrayed an army, or the magistrate who ruined a province, Sylla was content to aggravate the pecuniary damages by the penalty of exile, or, in more constitutional language, by the interdiction of fire and water. The Cornelian, and afterwards the Pompeian and Julian laws introduced a new system of criminal jurisprudence;[2] and the emperors, from Augustus to Justinian, disguised their increasing rigour under the names of the original authors. But the invention and frequent use of extraordinary pains proceeded from the desire to extend and conceal the progress of despotism. In the condemnation of illustrious Romans the senate was always prepared to confound, at the will of their masters, the judicial and legislative powers. It was the duty of the governors to maintain the peace of their province by the arbitrary and rigid administration of justice; the freedom of the city evaporated in the extent of empire, and the Spanish malefactor who claimed the privilege of a Roman was elevated by the command of Galba on a fairer and more lofty cross.[3] Occasional rescripts issued from the throne to decide the questions which, by their novelty or importance, appeared to surpass the authority and discernment of a proconsul. Transportation and beheading were reserved for honourable persons; meaner criminals were either hanged or burnt, or buried in the mines, or exposed to the wild beasts of the amphitheatre.
- ↑ Such is the number assigned by Valerius Maximus (l. ix. c. 2, No. 1). Florus (iv. 21 [leg. iii. 21 (=ii. 9)]) distinguishes 2000 senators and knights. Appian (de Bell. Civil. l. i. c. 95, tom. ii. p. 133, edit. Schweighæuser) more accurately computes 40 victims of the senatorian rank, and 1600 of the equestrian census or order.
- ↑ For the penal laws (leges Corneliæ, Pompeiæ, Juliæ, of Sylla, Pompey. and the Cæsars), see the sentences of Paulus (l. iv. tit. xviii-xxx. p. 497-528, edit. Schulting), the Gregorian Code (Fragment, l. xix. p. 705, 706, in Schulting), the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum (tit. i. xv.), the Theodosian Code (l. ix.), the Code of Justinian (l. ix.), the Pandects (xlviii.), the Institutes (l. iv. tit. xviii.), and the Greek version of Theophilus (p. 917-926).
- ↑ It was a guardian who had poisoned his ward. The crime was atrocious; yet the punishment is reckoned by Suetonius (c. 9) among the acts in which Galba shewed himself acer vehemens, et in delictis coercendis immodicus.
