Latin
Ancient Law
Roman Law and Society, Useful Links to Roman Law Materials. 2.1.445
Not analysed yet
Nothing, I have said, can be simpler than the considerations which ultimately led ancient societies to the formation of a true criminal jurisprudence. The State conceived itself to be wronged, and the Popular Assembly struck straight at the offender with the same movement which accompanied its legislative action. it is further true of the ancient world though not precisely of the modern, as I shall have occasion to point out --that the earliest criminal tribunals were merely subdivisions, or committees, of the legislature. This, at all events, is the conclusion pointed at by the legal history of the two great states of antiquity, with tolerable clearness in one case, and with absolute distinctness in the other. The primitive penal law of Athens entrusted the castigation of offences partly to the Archons, who seem to have punished them as torts, and partly to the Senate of Areopagus, which punished them as sins. Both jurisdictions were substantially transferred in the end to the Heliaea, the High Court of Popular Justice, and the functions of the Archons and of the Areopagus became either merely ministerial or quite insignificant. But "Heliaea" is only an old word for Assembly; the Heliaea of classical times was simply the Popular Assembly convened for judicial purposes, and the famous Dikasteries of Athens were only its subdivisions or panels. The corresponding changes which occurred at Rome are still more easily interpreted, because the Romans confined their experiments to the penal law, and did not, like the Athenians, construct popular courts with a civil as well as a criminal jurisdiction. The history of Roman criminal jurisprudence begins with the old Judicia Populi, at which the Kings are said to have presided. These were simply solemn trials of great offenders under legislative forms. It seems, however that from an early period the Comitia had occasionally delegated its criminal jurisdiction to a Quaestio or Commission, which bore much the same relation to the Assembly as a Committee of the House of Commons bears to the House itself, except that the Roman Commissioners or Quaestores did not merely report to the Comitia, but exercised all powers which that body was itself in the habit of exercising, even to the passing sentence on the Accused. A Quaestio of this sort was only appointed to try a particular offender, but there was nothing to prevent two or three Quaestiones sitting at the same time; and it is probable that several of them were appointed simultaneously, when several grave cases of wrong to the community had occurred together. There are also indications that now and then these Quaestiones approached the character of our Standing Committees, in that they were appointed periodically, and without waiting for occasion to arise in the commission of some serious crime. The old Quaestores Parricidii, who are mentioned in connection with transactions of very ancient date, as being deputed to try (or, as some take it, to search out and try) all cases of patricide and murder, seem to have been appointed regularly every year; and the Duumviri Perduellionis, or Commission of Two for trial of violent injury to the Commonwealth, are also believed by most writers to have been named periodically. The delegations of power to these latter functionaries bring us some way forwards. instead of being appointed when and as state-offences were committed, they had a general, though a temporary jurisdiction over such as might be perpetrated. Our proximity to a regular criminal jurisprudence is also indicated by the general terms "Parricidium" and "Perduellio" which mark the approach to something like a classification of crimes.