31

probably from the Senate, to hear a cause, whether it were a controversy or a criminal charge. Other trials, called the People's, were conducted by the Quæstors, as we have observed, before the Centuries, or by the Tribunes, before the Tribes; although it is now to be remarked that the law of the Twelve Tables removed capital cases to the cognizance of the Centuries alone. The writ or the accusation, in all causes, was followed by the security or the bail, before the proper magistrate, and then by reference to the judges or the assembly, according to the character of the charge or the suit preferred. If it were a case to be laid before the people, the first step to its prosecution was its assumption by a magistrate, who was said to name the day for the person accused to make his defence. Under these forms, as may be recollected, Coriolanus and Cæso Quinctius were brought to trial. Our present object, however, is to mark how entirely the administration of justice depended upon circumstances, from which, in order to be correct, it needed to be entirely preserved. Whether it were the Consul, or the judges he appointed, or the assembly, who decided the important causes that originated amidst the turbulence and the injuries of which we have, perhaps, formed some idea, it is per

have possessed some power of laying fines. The judicial functions of the Pontiffs do not enter into our present inquiry.

31 Omnia judicia, aut distrahendarum controversiarum, aut pu

niendorum maleficiorum causa re

perta sunt," etc. Cic., Pro Cæc., 2.

32 The important causes; because more trifling matters were decided by inferior judges, such as Servius Tullius had instituted, or the Centumvirs.

fectly evident that considerations of interest and rank, or passions still more personal, would enter into and occupy the tribunals, where men sought equity and protection, too often in vain. The written laws might secure more justice than the unwritten had ever done; but to say. this is to say all that can be said in its or their behalf.

One more moment of delay is requisite in order to consider, or rather to review, the process by which the highest powers of the Roman people were exercised in the creation of their laws. A law,33 as has previously appeared, could not be made by any single magistrate or any single assembly. If a Consul wished one to be passed, he laid it before the Senate, with whose approval he then proposed it to the Centuries; but their votes, even if unimpeded by the veto of the Tribunes, or the report of the Augurs, were not sufficient to establish a law until the confirmation of the Curies could be obtained. In the same way, a Tribune brought his bill before the Tribes, and if it were carried by them, he proposed it as a petition, to which the consent both of the Senate and the Curies or the Centuries was indispensable before it became a law. The laws once established bore the names of their authors. Now, though the dependence of any act of legislation upon various public bodies was apparently a guaranty that the laws

33 From which, of course, we must distinguish mere Acts of the Senate, as well as the Decrees of the Plebs, the Edicts of the Con

suls or (in after times) of other magistrates, and the later Maxims or Opinions of the Jurisconsults.

of the Commonwealth would be such as approved themselves to many different judgments and interests, it was not really as it seemed. In the instance of a consular bill, the votes of the Patricians alone were paramount from its proposal to its passage, not even excepting its submission to the Centuries, in which, at the present period, the higher estate, with their supporters, were still supreme. The tribunitian bill, which had, it is true, its source in the desires of the lower estate, could be hindered, as we have seen, and stopped, until the current broke into a freshet and swept its way. It is hardly needful to remind the reader that the broils of trials and elections were equally common to the legislative meetings of the early, as, indeed, of the later Romans.

Through these restraints and through these liberties the destiny of the nation was to be evolved. And as we stood by the hills and upon the plains, to watch the settlements they received, and the manner in which the city rose, so now, three centuries after, we look back and forward to signs unerring, that freedom will be hard to establish, and harder still to exercise aright in Rome. Every countenance seems to wear a scowl, and every hand to bear a sword, as if there were battles to fight rather than rights to win.

CHAPTER IV.

ACTIONS AND REACTIONS.

"This frame is raised upon a mass of antipathies.". "SIR THO. BROWNE, Rel. Med., Pt. II. sect. 7.

THE spirit of the Twelve Tables is much more easily ascertained than their letter can in any way be restored, by following out the events immediately succeeding to their establishment in Rome; though it be true that we must still walk among shadows, and that the operation of the laws will often prove uncertain, like their style. We shall yet be exclusively occupied by the early public growth of Roman liberty.

The Tables were hardly completed, and the last two were not even ratified by the people, when their emptiness seemed proved through the very men by whom they had been compiled. Appius Claudius and his colleagues began to wear the looks of tyrants,' and it was noised that they had the intention of making themselves what they seemed. Some of the Patricians, delighted at any system of oppression, supported the Decemvirs with all their zeal. Others, and the majority, aggrieved that their assemblies were not called together, and that the Decemvirs did

1 "Decem regum species erat." Liv., III. 36.

not resign their power, were content to wait awhile before attempting force. Many, injured or wantonly offended, withdrew, it is said, to their farms, forgetting or abandoning their own affection for authority. The Plebeians suffered, but perhaps no more than the Patricians. A certain number of them, also, appear to have left the city;3 and most, if not all, would be as anxious as their neighbours to be done with the Decemvirs, and return to their own magistrates and assemblies. Yet from the narrative which presently follows, in the old historians, it can be plainly gathered, that, while both classes were weary of the decemvirate, a large party of the Patricians were determined that the resignation of the Decemvirs should be to their own advantage, whenever it occurred, and that the Plebeians should be prevented by every means from recovering their Tribunes or the recent powers of their Tribes.

Some time towards the close of the second decemvirate, the Senate was summoned to provide the means of defence against a threatened invasion from the Equians and Sabines. Among the Senators assembled, after a prorogation of many months, were two who came determined to assail the Decemvirs and compel their abdication. One of these was Lucius Valerius, the grandson or grand-nephew of old Valerius, the People's Friend; the other, Marcus Horatius, descended from one of the greatest and the worthiest Patrician families. It is not too much to

2 Liv., III. 36.

3 Dion. Hal., XI. 2.

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