in times of public commotion, no provisions were made for the body of the people, it is meant, no provisions which were likely to prove effectual in the event. When the people were aroused to a certain degree, or when their concurrence was necessary to carry into effect certain resolutions or measures, that were particularly interesting to the men in power, the latter could not, with any 345 prudence, openly profess a contempt for the political wishes of the people; and some declarations, expressed in general words, in favour of public liberty, were indeed added to the laws that were enacted on those occasions. But these declarations, and the principles which they tended to establish, were afterwards even openly disregarded in practice.

346

Thus, when the people were made to vote, about a year after the expulsion of the kings, that the regal government never should be again established in Rome, and that those who should endeavour to restore it should be devoted to the gods, an article was added, which, in general terms, confirmed to the citizens the right they had before enjoyed under the king, of appealing to the people from the sentences of death passed upon them. No punishment (which will surprise the reader) was decreed against those who should violate this law; and indeed the consuls, as we may see in Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Livy, concerned themselves but little about the appeals of the citizens; and, in the more than military exercise of their functions, continued to sport with rights which they ought to have respected, however imperfectly and loosely they had been secured.

An article, to the same purport with the above, was afterwards also added to the laws of the Twelve

Tables (1); but the decemvirs, to whom the execution of those laws was at first committed, behaved exactly in the same manner, and even worse than the consuls had done before them: and after they were expelled (a), the magistrates who succeeded them appear to have been as little tender of the lives of the citizens. Out of many instances, the following may be selected, to show upon what slight grounds the citizens were exposed to have their lives taken away:-Spurius Mælius being accused of endeavouring to make himself king, was summoned by the master of the horse to appear before the dictator, in order to clear himself of this somewhat extraordinary imputation. Spurius took refuge among the people; the master of the horse pursued him, and killed him on the spot. The multitude having there- 347 upon expressed a great indignation, the dictator had them called to his tribunal, and declared that Spurius had been lawfully put to death, even though he might be innocent of the crime laid to his charge, for having refused to appear before the dictator, when desired to do so by the master of the horse (b).

(1) These Tables were in great part brought from Greece; and it was an opinion commonly received in Rome, that the cruelties practised by the magistrates on the citizens were only imitations of the examples which the Greeks had given them.-EDITOR.

(a) At the time of the expulsion of the decemvirs, a law was also enacted that no magistrate should be created from whom no appeal could be made to the people (magistratus sine provocatione.-Tit. Liv. lib. iii. § 55); by which the people expressly meant to abolish the dictatorship; but, from the fact that will just now be related, and which happened about ten years afterwards, we shall see that this law was not better observed than the former ones had been.

(b) Tumultuantem deinde multitudinem, incertâ existimatione facti, ad concionem vocari jussit, et Mælium jure cæsum pronunciavit,

after the times

appeal to the

But we do not

About one hundred and forty years we mention, the law concerning the people was enacted for the third time. see that it was better observed in the sequel than it had been before: we find it frequently violated, after that period, by the different magistrates of the republic; and the senate itself, notwithstanding this same law, at times made formidable examples of the citizens. Of this we have an instance in the three hundred soldiers who had pillaged the town of Rhegium. The senate, of its own authority, ordered them all to be put to death. In vain did the tribune Flaccus remonstrate 348 against so severe an exertion of public justice on Roman citizens; the senate, says Valerius Maximus, nevertheless persisted in its resolution (c).

All these laws for securing the lives of the citizens had hitherto been enacted without any mention of a punishment against those who should violate them. At last the celebrated Lex Porcia was passed, which subjected to banishment those who should cause a Roman citizen to be scourged and put to death. From a number of instances posterior to this law, it appears that it was not better observed than those before it had been; Caius Gracchus, therefore, caused the Lex Sem

etiamsi regni crimine insons fuerit, qui vocatus a magistro equitum, ad dictatorem non venisset.-Tit. Liv. lib. iv. § 15.

(c) Val. Max. book ii. ch. 7. This author does not mention the precise number of those who were put to death on this occasion; he only says that they were executed fifty at a time, on different suc cessive days; but other authors make the number of them amount to four thousand. Livy speaks of a whole legion-Legio Campana, quæ Rhegium occupaverat, obsessa, deditione factâ, securi percussa est.-Tit. Liv. lib. xv. Epit.-Polybius says that only three hundred were taken and brought to Rome.

pronia to be enacted, by which a new sanction was given to it. But this second law did not secure his own life, and that of his friends, better than the Lex Porcia had done that of his brother, and those who had supported him; indeed all the events which took 349 place about those times rendered it manifest that the evil was such as was beyond the power of any laws to cure. I shall here mention a fact which affords a remarkable instance of the wantonness with which the Roman magistrates had accustomed themselves to take away the lives of the citizens. A citizen, named Memmius, having put up for the consulship, and publicly canvassing for the same, in opposition to a man whom the tribune Saturninus supported, the latter caused him to be apprehended, and made him expire under blows in the public forum. The tribune even carried his insolence so far (as Cicero informs us) as to give to this act of cruelty, transacted in the presence of the whole. people assembled, the outward form of a lawful act of public justice (d).

Nor were the Roman magistrates satisfied with com- 350 mitting acts of injustice in their political capacity, and

(d) The fatal forms of words (cruciatus carmina) used by the Roman magistrates when they ordered a man to be put to death, resounded (says Tully, in his speech for Rabirius) in the assembly of the people, in which the censors had forbidden the common executioner even to appear, I, lictor, colliga manus. Caput obnubito, Arbori infelici suspendito.—Memmius being a considerable citizen, as we may conclude from his canvassing with success for the consulship, all the great men in the republic took the alarm at the atrocious action of the tribune: the senate, the next day, issued out its solemn mandate, or form of words, to the consuls, to provide that the republic should receive no detriment; and the tribune was killed in a pitched battle that was fought at the foot of the Capitol.

for the support of the power of that body of which they made a part. Avarice and private rapine were at last added to political ambition. The provinces were first oppressed and plundered. The calamity, in process of time, reached Italy itself, and the centre of the republic; till at last the Lex Calpurnia de repetundis was enacted to put a stop to it. By this law an action was given to the citizens and allies for the recovery of the money extorted from them by magistrates, or men in power: and the Lex Junia afterwards added the penalty of banishment to the obligation of making restitution.

But here another kind of disorder arose. The judges proved as corrupt as the magistrates had been oppressive. They equally betrayed, in their own province, the cause of the republic with which they had been entrusted; and rather chose to share in the plunder of 351 the consuls, the prætors, and the proconsuls, than put the laws in force against them.

New expedients were therefore resorted to, in order to remedy this new evil. Laws were made for judging and punishing the judges themselves; and, above all, continual changes were made in the manner of composing their assemblies. But the malady lay too deep for common legal provisions to remedy. The guilty judges employed the same resources, in order to avoid conviction, as the guilty magistrates had done; and those continual changes, at which we are amazed, that were made in the constitution of the judiciary bodies (e),

(e) The judges (over the assembly of whom the prætor usually presided) were taken from the body of the senate, till some years