=299. The Great Tribunals in the Basilicas.=--If we visit the great basilicas, we find two kinds of tribunals steadily functioning. For much civil business there is the great “Court of the Centumviri,” a board not of “One Hundred” but actually of one hundred and eighty distinguished citizens, who sit sometimes all together, sometimes divided into four groups for conducting trials simultaneously. Their stronghold is the Basilica Julia. It is a great honor to argue before the Centumviri, and every advocate exhausts his wiles to induce the grave judges to pay him the highest compliment (as they did to Pliny the Younger) by “suddenly leaping to their feet and applauding him as if they could not help themselves.” The most of the higher litigation, however, goes before _judices_. A _judex_ may be one of the great panel of 4000 citizens,--senators, equites, and plebeians of substance who can be called upon to serve as a kind of jury for ordinary trials of importance. The size of such a jury depends on the nature of the case as provided by statute,--you can have from 32 members up to a full 100. There is a high judge over the entire body, either the prætor, or a professional expert in the law, the _judex quæstionis_, who controls the presentation of evidence and the strictly technical parts of the trial. After the evidence has been submitted, orally or in writing, and the orators have exhausted themselves, the jurors take small wax-covered tablets and vote, each man marking simply letters: A = _absolvo_, “Not guilty,” C = _Condemno_, “Guilty,” N.L. = _Non Liquet_, “No verdict.” A bare majority can either acquit or condemn, but, of course, no man is condemned on a plurality, and a tie means acquittal. If “No verdict” is the decision, the case can still go to another trial. Roman juries, therefore, do not have to be locked up for days to compel them to agree. However, this jury system is often inconvenient and does not adapt itself to that very technical justice in which the Roman jurisconsults increasingly delight. More and more cases are being tried by a single _judex_, or a small bench of _judices_, men highly trained in the law, and especially appointed by the prætor or other high official, to investigate a given case and report their findings. Under the later Empire the large juries will disappear altogether, and a few professional judges will become arbiters alike of the law and the evidence--an excellent system from the standpoint of scientific jurisprudence, but not so excellent if these judges become corrupt, pliable, or subject to class prejudices.