A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early PrincipateGreenidge, A. H. J. (Abel Hendy Jones)
History
A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early Principate
Greenidge, A. H. J. (Abel Hendy Jones)
Rome -- History
Gracchan jurors were to be over thirty and under sixty, while a large
number of the military _equites_ were under the former limit of age, in
consequence of the practice of retiring from the corps after the
attainment of the quaestorship or selection into the senate. The
aristocratic element in the equestrian order, if this latter expression
be used in its widest sense to include both the military and civilian
knights, was thus rigorously excluded: and there remained but the men
whose business interests were in no way complicated by respect for
senatorial traditions. The official list of the new jurors _(album
judicum)_ was probably to be made out annually; and there is every
reason to suppose that there was a considerable change of personnel at
each revision, since one of the conditions of membership of the
panel--residence within a mile of Rome--could hardly have been observed
by business men with world-wide interests for any extended period. The
conception which still prevailed that judicial service was a burden
_(munus)_, would alone have led the revising authority to free past
jurors from the service: and the practice must have been welcome to the
capitalists themselves, many of whom may well have desired the share of
power and perhaps of profit which jurisdiction over their superiors
conferred. We are told that the selection of the first panel was
entrusted to the legislator himself;[626] for the future the Foreign
Praetor was to draw up the annual list of four hundred and fifty who
were qualified to hear cases of extortion.[627] It is not known whether
this was the full number of the new jurors, or whether there were
additional members selected by a different authority for the trial of
other offences. It is not probable that the judiciary law of Gracchus
imposed the new class of _judices_ directly on the civil courts. The
_judex_ of private law still retained his character of an arbitrator
appointed by the consent of the parties, and it would have been improper
to restrict this choice to a class defined by statute. But the practical
monopoly of jurisdiction in important cases, which senators seem to have
acquired, was henceforth broken through, and the _judex_ in civil suits
was sometimes taken from the equestrian order.[628]
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