wrote later than the date last mentioned, that the military tribunes were accustomed in court-martial to condemn common soldiers for neglect of sentinel duty and that the condemned were cudgeled and stoned, often to death, by their fellow-soldiers. He also speaks of the punishment of entire maniples by decimation. Under Scipio Aemilianus, 133, the Roman who neglected duty was flogged with vine stocks, the foreigner with cudgels.[1526] Cicero[1527] intimates that in his own time there was no appeal from the judgment of commanders; and in fact it is impossible to understand how discipline could otherwise be maintained. Evidence to the contrary is scant and uncertain. The person against whom an accusation of desertion was brought before the tribunes of the plebs in 138 seems to have claimed to be a civilian, and on that ground appealed to the tribunes. When proved guilty he was flogged and sold as a slave, probably by a judgment of the military authorities.[1528] In 122 Livius Drusus proposed to exempt Latin soldiers from flogging.[1529] While informing us that in 108 a commander had a right to scourge and put to death a Latin official, Sallust[1530] intimates that he had less authority over a Roman. In the time of the emperors, on the other hand, soldiers were subject to the death penalty as in the time of Polybius.[1531] All these circumstances may be best explained by supposing that the third Porcian law permitted the infliction of flogging and death on Roman soldiers by the judgment only of a court-martial.[1532] This difficult subject is further complicated by the statement of Cicero[1533] that the three Porcian statutes introduced nothing new excepting by way of penalty. Interpreted in the light of other information given by various authors, including Cicero himself, these statutes simply extended the right of appeal by adapting the Valerian principle to new conditions, and substituted exile in place of scourging and death. In the relation between the accused and the civil court the cry “civis Romanus sum” was thereafter a sufficient protection from bodily injury.[1534] In the period to which the Porcian laws belong falls the accusation of perduellio brought by the tribune P. Rutilius Rufus against the censors C. Claudius and Ti. Sempronius Gracchus, while they were in office, 169. The charge against Gracchus was disregard of the tribunician auxilium, against his colleague the interruption of a concilium plebis (quod contionem ab se avocasset). The accused, foregoing the privilege of their magistracy, consented to a trial, which came before the comitia centuriata. Claudius narrowly escaped condemnation, whereupon the case against Gracchus was dropped.[1535]