By an arrangement referred to in the preceding chapter,[1731] partly based on the law of the Twelve Tables relating to capital cases[1732] and further developed in 449, possibly by an article of the Valerian-Horatian statute, a division of popular jurisdiction was made between the centuriate and the tribal assemblies, on the basis of a distinction in the nature, not of the crime, but of the penalty.[1733] The tribes punished with fines, the centuries with the extreme penalty—banishment or death, to which was always added total confiscation of property. The prosecutor, accordingly, first thought of the penalty, to which he then attempted to adapt the form of action. The people were not guided to their decision by legal formalities and precedents,[1734] but were often swayed by the emotions of favor and anger.[1735] No juror’s oath was imposed upon them to decide according to law and without personal or party bias, such as the Athenian heliasts swore. If the prosecutor, in addition to believing that the case merited the severest punishment, hoped to persuade the people to vote the death or banishment of the accused, he pronounced a capital condemnation, and the case was accordingly appealed to the centuriate assembly. If on the other hand he doubted whether he would be able sufficiently to excite the anger of the populace against the accused, however heinous the crime may have been in his own opinion, he satisfied himself with a finable action, and allowed it to go before the tribes. Sometimes while the evidence was being taken in the latter form of action, the rage of the people was so inflamed against the accused that they clamored for the extreme penalty, in which case the prosecutor might change the form of action agreeably to their wishes.[1736] The greater ease with which the tribes were summoned, together with the growing disinclination of the people to pronouncing the death penalty, induced the magistrates more and more to make use of finable rather than of capital actions. Fines were generally estimated in cattle and sheep till in 430 the consuls L. Julius and L. Papirius Crassus passed a centuriate law establishing a hundred pounds of copper as equivalent to an ox and ten to a sheep.[1737] Probably the same law provided that no fine should exceed half the value of the estate on which it was levied.[1738] For the period immediately following 449 the authorities—uncritically as will soon be made evident—assign to the tribunes of the plebs a formidable jurisdiction in finable actions, not only over private persons,[1739] but also, on account of official misconduct, over functionaries of every grade from ambassadors and tresviri coloniae deducendae to consuls and dictators. Such prosecutions were usually brought after the retirement of the accused from office. A chronological list of the principal cases reported will be instructive.