For a long time the laws of the Twelve Tables administered by the magistrates, more rarely by a special court created sometimes by the senate but oftener and in better right during this period by the people,[2206] sufficed for controlling crime. But as offences multiplied in consequence of the increasing complexity of life, the people were called upon more and more frequently to legislate on the subject.[2207] One of the earliest may have been the lex Fabia de plagiariis,[2208] against the usurpation of ownership over a Roman citizen without his consent or over his slave without the consent of the owner.[2209] The date of its origin is unknown; but if Plautus[2210] refers to it, as Voigt asserts,[2211] it must have been in force before 197. For this and other reasons Voigt assigns it to Q. Fabius Verrucossus, consul in 209.[2212] Lange prefers Q. Fabius Labeo, consul in 183,[2213] whereas Mommsen places it after the Social war.[2214] A lex Gabinia threatened with scourging and death any one who induced the people to gather in secret meetings. It seems to belong to the time of the Bacchanalian trouble, 186,[2215] and to have been designed against religious associations of the kind; nevertheless the nobility found in it a means of repressing popular agitation. On the authority of a mutilated passage in the newly found epitome of Livy an attempt has been made to assign to 149 the law of M. Scantinius (or Scatinius), probably tribune of the plebs, for imposing a fine of ten thousand sesterces on any one convicted of violating a man of free birth.[2216] The statute which established the first standing court—quaestio perpetua—was the lex Calpurnia de repetundis of the tribune L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi, 149.[2217] His motive was undoubtedly a sincere desire to protect Italy[2218] and the provinces from official rapacity. The court was made up of a considerable number of jurors drawn from the senate and presided over by a praetor, who had hitherto exercised civil jurisdiction only. In fact a trial for extortion was at first thought of as a civil suit for the recovery of wealth illegally taken—a conception which determined the organization of the Calpurnian quaestio. But from time to time new standing courts were instituted each with cognizance of a specified class of crimes, till before the end of the republic they had taken upon themselves practically all criminal jurisdiction, retaining little trace of their civil origin.[2219] Between 149 and 141, for instance, was established a standing quaestio for the trial of cases of murder.[2220]