A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early Principate by A.H.J. Greenridge

Author:A.H.J. Greenridge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jovian Press

This review of the legislation on social questions which was initiated or endured by the senate, shows the tentative attitude adopted by the nobility in their dealings with the people, and proves either a statesmanlike view of the needs of the situation or the entire lack of a proud consciousness of their own immunity from attack. Even had they possessed the power to dictate to the Comitia, they were hemmed in on another side; for they had not dared to raise a protest against the law of Gracchus which transferred criminal jurisdiction over the members of their own order to the knights. The equestrian courts sat in judgment on the noblest members of the aristocracy; for the political or personal motives which urged to prosecution were stronger even than the camaraderie of the order, and governors of provinces were still in danger of indictment by their peers. Within two years of the transference of the courts, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, known in later life as “the Augur” and famed for his knowledge of the civil law, returned from his province of Asia to meet the accusation of Titus Albucius.[783] The knights did not begin by a vindictive exercise of their authority. Although Asia was the most favoured sphere of their activity, Scaevola was acquitted. Seven years later they gave a stern and perhaps righteous example of their severity in the condemnation of Caius Porcius Cato.[784] The accused when consul had obtained Macedonia as his province, and had waged a frontier war with the Scordisci, which ended in the annihilation of his forces and his own narrow escape from the field of battle. His ill-success perhaps deepened the impression made by his extortions in Macedonia, and he was sentenced to the payment of a fine. Neither in the case of the acquittal nor in that of the condemnation does political bias seem to have influenced the judgment of the courts, and the equestrian jurors may have seemed for a time to realise the best hopes which had inspired their creation.

The attention of the leading members of the nobility was probably too absorbed by the problem of adapting senatorial rule to altered circumstances to allow them the leisure or the inclination to embark on fresh legislative projects of their own. Our record of these years is so imperfect that it would be rash to conclude that the scanty proposals on new subjects which it reveals exhausted the legislative activity of the senate; but had they done so, the circumstance would be intelligible; for the work that invited the attention of the senate in its own interest, was one of consolidation rather than of reform; the political feeling of the time put measures of a distinctly reactionary character, such as might have been welcomed by the more conservative members of the order, wholly out of the question; and the government was not likely, except under compulsion, to undertake legislation of a progressive type. The only important law of the period certainly proceeding from governmental

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