Lex

Lex This term indicates generally a rule of law binding universally on the citizens of a given state: Lex est commune praeceptum, virorum prudentium consultum, delictorum coercitio, communis reipublicae sponsio (Dig. 1, 3, 1); Legis virtus est haec, imperare, vetare, permittere, punire (ib. 7). In the works of the Roman writers and jurists it is used to denote an enactment of any body (or even individual) constitutionally empowered to legislate, but more properly it is used only of the enactments of the Comitia Centuriata. Definitions of lex will be found in Cicero, de Leg. 1.6 (cf. 2.16); in Aulus Gellius, 10.20 (by the jurist Capito); in Gaius, 1.3 (adopted in Justinian's Institutes, 1.2, 4); and in Dig. 1, 3, 1 (by Papinian).

The earliest leges of which we read were those made in the Comitia Curiata (whence they are called Leges Curiatæ), which till the reforms of Servius Tullius was the only legislative body at Rome. Some of these--the so-called leges regiae--were said to have been enacted by the Comitia on the motion of Romulus, as well as of the kings who succeeded him (Dig. 1, 2, 2, 2). Dionysius says (3.36) that a collection of these leges regiae was made towards the end of the regal period by one Sextus Papirius, a commentary on which, written in the time of Julius Caesar by Granius Flaccus, is quoted in Dig. 50, 16, 144; but it is improbable that they were anything more than formal restatements of customary law already binding, and the fact that Sextus Papirius was (according to Dionysius) a pontifex suggests that they may have been only of sacerdotal import. (Some of their substance has been collected in a fragmentary form by earlier writers, and there is an essay on the subject by H. E. Dirksen: Versuche zur Kritik und Auslegung, Leipzig, 1823). It may indeed be doubted whether any large proportion of the enactments of the Comitia Curiata were genuine laws, though the fifty leges of Servius mentioned by Dionysius (4.13) seem to have made some general changes; at any rate it is certain that after the establishment of the Comitia Centuriata by Servius Tullius the assembly of the Curiae, as a legislative body, fell almost entirely into disuse. We read of its conferring the imperium on the magistrates, sanctioning testaments and adrogations, and confirming some of the resolutions of the centuries which were held to require a religious sanction, and in all these cases it acted by a resolution or lex, but the difference between such a lex and a true law is too obvious to need any further exposition. And though even under Augustus a shadow of the old constitution was preserved in the formal bestowal of the imperium by a Lex Curiata only, the assembly of the Curiae had ceased even before Cicero's time to consist of the old patricians: they were merely represented by thirty lictors.

In the sense of a genuine enactment, establishing a rule of law, lex denotes the legislation of the Comitia Centuriata, in which the law was proposed (rogabatur) by a magistrate of senatorial rank, usually by one or both of the consuls for the year (Inst. 1.2, 4). Such leges were also called populiscita (Festus, s. v. Scitum Pop.).

The resolutions of the Comitia Tributa, whose origin was almost contemporaneous with that of the centurial assembly, had not at first the force of law: they seem to have been regarded merely as expressions of plebeian opinion, by which the patricians gauged the temper of the political opposition, and were guided to the line of policy which party exigencies rendered expedient. They were known as plebeiscita because the Comitia Tributa was at first attended only by members of the plebs, though every Roman was in fact enrolled in a tribe, and entitled to attend. When the tribunate of the plebs was instituted (circ. B.C. 494), a means was provided by which the resolutions of the tribes might become law. The tribunes were permitted to appear at the threshold of the building where the senate deliberated, and lay before it the proposals of the order which they represented: if approved, these proposals could then be referred in the ordinary way to the Comitia Centuriata, and thereby become genuine enactments of the sovereign populus (V. Max. 2.2, 7). After the enactment of the Lex Horatia Valeria (B.C. 449) the patricians seem to have begun to take part in the business of the Comitia Tributa, and it was perhaps provided by the same statute that plebiscita which related to matters of purely private law should have binding force without confirmation by the centuries. This exemption was apparently extended to all plebiscita by the first of the Leges Publiliae, B.C. 339 (Liv. 8.12; Gellius, 15.27), and finally a Lex Hortensia (B.C. 287) dispensed with the requirement of senatorial sanction to plebiscita. By this last change they were placed on a footing of complete equality with leges passed in the Comitia Centuriata (Dig. 2, 14, 7, 7; Gaius, 1.3; Inst. 1.2, 4): as the latter were proposed to the centuries by a senatorial magistrate, so they were submitted to the tribes by a tribune: leges related in the main to administrative and constitutional matters, plebiscita to matters of private law. The result of the equal legislative authority of the two comitia was that plebiscita came not uncommonly to be called leges, lex becoming a generic term (Dig. 1, 3, 32, 1), to which was sometimes added the specific designation, as lex plebeivescitum, lex sive plebiscitum est (e. g. the Tabula Heracleensis, Savigny, Zeitschrift, &c. vol. ix. p. 355). Cicero, in his enumeration of the sources of Roman law (Top. 5), does not mention plebiscita, which he undoubtedly included under leges: among the so-called leges which in fact were plebiscita are the Lex Aquilia (Cic. pro Tullio, 8, 11; Dig. 9, 2, 1, 1), the Lex Canuleia, Lex Rubria, &c.

The term rogatio means any measure proposed (bill, projet de loi) to the legislative body, whether on its enactment it would technically be a lex or a plebiscitum: hence the expressions populum rogare (Cic. Phil. 1.10.26), plebem rogare (de Leg. 3.3, 9), legem rogare (de Republ. 3.10, 17; Phil. 2.29, 72; Dig. 9, 2, 1, 1), and, by analogy, magistratum rogare, to offer a magistrate for election to the people (Liv. 3.65, 6.42; Cic. Att. 9.1. 5, 2, &c.; Sallust, Sal. Jug. 29: cf. Festus, s. v. Rogatio). The form of such rogation (in the case of an adrogation effected before the Comitia Curiata) is given by Gellius, 5.19, 5, 9: Velitis jubeatis, uti L. Valerius L. Titio tam jure legeque filius siet, quamsi ex eo patre matreque familias ejus natus esset, utique ei vitae necisque in eum potestas siet, uti patri endo filio est, haec ita uti dixi, ita vos quirites rogo. Assent to the proposal was expressed in the form uti rogas (which explains the term sponsio in the definition of lex above from Dig. 1, 3, 1); rejection by the verb antiquo (Liv. 4.58, 5.30, 55, &c.; Cic. de Off. 2.2. 1, 73; ad Att. 1.13; de Leg. 3.17, 38). The measures submitted were not unfrequently called rogationes even after their definite enactment as leges or plebiscita; and in Dig. 35, 2, 1, pr., an enacted statute is termed lex rogata. Promulgare legem denotes the publication of its terms for the public information (see LEX CAECILIA DIDIA inf.), such publication being usually followed by contiones or meetings in which the bill was explained and recommended to the people by its proposer or supporters (suasores): this promulgation and informal discussion is expressed by the phrase ferre legem as contrasted with rogare, which is confined to the solemn submission of the measure to the Comitia for acceptance or refusal: the general term used for acceptance is rogationem accipere. Legem perferre is to carry a rogatio, to convert it into a lex (Cic. Cornel. fragm. ap. Ascon.; Liv. 33.46). Other terms familiarly used in connexion with leges are explained by Ulpian (Reg. 1, 3): Lex aut rogatur, id est fertur: aut abrogatur, id est, prior lex tollitur: aut derogatur, id est, pars primae legis tollitur: aut subrogatur, id est, adjicitur aliquid primae legi: aut obrogatur, id est, mutatur aliquid ex prima lege.

By Festus rogatio is described as equivalent to what is otherwise called privilegium: a command of the populus relating to one or more persons, but not to all persons, or relating to one or more things, but not to all: cf. Dig. 50, 17, 196. Privilegia had been forbidden by the Twelve Tables (Cic. de Leg. 3.1. 9, 44; pro Domo, 17, 43), but in the sense of statutes in favour of or directed against individuals they are common; e. g. the Lex Centuriata by which Cicero was recalled from exile: Non sunt generalia jussa, ... sed de singulis concepta, quocirca privilegia vocari debent, quia veteres priva dixerunt quae nos singula dicimus (Gellius, 10.20, 4). The term is generally used by Cicero in the unfavourable sense (pro Domo, 17, 43; pro Sestio, 30, 65; Brut. 23, 89), and from the language in pro Domo, 11, 28, it may be inferred that privilegia were not considered leges proper: cf. Ulpian in Dig. 1, 3, 8: Jura non in singulas personas, sed generaliter constituuntur. In the Corpus juris privilegium is used generally to denote a jus singulare or privilege conferred on classes by law: cf. Dig. 1, 3, 16; 9, 2, 51, 2; 1, 3, 14 and 15: and see Savigny, System, i. p. 61.

Of the form and style of Roman legislation we can judge to some extent from the fragments which survive. The Romans seem to have always adhered to the old expressions, and to have used few superfluous words. Great care was taken with such clauses as were intended to alter a previous lex (whence the standing clause de impunitate si quid contra alias leges, ejus legis ergo, factum sit, Cic. Att. 3.2. 3), and to avoid all interference with prior enactments when no change in them was contemplated (whence the common formula ejus hac lege nihil rogatur, E. H. L. N. R. Lex Tab. Heracl., Lex Rubria, Lex Quinctia de aquaed.: cf. Valerius Probus; Cic. pro Caec. 33, 95; pro Balbo, 14, 32): though the general principle seems to have been that a subsequent repealed or modified a prior lex with which it was inconsistent. The leges were often divided into chapters (capita), e. g. the Lex Aquilia (Gaius, 3.210, 215, 217): cf. also the tablet of the Lex Rubria or de Gall. Cisalp. and Cic. ad Att. l.c. In order to preserve a permanent record, the lex was engraved on bronze (aes) and deposited in the Aerarium (Sueton. Jul. 28; Plut. Cat. min. 17): but it also seems to have been usual to cut statutes on tablets of oak (Dionys. A. R. 3.36), which were whitened over and then fixed in a public place for all citizens to read, though whether they were so exposed for any great length of time is uncertain (Cic. Att. 14.1. 2). The title of the lex was generally derived from the gentile name of the magistrate who proposed it, and sometimes from those of both the consuls or praetors (e. g. Lex Aelia Sentia, Junia Norbana, Papia Poppaea, &c.): and it was sometimes further described by reference to the topic to which it related (e. g. Lex Cincia de donis et muneribus, Lex Furia de sponsu, Lex Furia testamentaria, Lex Julia municipalis, &c.). Leges which related to a common subject were often designated by a collective name, as Leges agrariae, judiciariae, sumptuariae, &c. When a lex comprised very various provisions, relating to matters essentially different, it was called Lex Satura.

The terms in which a statute was expressed were fixed by the proposer, though he would usually be assisted by others who possessed the requisite familiarity with technical language: it was proposed to the Comitia for acceptance or rejection in its entirety, there being no discussion of or alteration in its clauses, which indeed in such an assembly would have been injurious, if not impossible. One important part of the lex was its sanctio--i.e. that part of it which provided a penalty for, or declared what should be the effect of, its infraction (Inst. 2.1, 10; Auct. ad Herenn. 2.10; Cic. de Invent. 2.4. 9, 146; Papinian in Dig. 48, 19, 41). If the sanctio declared that the act against which the statute was directed should be void, the lex was said to be perfecta; if there was no such provision, it was imperfecta (e.g. the Lex Cincia): and if an act was merely penalised, but not declared void, the lex is said by Ulpian (Reg. 1, 2) to be called minus quam perfecta (e. g. the Leges Furiae testamentaria and de sponsu): cf. Savigny, System, iv. p. 549 sq.

The number of leges was largely increased towards the end of the republican period (Tac. Ann. 3.25-28), and Julius Caesar is said to have contemplated a revision of the whole of them. Augustus, and perhaps his immediate successors, was careful to conduct his legislation under republican forms, though it may be doubted whether any statute was enacted after the fall of the Republic except on the initiative of the emperor, or at any rate without his sanction express or implied. The Comitia assembled and gave the force of law to the proposals submitted to them for some time after the constitution had lost all trace of real freedom (Tac. Ann. 1.15 relates to the election of magistrates, not to legislation); and most of the Leges Juliae, a Lex Visellia, an agrarian law of Caligula, and a law of Claudius (Gaius, 1.157, 171) were enacted in the ordinary way. The last statute which we know to have been passed in this manner is a lex agraria of the time of Nerva (A.D. 96-98), mentioned in Dig. 47, 21, 3, 1. Gaius speaks of the Comitia as in theory still a source of law ( lex est, quod populus jubet atque constituit, plebiscitum, quod plebs jubet atque constituit, 1.3: cf. Inst. 1.2, 4, in which the present tense has been turned into the past): but it is improbable that they had been called upon to discharge legislative functions since A.D. 100.

For some reigns after that of Augustus legislation was most ordinarily conducted by resolutions of the senate [SENATUSCONSULTUM], into which the proposed law was introduced by a consul, or very often by an oration of the emperor [CONSTITUTIONES]. Originally senatusconsulta did not acquire the force of law until they had been confirmed by the Comitia, in which case they were leges proper: but during the last half-century of the Republic the senate asserted and established an independent right of legislation. Hence, when genuine statutes ceased to be enacted with any frequency, senatusconsulta came to be actually called leges. Justinian says (Inst. 1.2, 5), Cum auctus esset populus Romanus in eum modum ut difficile esset in unum eum convocari legis sanciendae causa, aequum visum est senatum vice populi consuli: a passage based on similar language of Pomponius in Dig. 1, 2, 2, 9. The name comitia came to be commonly given to the sittings of the senate (Tac. Ann. 1.15; Capitol. Max. 10). Gaius says (1.4) that a senatusconsultum vicem legis obtinet, and in 1.85 he terms a senatusconsult of Claudius a lex: for similar passages cf. Dig. 14, 6, 9, 4; ib. 14; 48, 16, 10. No senatusconsulta occur after the reign of Septimius Severus (A.D. 193-211). The constitutions of the emperors, which succeeded senatusconsulta as the ordinary mode of legislation, were also called leges (e.g. Lex Anastasiana, Cod. 4, 35, 22): cf. Inst. 1.2, 6, and Dig. 1, 4, 1: Quodcunque Imperator statuit, legem esse constat. [See CONSTITUTIONES]

A less common and proper signification of lex, quite distinct from that of a general rule of law, is that in which it denotes the conditions under which a thing is to be done, or under which parties contract with one another: e. g. lex commissoria [COMMISSORIA]; leges venditionis or emptionis, conditions of sale, Dig. 18, 1, 40 (which explains why Cicero speaks of Marcus Manilius' work on sales as Manilianas venalium vendendorum leges, de Orat. 1.58, 246); legem traditioni dicere, Dig. 8, 4, 17, 3; lex donationis, Dig. 1, 5, 22, Accordingly we find the expression leges censoriae to express the conditions on which the censors let the public property or taxes to farm, which were perhaps embodied in certain standing regulations (Fragm. de jure fisci, § 18; Dig. 50, 16, 203). Similarly the term is used of conditions imposed on a testamentary disposition: legatario legem dicere, Dig. 40, 5; 40, 1; cf. Dig. 32, 22, pr. Not unfrequently lex denotes merely the statute of the Twelve Tables (e. g. Dig. 2, 14, 7, 14; 8, 3, 13; 41, 3, 3, &c.), and in one passage it means nothing more than the nature or character of a thing: lex danda operi talis, ne quid noceat vicinis, Dig. 39, 2, 15, 10. The extant authorities for Roman leges are inscriptions and the works of the classical writers and jurists. The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum of Mommsen of course comprises all extant records of authentic legislation, along with a vast number of other inscriptions; smaller collections, relating more particularly to leges, are those of Göttling (Römische Urkunden auf Erz und Stein, Halle, 1845) and Zell (Delectus inscriptionum cum monumentis legalibus fere omnibus): cf. also Rudorff, Römische Rechtsgeschichte, 1. § § 81-86. The best information as to the fragmentary citations from or references to leges which are found scattered about in non-juristic Latin writers is to be obtained from Haubold's Institutiones juris Romani litterariae, vol. i. pp. 241-44, 297-349 (Leipzig, 1809): of the imperial legislation (independently of the Codes which have come down to us) there is a very full collection by Haenel, Corpus legum, &c. Fasc. i. (Leipzig, 1857). But perhaps the most useful modern collection to the classical student is that of Orelli (vol. viii. of his edition of Cicero) entitled Index legum Romanarum quarum apud Ciceronem ejusque Scholiastas, item apud Livium, Velleium Paterculum, A. Gellium nominatim mentio fit.

The following is a list of the principal Leges:--

ACILIA

ACILIA DE COLONIIS DEDUCENDIS, B.C. 198 (Liv. 32.29).

ACILIA

ACILIA REPETUNDARUM, B.C. 102 (Cic. in. Verr. 1.17, 51; 2.1, 9). [REPETUNDAE]

ACILIA CALPURNIA

ACILIA CALPURNIA B.C. 68 (D. C. 36.21). [AMBITUS]

AEBUTIA

AEBUTIA enacted probably about B.C. 170 (for the various views as to its precise date see Rudorff, Rechtsgeschichte, 1.44, p. 106; Padelletti, Hist. Roman Law, ch. 32, note 2): it abolished the legis actio procedure except in suits tried before centumviri, in cases of damnum infectum, and for the voluntary jurisdiction employed for adoptions, manumissions, in jure cessio, &c. (Gellius, 16.10, 8; Gaius, 4.31). [JUDEX; ACTIO.] Another lex of the same name prohibited the proposer of a lex which created any office or power (curatio ac potestas) from having such office or power, and even excluded his collegae, cognati and affines (Cic. de lege agr. [in Rull.] 2.8, 21; de Domo, 20, 51).

AELIA

AELIA This and a Lex Fufia passed towards the end of the sixth century of the city (Cic. in Pison. 5, 10) gave every magistrate the right of declaring beforehand his intention of taking the omens on a fixed day, and thereby (on the plea of their being unfavourable) of preventing the assembly of the Comitia (obnuntiatio). This right was frequently exercised against the tribunes of the people (Cic. in Vatin. 7, 9), for which reason Clodius (B.C. 58) got it temporarily taken away (D. C. 38.13). The better opinion seems to be that there were two distinct leges (see Walter, Geschichte des römischen Rechts, § 152, note 98); they are frequently mentioned by Cicero, especially in Vatin.; pro Sestio; in Pison.; ad Att. 1.16, 2.9, 4.16, 5. See also Orelli's discussion of them in his Onomasticon; Index Legum, where the passages in which they are mentioned are collected; and Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, i. pp. 80, 107.

AELIA

AELIA DE COLONIIS DEDUCENDIS, B.C. 195 (Liv. 34.53).

AELIA SENTIA

AELIA SENTIA This was passed A.D. 4, mainly to prevent the true Roman population from being swamped by a too free exercise of the master's right of making his slaves citizens of Rome by manumission [LIBERTUS]. It contained the following provisions:--

(i.) Slaves who had been put in irons or branded by their masters as a punishment, or put to torture on a criminal charge and convicted, or made to fight in the arena, or thrown into prison or consigned to the gladiatorial school, were not by subsequent manumission to attain any higher status than that of peregrini dediticii (Gaius, 1.13; Ulpian, Reg. 1.11; Paul. Sent. rec. 4.12, 3-8: see DEDITICII and LIBERTUS). (ii.) Slaves under thirty years of age could not in future be manumitted so as to become cives unless the form of manumission were per vindictam, and a sufficient reason for it were proved before a consilium, consisting at Rome of five senators and five equites, sitting on fixed days, and in the provinces of twenty recuperatores or judges who were cives, and who sat for this purpose on the last day of the conventus or judicial assize in different towns (Gaius, 1.18, 20; Ulp. Reg. 1.12). Among the sufficient reasons (justae causae) were that the slave was a child or near relation of the manumitter, or his paedagogus; or that he wished to make him his agent, or (being a girl) to marry her (Gaius, 1.19). But even a slave under thirty could be made a civis by his master's will if he were instituted heres necessarius cum libertate, and the master was insolvent (Gaius, 1.21). Slaves under thirty manumitted otherwise than vindicta apud consilium at first remained slaves in the eye of the law [LIBERTUS], but by the Lex Junia Norbana, A.D. 19, they acquired the status of Latini. The Lex Aelia Sentia, however, itself provided one way in which they could rise to the condition of civitas; that is to say, if they married a civis Romana, or a Latina coloniaria, or a woman of the same class as themselves, had as evidence of this fact the presence of five Roman citizens of full age, and begot a son who attained the age of one year, they could prove these facts to the praetor at Rome, or the governor in a province,; and on the magistrate declaring the case proven, the man, his wife and child became all Roman citizens. If the man died before he had proved his case to the magistrate, the mother could do it, and the legal effect was the same. There were also other modes in which a Latinus could become civis [LATINITAS; cf. Poste's Gaius, note on 1.35]. (iii.) Manumission by a master under twenty was declared void unless made per vindictam and on proof of a justa causa of the same kind as above before the consilium (Gaius, 1.38). Thus, after this, though he could make a will at fourteen, a master could not manumit his slaves by it unless he was twenty (Gaius, 1.40); but Justinian permitted testamentary manumission at seventeen (Inst. 1.6, 7) and (by Nov. 119, 2) even at fourteen. Even manumission in one of the informal modes (e.g. inter amicos) by a master under twenty, which at the most could only have made him a Latinus, was held void unless a justa causa were proved before the consilium (Gaius, 1.41). (iv.) Manumission being an act by which a man diminished his property, manumission in fraud of creditors was by the statute made revocable by the latter (Gaius, 1.37; Inst. 1.6, pr.--4), and this provision was extended to peregrini by a senatusconsult under Hadrian (Gaius, 1.47): but it did not apply to the institution of a slave as necessarius heres, in order to save the testator from the disgrace of posthumous bankruptcy (Inst. l.100.1). Similarly the patron of a freedman who owned slaves was enabled to prevent the libertus from prejudicing his contingent rights of succession by revoking manumissions in fraudem patroni (Gaius, 1.37). (v.) The statute also allowed a patron to bring a criminal prosecution against his liberti if guilty of ingratitude (Dig. 40, 9, 30; 50, 16, 70, pr.: cf. Tac. Ann. 13.26).

Of the above provisions only the third and fourth were in force under the law of Justinian. The supposed reference to a Lex Aelia Sentia in Cicero (Top. 2, 10) is shown by Orelli to be a myth.

AEMILIA BAEBIA

AEMILIA BAEBIA [CORNELIA BAEBIA.]

AEMILIA

AEMILIA DE CENSORIBUS, passed by M. Aemilius when dictator, B.C. 433: it gave the censors, though elected at intervals of five years, only a year and a half instead of a whole lustrum for the discharge of their functions (e. g. holding the census and letting out the taxes and public works to farm), so that the state was without censors for intervals of three years and a half (Liv. 4.24, 9.33, 34; Mommsen, Röm. Staatsrecht, ii. p. 336).

AEMILIA

AEMILIA DE LIBERTINORUM SUFFRAGIIS, B.C. 116 (Aurel. Vict. de Vir. illustr. 72).

AEMILIA

AEMILIA SUMPTUARIA, passed by Aemilius Lepidus, B.C. 179 (Macrob. Saturn. 2.13, p. 369). Pliny (Plin. Nat. 8.223) seems to be referring to a different sumptuary law of the same name passed by M. Aemilius Scaurus, B.C. 116, though this may have been identical with the Lex Aemilia de libertinorum suffragiis.

AGRARIAE

AGRARIAE [AGRARIAE LEGES: and LEX APULEIA; CASSIA; CORNELIA; FLAMINIA; FLAVIA; JULIA; LICINIA; MAMILIA;, SEMPRONIA; SERVILIA; THORIA.]

AMBITUS

AMBITUS [AMBITUS]

AMPIA

AMPIA a lex proposed by T. Ampius and T. Labienus, trib. plebis, B.C. 64, by which Cn. Pompeius was allowed to wear a crown of bay at the Ludi Circenses, and the like (Vell. Paterc. 2.40; D. C. 37.21).

ANASTASIANA

ANASTASIANA a constitution of the Emperor Anastasius, A.D. 506 (Cod. 4, 35, 22), providing that no purchaser of a debt or chose in action should be able to recover more from the debtor than what he had paid for it himself, with ordinary interest, even though it was alleged that the transaction was in part a gift (Vangerow, Lehrbuch der Pandekten, § 576).

ANNALES

ANNALES were those statutes which determined at what age a man might be a candidate for the several magistracies: if he was elected to one at the earliest possible age, he was said to become praetor, consul, &c., anno suo (Cic. de Off. 2.1. 7, 59; Philip. 5.17, 47 sq.; Tac. Ann. 11.22). The first of them was a Lex Villia, proposed by L. Villius, a tribune, B.C. 180 (Liv. 25.2, 40.44), by which a man could be elected quaestor at the age of thirty-one, aedile at thirty-seven, praetor at forty, and consul at forty-three. There seems to have been a Lex Pinaria on the same subject carried by one M. Pinarius Rusca, a tribune, circ. 134 B.C. (Cic. de Orat. 2.65, 261): see Wex, Rhein. Museum, 1845, pp. 276-288; Hofmann, Röm. Senat. pp. 172-177.

ANTIA

ANTIA (Gel. 2.24, 13; Macrob. Saturn. 2.13). [SUMPTUARIAE LEGES]

ANTONIA

ANTONIA DE TERMESSENSIBUS, a plebiscitum enacted circ. 72 B.C., by which Termessus in Pisidia was recognised as libera. (See FOEDERATAE CIVITATES; Puchta, Institutionen, § 69; and Dirksen, Bemerkungen über das Plebiscitum de Thermensibus.)

ANTONIAE

ANTONIAE the name of various enactments proposed or passed by the influence of M. Antonius after the death of the dictator Julius Caesar (Cic. Phil. 3.4, 9; 5.4, 10; 6.2, 3; 13.3, 5; ad Fam. 12.14, 6). One abolished the dictatorship (Phil. 1.1, 3; D. C. 44.51); others related to the constitution of the judicia (Phil. 5.5, 12; 8.9, 27), to appeals after conviction for Vis or Majestas (Phil. 1.9, 21), to permutatio of the provinces (D. C. 45.9, 20; Vell. 2.20; Appian, App. BC 3.27, 30), to honours to be paid to Caesar at the ludi Romani (Phil. 2.43, 110), and to an agrarian division of land (Phil. 5.3, 7; D. C. 45.9).

APULEIA

APULEIA B.C. 102, gave one of two or more sponsors or fidepromissors (sureties), who paid the whole debt which they had guaranteed, the right of bringing an actio pro socio against the rest for the recovery of what he had paid in excess of his fair share (Gaius, 3.122). [INTERCESSIO]

APULEIA

APULEIA AGRARIA, proposed by the tribune L. Apuleius Saturninus, B.C. 101 (Liv. Epit. 69; Appian, App. BC 1.29; Cic. pro Sestio, 16, 37; 47, 101).

APULEIA

APULEIA DE COLONIIS DEDUCENDIS, perhaps really a chapter of the preceding lex: at any rate passed by the same tribune in the same year (Aurel. Vict. de Vir. illust. 73; Cic. pro Balbo, 21, 48).

APULEIA

APULEIA FRUMENTARIA, of the same date and author (Auct. ad Herenn. 1.12, 21). [FRUMENTARIAE LEGES]

APULEIA

APULEIA MAJESTATIS, probably passed by the same tribune and about the same time (Cic. de Orat. 2.2. 5, 49, 107, 201). [MAJESTAS]

AQUILIA

AQUILIA circ. B.C. 287. [DAMNI INJURIA ACTIO.]

ATERNIA TARPEIA

ATERNIA TARPEIA B.C. 454, gave to all magistrates the right, which had hitherto belonged only to the consuls, of fining those who resisted their authority: the maximum of the fine, which had been fixed by a Lex Valeria (B.C. 509) at two sheep and five oxen, was raised to two sheep and thirty oxen: cf. PAPIRIA or JULIA PAPIRIA (Cic. de Republ. 2.35, 60; Dion. Halic. 10.50; Gellius, 11.1, 2-3; Festus, s. vv. Ovibus, Duobus, Peculatus; Paul. Diac. ex Festo, s. v. Maximam Multam; Plin. Nat. 18.11; Niebuhr, Röm. Geschichte, ii. p. 341 sq.; Mommsen, Röm. Staatsrecht, i. p. 128; Huschke, Multa, pp. 31, 46, 88; Puchta, Institutionen, § 53 ad fin.; Walter, Geschichte des röm. Rechts, § 820.)

ATIA

ATIA DE SACERDOTIIS, B.C. 63, proposed by the tribune T. Atius Labienus; it restored the regulations of the Lex Domitia on the same subject, which had been repealed by Sulla (D. C. 37.37; Ascon. in Div. 3).

ATILIA

ATILIA [JULIA LEX ET TITIA; TUTOR.]

ATILIA MARCIA

ATILIA MARCIA B.C. 312, related to the election of tribuni militum by the people (Liv. 9.30).

ATINIA

ATINIA passed perhaps B.C. 198, repeated the rule of the Twelve Tables that stolen property should not be acquirable by usucapio, and added that the vitium furti should be removed, and the property admit of usucapio, as soon as the owner recovered possession of it, or was in a position to bring a vindicatio for its recovery (Gel. 17.7; Inst. 2.6, 2; Dig. 41, 3, 4, 6; 50, 16, 215: see FURTUM).

ATINIA

ATINIA a plebiscitum of the time of Sulla; apparently enacted that tribuni plebis should be elected solely from senators. The chief authority on its content is Gel. 14.8 (cf. Plin. Nat. 7.143; Cic. pro Dom. 47), which may also be interpreted to mean (1) that tribuni plebis should become senators virtute officii sui (Becker, 2.2, 277), or (2) that they might (but not must) be chosen from senators (Hofmann, Böm. Senat. pp. 144-165). On the different views, see Walter, Geschichte des röm. Rechts, § 140, note 128. There is a reference to certain Leges Atiniae in Cic. Phil. 3.6, 16; Verr. 1.42, 109, of which nothing further is known.

AUFIDIA

AUFIDIA B.C. 62 (Cic. Att. 1.1. 6, 13). [AMBITUS]

AURELIA

AURELIA DE AMBITU (Cic. ad Q. fratrem, 1.3, 8).

AURELIA

AURELIA JUDICIARIA, B.C. 71 (Cornel. fragm. 26; Ascon. in Pis. p. 16, 19, in Com. p. 67, 78 sq.; Liv. Epit. xcvii.; Veil. Pat. 2.32, 3). [JUDEX]

AURELIA

AURELIA TRIBUNICIA (Ascon. in Com. p. 66, 78). [TRIBUNI.]

BAEBIA

BAEBIA B.C. 192, enacted that four and six praetors should be chosen in alternate years; but the law was not observed, and perhaps repealed (Liv. 40.44; Festus, s. v. Rogat; Meyer, Orator. Rom. fragm. p. 90, ed. 2).

BAEBIA CORNELIA

BAEBIA CORNELIA See CORNELIA BAEBIA.

CAECILIA

CAECILIA DE CENSORIBUS or CENSORIA, carried by Metellus Scipio, B.C. 52: it repealed a plebiscitum of Clodius (B.C. 58) which had prescribed a formal procedure for the censors in exercising their functions as inspectors of Mores, by providing that they should not, in selecting the senate, pass over and so cast a slur on any one who had not been explicitly accused before them, and marked with the nota censoria by both (Ascon. in Pis. 4, p. 9 (Orelli); Cic. pro Sest. 25, 55, and Schol. Bob. p. 360; D. C. 38.13, 15, 40.57).

CAECILIA

CAECILIA DE CN. POMPEIO, B.C. 63 (Schol. Bob. pro Sestio, p. 302; D. C. 37.43; Plut. Cato minor, 100.26 sq.).

CAECILIA

CAECILIA DE P. SULLA ET P. AUTRONIO (Cic. pro Sulla, 22 sq.; D. C. 37.25: see Orelli, Onomasticon).

CAECILIA

CAECILIA DE VECTIGALIBUS, B.C. 62, released the harbours of Italy from payment of direct taxes (portoria) to the state (D. C. 37.51; Cic. Att. 2.1. 6; ad Quint. fratr. 1.10; Dig. 50, 16, 203), which, however, were re-imposed by Caesar (Suet. Jul. 43).

CAECl‘LIA DIDIA, B.C. 98, forbade the proposing of a Lex Satura (i. e. of enactments relating to different matters in one rogatio), lest people might be compelled either to vote for something which they did not approve, or reject something which they did. It also contained a provision that leges should be promulgated trinis nundinis before they were proposed to the Comitia (Cic. Phil. 5.3, 8; pro Dom. 16, 41; 20, 53; pro Sestio, 64, 135; ad Att. 2.9, 1: see LICINIA JUNIA).

CAELIA TABELLARIA

CAELIA TABELLARIA B.C. 71. [TABELLARIAE LEGES]

CALIDIA

CALIDIA B.C. 99, by which Q. Metellus Numidicus was recalled from exile (V. Max. 5.2, 7; Aurel. Vict. de Viris illustr. 100.62; Cic. pro Plancio, 28, 69).

CALIGULAE LEX AGRARIA

COMMISSORIA [COMMISSORIA LEX]

CORNELIAE

CORNELIAE These comprise (I.) a large number of leges passed by Sulla in his dictatorship (Liv. Epit. lxxxix.); (II.) leges of L. Cornelius Cinna; and (IlI.) a number of statutes passed by different magistrates bearing this name.

The laws were cut on tablets of bronze and put up in a public place (Liv. 3.57; Diod. 12.56), though Pomponius, in the passage of the Digest already referred to, says that the material of the Tablets was ivory (see Zimmern, Geschichte des röm. Privatrechts, vol. i. p. 101). It is commonly supposed that they were destroyed in the burning of the city by the Gauls some sixty years after their enactment, but the passage of Livy on which this is based (6.1) is just as conclusive against as for the supposition. The Romans of the age of Cicero had no doubt of the genuineness of the collection which then existed; and if we may believe Cyprian (Ep. 2, 4, ad Donat. de gratia Dei), the Twelve Tables, were exposed in the forum as late as the third century of our era. Cicero speaks of learning the text of them by rote ( ut carmen necessarium ) when a boy (de Leg. 2.4, 23), and up to his time the chief juristic work of the lawyer class seems to have been their interpretatio--the extension of a rule of the Twelve Tables (or of other early statutes, such as the Lex Aquilia) to cases not strictly within its letter: but shortly before the fall of the Republic, as he tells us (de Leg. 1.5, 17), the jurists had abandoned the jus civile, and taken to commenting instead on the Praetor's Edict. Of actual commentaries on the Twelve Tables we hear of one by Sextus Aelius Paetus Catus in his Tripartita, a work which existed in the time of Pomponius [JUS AELIANUM]. Others. were written by another Aelius, by Atilius (Cic. de Leg. 2.2. 3, 59; Dig. 1, 2, 2, 38), by Labeo (Gel. 1.12, 7.15, 20.1), and finally by Gaius: this was in six books, from which twenty excerpts are preserved in the Digest. The decemviral legislation, though largely modified (especially in the parts of it relating to public law) by subsequent enactments, was not formally repealed till the time of Justinian, nearly 1000 years after its first establishment. No complete copy of its text has come down to us, but about 100 fragments, partly incomplete, have bees collected from citations and references in classical and juristic literature.

It remains to give a short account of the contents of the Twelve Tables, so far as they can be gathered from the extant fragments and the notices of earlier writers.

I. The personal freedom and civil equality of citizens was secured by the exclusion of all capital sentences except those delivered by the Comitia Centuriata (Cic. de Leg. 3.1. 9, 44; de Republ. 2.36, 61; pro Sest. 30, 65), by the recognition as provisionally free of a man whose free status was called in question, and by the prohibition of privilegia.
II. Freedom of individual action within the domain of private law was secured by the recognition of contracts and testaments.
III. Certain points of private law were more precisely defined which would otherwise have endangered the security of rights of property, or opened the door to harshness and oppression: especially as regards (a) usucapion and the restrictions imposed on property in the interest of neighbours; (b) the law of debt and the rights of unsatisfied creditors; (c) family law (manus, patria potestas, tutela, and conubium between patricians and plebeians); and (d) inheritance, especially on intestacy.
IV. Capital penalties were prescribed for false witness, judicial partiality or corruption, incendiarism, nocturnal theft of crops, and libel; and the right of appeal from condemnation to any of these was given to every citizen (Cic. de Republ. 2.31).
V. Private poenae were established for injuria, theft, and certain kinds of damnum.
VI. The mode of summons and the procedure in actions generally were defined and regulated, especially with a view to preventing capricious exercise of his authority and jurisdiction by the magistrate; and
VII. Certain sanitary and sumptuary rules were laid down as to the interment of dead bodies.

JULIA ET PAPIA POPPAEA The relation of this statute to the Lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus is not perfectly clear. Augustus appears in his sixth consulate (B.C. 28) to have issued an edict (Tac. Ann. 3.28) on the subject of marriage, which he followed up (B.C. 18) by proposing a law to the senate regulating certain marriages, imposing disabilities on unmarried persons (caelibes), and establishing rewards for those who had married and reared children (D. C. 54.16). This he carried with difficulty through the senate, but, apparently owing to the organised resistance of the equites, it was tumultuously rejected at the Comitia (Suet. Aug. 34). Towards the end of his reign, however (A.D. 3), he succeeded in carrying it, with its rewards increased and its penalties mitigated: it is referred to in the Carmen Saeculare of Horace, which was written B.C. 17, and is mentioned under the name Lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus in Dig. 38, 11; 23, 2. The opposition of the knights was overcome by a provision that it should not come into force for three, a period subsequently extended to six, years; and taking advantage of this, Augustus passed in A.D. 9 another statute (called Papia Poppaea from the consules suffecti for the year, M. Papius Mutilus and Q. Poppaeus Secundus: D. C. 56.1-10), containing further enactments on the same subject. Some writers are of opinion that there was but one lex (Papia Poppaea), in which the earlier unsuccessful law was incorporated, and it is true that the frequent mention of them together as one lex (Julia et Papia Poppaea) lends some colour to the supposition: but the view here taken seems more in accordance with the information given by historians, and to be confirmed by the provisions of the statutes being sometimes distinguished in close juxtaposition. Sometimes they are cited by reference to their various chapters: e. g. Lex Caducaria, Lex Decimaria, Lex Miscella, &c.

Many commentaries were written on these leges by the Roman jurists, of which considerable fragments are preserved in the Digest: Gaius wrote fifteen books, Ulpian twenty, and Paulus at least ten. The joint statute contained at least thirty-five chapters (Dig. 22, 2, 19), but as a rule it is impossible to say to which of the two leges included under the general title of Lex Julia et Papia Poppaea the several provisions as now known to us belong. Attempts have been made both by J. Gothofredus and Heineccius to restore them, on the assumption that their provisions are reducible to the two general heads of a Lex Maritalis and a Lex Caducaria (cf. Puchta, Institutionen, § 107).

Among the enactments of these statutes are the following:--

(i.) Prohibition of certain marriages under penalties: viz. of ingenui with infames (e. g. actresses and prostitutes); and of senators or their children with freedwomen, freedmen, and actors' daughters (Ulpian, Reg. 13.1, 16.2; Dig. 23, 2, 44, pr. and 1). Marriages between a senator or his issue and libertini were declared void by a senatusconsult passed under M. Aurelius (Dig. 23, 2, 16, pr.), and the rule was subsequently extended to actors and actresses (Dig. ib. 42, 1).

(ii.) Avoidance of conditions against marriage annexed to legacies and inheritances. [JULIA MISCELLA.]

(iii.) Provisions to encourage marriage. Caelibes were disabled by the Lex Julia from taking either as heirs or as legatees (Gaius, 2.111, 144, 286) under a will, unless the testator were related to them within the sixth degree (Ulpian, Reg. 16.1; Frag. Vat. 216, 219), or unless they married within 100 days (Ulpian, Reg. 17.1; 22.3). Spadones and vestal virgins were exempted from the operation of the statute, as were widows for twelve months, and divorced women for six: these periods were extended by the Lex Papia to two years and eighteen months respectively (Ulp. Reg. 14). Again, the penalty of the statute could be evaded by an engagement to marry, if carried out within two years (Sueton. Octav. 34; D. C. 54.16, 56.7; Dig. 23, 1, 17). Finally, males were released from its provisions in this respect on attaining sixty, women on attaining fifty years of age; but a Senatusconsultum Persicianum passed under Tiberius enacted that they should be regarded as caelibes in perpetuity if they postponed marrying till so late in life. A Senatusconsultum Claudianum so far modified the strictness of the new rule as to give a man who married after sixty the same advantage that he would have had if he had married under sixty, provided he married a woman who was under fifty; but it was enacted by a Senatusconsultum Calvisianum under Nero, that if a woman over fifty married a husband under sixty, even the latter should not escape the disabilities imposed by the statute (Ulpian, Reg. 16.4). Similarly, by the Lex Papia, orbi (persons who had been married, but had no children living) were disabled from taking more than a moiety of what was left them by way of either inheritance or legacy (Gaius, 2.111, 286; Ulpian, Reg. 16.1; Sozomenus, 1, 9), unless related to the testator within the sixth degree. Males escaped the penalties of orbitas by having a single (even adoptive) child (Juv. 19.83, 86-89), but by a Senatusconsultum Memmianum adoption was deprived of this effect when resorted to merely in order to evade the statute: but women were not so well off, ingenuae being released only by three, libertinae only by four children (Paul. Sent. rec. 4.9, 1-3). There were exceptions to these rules if the wife was under twenty or over fifty, or the husband under twenty-five or over sixty, and also if the husband was residing away from the wife reipublicae causa (Ulpian, Reg. 16.1). Legacies and inheritances which could not be taken either in whole or part, owing to these provisions of the Lex Julia or Lex Papia Poppaea, became caduca [BONA CADUCA], the law upon which subject was considerably modified by these statutes.

(iv.) Some other provisions have been noticed elsewhere [DECIMARIA; JULIA MISCELLA]. To these may be added the rule giving a preference to candidates for office according to the number of their children (Tac. Ann. 15.19; Plin. Ep. 7.16): the release of ingenuae with three and libertinae with four children from tutela (Gaius, 1.144, 145), and of libertini with a certain number of children from operarum obligationes (Dig. 38, 1). The exemption of persons from discharging the office of tutor or curator jure liberorum (Inst. 1.25, pr.; Dig. 27, 1, 18) was based on these statutes, which also introduced changes (besides those already noticed) into the law of succession, both testamentary and intestate, especially in connexion with libertini (Gaius, 3.42-50, &c.: see PATRONUS). And the Lex Julia also fixed the date at which wills were opened as that at which the rights of legatees should become indefeasible (dies cedit: see LEGATUM), which previously had been the decease of the testator; but the old rule was restored under Justinian.

After the enactment of the Lex Papia Poppaea, it became not unusual to obtain a grant of a fictitious jus liberorum by special favour from the senate, and later from the emperor (D. C. 55.2; Sueton. Claud. 19; Plin. Ep. 2.13, 10.2, 95, 96; Paul. Sent. rec. 4.9, 9), whereby those who had no children, or not enough, were enabled to escape its disabilities and even enjoy most of its benefits (Fragm. Vat. 170). This privilege is mentioned in some inscriptions, on which the abbreviation I. L. H. (jus liberorum kabens) sometimes occurs. The Emperor M. Aurelius enacted that children should be registered by name within thirty days of their birth with the Praefectus Aerarii Saturni (Capitol. Marc. 9; cf. Juv. Sat. 9.84).

The penalties of caelibatus and orbitas were abolished by Constantine and his sons (Cod. Theod. 8, 16), as were the disabilities contained in the Lex Decimaria by Theodosius II. (Cod. Theod. 8, 17, 2, 3), so that little is left of these statutes in the law of Justinian.

JULIA PAPIRIA

JULIA PAPIRIA [PAPIRIA.]

JULIA PECULATUS

JULIA PECULATUS [PECULATUS]

JULIA

JULIA, ET PLAUTIA, of uncertain date, enacted that res vi possessae should stand on the same footing with res furtivae [ATINIA] and be incapable of acquisition by usucapio. It related solely to land, for robbery of res mobiles was theft itself (Gaius, 3.209), and land could not be stolen (Inst. 2.6, 7). (Gaius, 2.45, 51; Inst. 2.6, 2; Dig. 41, 3, 4, 22.) It would seem from Theophilus on the passage of the Institutes last referred to that there were really two statutes, Julia and Plautia, perhaps the two of those names de vi.

JULIA REPETUNDARUM

JULIA REPETUNDARUM [REPETUNDAE]

JULIA SUMPTUARIA

JULIA SUMPTUARIA passed B.C. 49 by Julius Caesar (Cic. Att. 13, 7, 1; ad Fam. 7, 26, 2; 9, 15, 5). Augustus, too, seems to have re-enacted with additional severities the earlier sumptuary laws (Gel. 2.24; 43.25). [SUMPTUARIAE LEGES]

JULIA THEATRALIS

JULIA THEATRALIS (Sueton. Aug. 40; Plin. Nat. 33.32) permitted Roman equites, in case they or their parents had ever had a census equestris, to sit in the fourteen rows of the theatre appropriated to them by the Lex Roscia Theatralis, B.C. 67.

JULIA

JULIA, ET TITIA (supposed to have been passed B.C. 31) assigned to the governors of provinces (praesides) the duty of appointing guardians for women and impuberes who were not in patria potestas, or already provided with one. A Lex Atilia, which was in existence in the seventh century of the city, had already given the same power in Rome to the praetor urbanus, acting with a majority of the tribuni plebis (Gaius, 1.185; Inst. 1.20, pr.; Ulpian, Reg. 11.18).

JULIA VICESIMARIA

JULIA VICESIMARIA passed by Augustus, A.D. 6 (D. C. 55.25, 56.28; Plin. Paneg. 37-40; Capitol. Marc. 11). [VICESIMA]

JUNIA

JUNIA DE LIBERTINORUM SUFFRAGIIS. [CLODIA; MANUMISSIO.]

JUNIA

JUNIA DE PEREGRINIS, or JUNIA PENNI, a plebiscitum of M. Junius Pennus, B.C. 126, expelling peregrini from the city (Cic. de Off. 3.1. 1, 47; Brut. 28, 109). By a Lex Fannia (possibly merely an edict of the Consul Fannius) B.C. 122, Latins and Italians were similarly treated (Appian, App. BC 1.23; Plut. C. Gracchus, 12; Cic. Brut. 26, 100, pro Sest. 13, 31), as were all persons who had not an Italian domicile by a Lex Papia, B.C. 65 (D. C. 38.9; Cic. in Rull. 1.4, 11; de Off. loc. cit.; ad Att. 4.16).

JUNIA LICINIA

JUNIA LICINIA [LICINIA JUNIA.]

JUNIA NORBANA

JUNIA NORBANA probably A.D. 19 (see Puchta, Institutionen, § 213, note u), created the status of Latinus Junianus by enacting that slaves manumitted otherwise than by one of the manumissiones legitimae, or against the provisions of the Lex Aelia Sentia, should have the rights of Latini (i.e. commercium without conubium). The statute, however, expressly deprived them of the right of making, or taking under a will, or of being testamentary guardians: see AELIA SENTIA LEX; LATINITAS; LIBERTUS; MANUMISSIO. (Gaius, 1.16, 17, 22, &c., 3.56; Ulpian, Reg. i., 20.8, 22.3.)

JUNIA PENNI

JUNIA PENNI [JUNIA DE PEREGRINIS.]

JUNIA PETRONIA

JUNIA PETRONIA or PATRONIA, enacted that if the judges in a suit relating to personal freedom were evenly divided, the person whose status was in question should be declared free (Dig. 40, 1, 24: cf. Dig. 42, 1, 38, pr.). Whether it is the same statute as the Lex Petronia is doubtful.

JUNIA REPETUNDARUIMI

JUNIA REPETUNDARUIMI [REPETUNDAE]

JUNIA VELLEIA

JUNIA VELLEIA A.D. 10, made it possible (which hitherto had not been allowed) to either institute or disinherit certain postumi sui (i.e. descendants who after the making of a will come into the immediate potestas of the testator). Those to whom this lex related were (a) children of the testator born in his lifetime, but after the execution of his will; (b) grandchildren of the testator born after their father's death, but in the lifetime of the testator; (c) grandchildren born before the execution of the grandfather's will, but who become sui heredes by their father's decease after that event (Ulpian, Beg. 22.19; Dig. 28, 2, 29; Gaius, 2.134, and Mr. Poste's note on § 130).

LAETORIA

LAETORIA the same as PLAETORIA [CURATOR]. Sometimes the lex proposed by Volero for electing plebeian magistrates at the Comitia Tributa is cited as a Lex Laetoria (Liv. 2.56, 57).

LENTULI

LENTULI (Cic. ad Fam. 13.48), really a magisterial decretum relating to the provincial organisation of Cyprus: cf. the decretum Rupilii for Sicily (Cic. in Verr. 2.13, 16).

LICINIAE

LICINIAE In B.C. 375 C. Licinius Stole and L. Sextius, two of the tribunes of the plebs, proposed a number of rogationes, partly in the political, partly in the economical interests of the plebeians (Liv. 6.35). The latter were aggrieved by their practical exclusion from the chief magistracies: but they were still more distressed by the burden of their debts. They had suffered heavily through the sacking of the city by the Gauls (Liv. 6.11, &c.), and in comparison with the patricians were taxed out of all proportion to their real means (Liv. 4.60, 5.10; Niebuhr, Röm. Gesch. 1.645); they were largely indebted to the other order, which was rapidly buying them out of their land (Liv. 34.4), and cultivating its new acquisitions by slave labour, so that the plebeians were debarred from making their livings even as farmers holding under their own creditors (Appian, App. BC 1.8).

The Licinian rogation which was intended to settle the financial question proposed that all sums which had been paid by way of interest should be struck off the capital debts, and that three annual periods should be allowed for the payment of the residue (Liv. 6.35, 39). The precise content of the second (de modo agrorum, Liv. 34.4; Gel. 20.1, 23; V. Max. 8.6, 3; Veil. Pat. 2.6, 3; Appian, App. BC 1.8; Plin. Nat. 18.3) is less certain. According to one view (Puchta, Institutionen, § 57) it proposed that no one should own more than 500 jugera of land, or pasture on the ager publicus more than 100 cattle and 500 sheep or smaller beasts: others (e. g. Niebuhr, and Walter, Gesch. des röm. Rechts, § 62) hold that it prescribed the limit of 500 jugera merely for the possessiones of ager publicus: a third view (advanced by Huschke, Ueber die Stelle des Varro, 1835, and Rudorff, Röm. Feldmesser, 2.312, Röm. Rechtsgeschichte, 1.38) is that both ownership and possession were comprised in the enactment. The first of these theories at any rate seems to be disproved by Livy, 6.37 and 39 ( agris occupatis... injustis possessoribus ), Plin. Nat. 18.17, and Appian, App. BC 1.8 sq.; and perhaps that of Niebuhr is best supported by the authorities. It was also proposed, in the interest of those plebeians who were too poor to buy land, that a certain number of free persons should be employed on every estate (Appian, loc. cit.). A third rogatio was for the abolition of the military tribunate (an office created some years previously in order to relieve the consuls of some of their less important duties, to which the plebeians had been eligible, though Livy says, 6.37, that in B.C. 369 it had not been occupied by any of them for forty-four years), and for the election of one of the consuls every year from the ranks of the plebeians (Liv. 6.35, 7.1, 21, 22, 25, 10.7; Gel. 17.21, 26, 27; Schol. Bob. pro Scauro, p. 375; Orelli). The patricians prevented the enactment of these rogations by inducing the other tribunes to veto them: Stole and Sextius, according to Livy, retaliated in the same way, and, being repeatedly re-elected tribunes, persevered for five years in preventing the election of any curule magistrates.

In B.C. 368, encouraged by the support of one of the tribuni militum, M. Fabius, Licinius' father-in-law, and by the decreasing opposition of their colleagues, the two tribunes proposed, and after two years' violent agitation carried (B.C. 366), a new rogatio that, instead of the duumviri hitherto established, there should be a collegium of decemviri for the custody of the Sibylline books, and the performance of the sacra therewith connected, and that one-half of these decemviri should be plebeians (Liv. 6.42). This paved the way for the admission of the plebeians to the consulship: and in the next year (B.C. 365) the three original rogations were at last carried together in the form of a Lex Satura (Liv. 7.39; Dio Cass. Fragm 33), and L. Sextius was elected consul, being the first plebeian who attained that dignity. The patricians were in some degree compensated by retaining the monopoly of the praetorship (urbana): but the incorrectness of Livy in representing them also as solely eligible to the curule aedileship, established about this time, has been shown by Niebuhr, 3.39-49.

The penalty fixed for an infraction of the Lex Licinia de modo agrorum was an arbitrary fine sued for before the populus by the plebeian aediles. Curiously enough, Licinius Stolo himself was (B.C. 357) the first person against whom the statute was put in force (V. Max. 8.6, 3). Livy (7.16) says that together with his son he held a thousand jugera of ager, and by emancipating his son fraudulently evaded the provisions of his own law: which apparently means that he emancipated the son in order that the latter might get 500 jugera nominally for himself, but which would practically be at his father's disposal: at any rate, he was fined 10,000 asses. From this story (which is also told by Columella, 1.3, and Pliny, Plin. Nat. 18.17) it is clear that the plebeians had now acquired the right of holding (possidere) the ager publicus, probably under the Lex Licinia itself; and it would seem that the estates which the patricians had to surrender as being against the statute came for the most part into the possession of plebeians. Niebuhr (Röm. Geschichte, 3.19) attributes to the lex a genuinely agrarian character, and believes that there was a regular distribution of land among them; but the passages on which he relies (especially Varro, de Re Rust. 1.2, and Columella, loc. cit.) hardly bear out his view, which is directly contradicted by Appian (App. BC 1.8). The history of the later agrarian legislation, however, makes it clear that in some way or other the Lex Licinia de modo agrorum (if it related at all to the possessiones of ager publicus, which Puchta denies) was persistently evaded.

(Besides the works of Niebuhr, Puchta, Huschke, and Rudorff, already referred to, cf. Göttling, Geschichte der röm. Staatsverfassung, p. 354; the Classical Museum, Nos. v. vi. and vii.; and AGRARIAE LEGES).

LICINIA

LICINIA of uncertain date, containing provisions similar to those of the second Lex Aebutia noticed above, in connexion with which it is mentioned by Cicero (in Rull. 2.8, 21; cf. pro Domo, 20, 51).

LICINIA

LICINIA DE CREANDIS TRIUMVIRIS EPULONIBUS, B.C. 197 (Liv. 33.42; cf. Cic. de Orat. 3.19, 73).

LICINIA

LICINIA DE LUDIS APOLLINARIBUS, B.C. 209 (Liv. 27.23).

LICINIA

LICINIA DE SACERDOTIIS, B.C. 146 (Cic. de Am. 25, 96).

LICINIA

LICINIA DE SODALITIIS, B.C. 56 (Cic. pro Planc. 15, 36; ad Fam. 8, 2, 1: see Wunder's Prolegomena, cited in full by Orelli, Ciceronis opera, vol. viii. pp. 200, 201; and AMBITUS).

LICINIA JUNIA

LICINIA JUNIA sometimes called JUNIA LICINIA, passed B.C. 62 by the consuls L. Licinius Murena and Junius Silanus, perhaps to enforce more strictly the provisions of the Lex Caecilia Didia, in connexion with which it is sometimes mentioned (Cic. Phil. 5.3, 8; ad Att. 2.9, 1; 4.16, 5; in Vatin. 14, 23; pro Sestio, 64, 135). But it also seems to have enacted that a copy of every proposed statute should be deposited before witnesses in the Aerarium (Schol. Bob. p. 310; Mommsen, Röm. Staatsrecht, ii. pp. 532, 533).

LICINIA MUCIA

LICINIA MUCIA DE CIVIBUS REGUNDIS (probably REDIGUNDIS), passed B.C. 95 by the consuls L. Licinius Crassus the orator, and Q. Mucius Scaevola, Pontifex Maximus; ordained a strict examination into the title to citizenship, as many non-cive had contrived to get themselves put on the census, and ordered back to their own civitates all who could not make out a good title. This. measure partly led to the Marsic war, and is cited by Cicero as an instance how even the wisest men sometimes pass bad laws (Cic. de Off. 3.1. 1, 47; Brut. 16, 63; pro Balbo, 21, 24; pro Sestio, 13, 30: Ascon. in Cornel. p. 67).

LICINIA SUMPTUARIA

LICINIA SUMPTUARIA (Gel. 2.24, 7-10; Macrob. Saturn. 2.13; Festus, s. v. Centenaria). [SUMPTUARIAE LEGES]

LIVIAE

LIVIAE Various enactments carried by M. Livius Drusus the younger, when tribunus plebis B.C. 91, for establishing colonies in Italy and Sicily (Appian, App. BC 1.35), distributing corn among the poorer citizens at a low rate (Liv. Epit. 71), and admitting the foederatae civitates to the Roman citizenship (ib. Appian, loc. cit.). He was also the author of a lex judiciaria, dividing the judicia equally between the senate and the Equites (Vell. 2.13; Liv. Epit. 70; Cic. pro Cluentio, 56, 153), and instituting a penal procedure against judges who allowed themselves to be bribed (Cic. loc. cit.; Appian, App. BC 1.35); and he is said by Pliny (Plin. Nat. 33.46) to have proposed a measure for adulterating silver by mixing with it an eighth part of brass. Drusus was assassinated, and the senate declared his laws not binding, either because they had been carried contra auspicia (Ascon. in Cornet. p. 68), or because they were in violation of the Lex Caecilia Didia (Cic. pro Domo, 16, 41). Cf. Cic. de Leg. 2.6, 12; Florus, 3.17; Plut. C. Gracchus, 9 if.

LUTATIA

LUTATIA DE VI [VIS]. The supposed existence of such a lex (based on Cicero, pro Caelio, 29, 70) is now much discredited but see Rein, Criminalrecht, p. 742.

MAENIA

MAENIA probably passed by Maenius, tribunus plebis, B.C. 287. It is mentioned only by Cicero (Cic. Brut. 14, 55), who says that M. Curius Dentatus compelled the Patres ante auctores fieri, in the case of the election of a plebeian consul, which was a great thing to accomplish, as the Lex Maenia had not yet been passed. The statute seems to have enacted that the senatorial auctoritas to the Comitia Curiata (by a vote of which the magistrates acquired their imperium) should be given before instead of after the assembly of the centuries in which the magistrates were elected (cf. Liv. 1.17; Cic. pro Plancio, 3, 8; Licinius Macer in Sallust. Frag. iii. p. 972, ed. Cort; Puchta, Institutionen, § 59, notes l and n; Walter, Geschichte des röm. Rechts, § 66; and AUCTORITAS).

MAENIA

MAENIA DE DOTE, B.C. 186: see Voigt's treatise on the subject, Weimar, 1866, and Puchta, Institutionen, § 74, note k, and § 292, note b.

DE MAGISTRIS AQUA

DE MAGISTRIS AQUA RUM: (Haubold, Spangenberg, Mon. Leg. p. 177).

MAMILIA

MAMILIA DE COLONIIS. It was supposed that Rudorff had proved (Zeitschrift, 9.12) that the Lex Mamilia, Roscia, Peducaea, Alliena, Fabia, is the same as the Lex agraria quam Gaius Caesar tulit (Dig. 47, 21, 3), and that this Gaius Caesar is the Emperor Caligula. But Mommsen (Schriften der röm. Feldmesser, ii. p. 223) believes that the so-called Lex Mamilia related to the appointment of C. Julius Caesar's agrarian commission: and this seems to be confirmed by the discovery of the Lex Coloniae Genetivae.

MAMILIA

MAMILIA DE JUGURTHAE FAUTORIBUS established a special tribunal of three quaesitores to investigate cases of bribery among Romans by Jugurtha (Sallust, Jugurtha, 40, 65; Cic. Brut. 33, 34: cf. Mommsen, Röm. Staatsrecht, vol. ii. pp. 646, 647).

MAMILIA

MAMILIA FINIUM REGUNDORUM (B.C. 110, Ernesti; B.C. 165, Pighius) re-enacted the provision of the Twelve Tables, that a space of 5 ft. along the boundaries of landed estates (extending 2 1/2 ft. into each) should be excluded from usucapio, and ordained a new procedure in cases of dispute (Cic. de Leg. 1.2. 1, 55; Rudorff; Gränzscheidungsklage, Zeitschrift, x. pp. 355-363).

MANILIA

MANILIA proposed by the tribune C. Manilius B.C. 66, and conferring on Cu. Pompeius the command in the war against Mithridates. It was supported by Cicero when praetor in his speech pro lege Manilia (cf. Vell. 2.33, 1; Liv. Epit. 100; D. C. 36.25; Appian, Bell. Mithrid. 97).

MANILIA

MANILIA DE LIBERTINORUM SUFFRAGIIS (D. C. 36.25; Ascon. in Corn. pp. 64, 65): perhaps the same as the Lex Manilia de suffragiorum confusione (Cic. pro Mur. 23, 47), which seems to have enacted that the libertini should vote in all and not only in the four urban tribes.

MANILIANAE

MANILIANAE (Cic. de Orat. 1.58, 246). These were not statutes at all, but forms which it was prudent for parties to observe in contracts of sale, whence they are called actiones by Varro, de Re Rust. 2.5, 11. They seem to have been invented by a jurist called M‘. Manilius, who was consul B.C. 149.

MANLIA

MANLIA a name wrongly given to the Lex Licinia de creandis triumviris epulonibus, because P. Manlius was one of the first triumviri appointed under its provisions (Liv. 33.42).

MANLIA

MANLIA DE LIBERTINORUM SUFFRAGIIS, B.C. 58, probably identical with the Lex Manilia of the same title (Ascon. in Mil. p. 46).

MANLIA

MANLIA DE VICESIMA MANUMISSORUM, B.C. 357, imposed a tax of one-fifth on the value of all manumitted slaves (Liv. 7.16; cf. 27.10). [MANUMISSIO]

MARCIA

MARCIA circ. 352 B.C., prescribed the procedure per manus injectionem against feneratores for recovering from them four times any sum which they had taken by way of illegal interest (Gaius, 4.23; Liv. 7.21).

MARCIA AGRARIA

MARCIA AGRARIA proposed by L. Marcius Philippus, tribunus plebis, B.C. 104 (Cic. de Off. 2.2. 1, 73).

MARCIA

MARCIA DE LIGURIBUS, B.C. 172 (Liv. 42.22).

MARIA

MARIA proposed by C. Marius, when tribune B.C. 119, for narrowing the pontes at elections (Cic. de Legg. 3.1. 7, 38; Plut. Marius, 4).

MEMMIA

MEMMIA or REMMIA. [CALUMNIA]

MENENIA

MENENIA seems to have in some way limited the magistrate's power of inflicting arbitrary fines: see ATERNIA TARPEIA.

MENSIA

MENSIA or MINICIA enacted that the children of parents, either of whom was a peregrinus, should be peregrini themselves: and thus (where a civis Romana married a peregrinus) introduced an exception to the rule that where there was no conubium between man and wife the issue should follow the condition of the mother (Ulpian, Reg. 5.8).

MESSIA

MESSIA DE CN. POMPEII IMPERIO (Cic. Att. 4.1, 7).

MESSIA

MESSIA DE REVOCANDO CICERONE (Cic. post Red. in Sen. 8, 21).

METILIA

METILIA B.C. 217 (Liv. 22.25 sq.; Plut. Fabius, 9).

MIINICIA

MIINICIA (Gaius, 1.78, Studemund ad loc.): see MENSIA.

MINUCIA

MINUCIA DE TRIUMVIRIS MENSARIIS, B.C. 46 (Liv. 23.21).

MUCIA

MUCIA a plebiscitum of 141 B.C.: resulted in the exile of L. Hostilius Tubulo (Cic. de Fin. 2.16, 54).

NERVAE AGRARIA

NERVAE AGRARIA the latest known instance of a lex passed at the Comitia (Dig. 47, 21, 3, 1).

OCTAVIA

OCTAVIA probably B.C. 87 (Cic. de Off. 2.2. 1, 72; Brut. 62, 222). [FRUMENTARIAE LEGES]

OGULNIA

OGULNIA proposed by two Ogulnii, who were tribunes B.C. 300: it increased the number of the Pontifices and Augurs from four each to eight and nine respectively, and enacted that four of the former and five of the latter should be taken from the plebs (Liv. 10.6-8).

OPPIA

OPPIA B.C. 215 (Liv. 34.1, 8; V. Max. 9.1, 3). It was repealed twenty years after its enactment. [SUMPTUARIAE LEGES.]

ORCHIA

ORCHIA B.C. 171 (Macrob. Saturn. 2.13). [SUMPTUARIAE LEGES]

OVINIA

PUBLICIA

PUBLICIA permitted betting at certain games which required strength, such as running and leaping (Dig. 11, 5, 2, 1 and 3). [CORNELIA; TITIA.]

PUBLILIA

PUBLILIA proposed by Publilius Volero, tribunus plebis, and carried after much opposition B.C. 471. It provided ut plebeii magistratus (tribunes and plebeian aediles) tributis comitiis fierent (Liv. 2.56); but this apparently should not be taken to mean that these magistrates had previously been elected in the Comitia Centuriata (as is held by Mommsen, Röm. Tribus, p. 83; Becker-Marquardt, 2.2, 253-260, &c.): the choice had practically been made by the plebs, but in a less organised fashion than became the rule after it had by this statute been definitely assigned to the Comitia in which the plebeians had the preponderance (Schwegler, 26.7: cf. Walter, Geschichte des röm. Rechts, § 44; for another view, see Mommsen, Röm. Geschichte, 2.2). From this time onward, says Dionysius (9.49), up to my own day, the election of tribunes and aediles was made without birds (augural ceremonies) and all the rest of the religious forms in the Comitia Tributa. By the same enactment the number of the tribunes was raised from two to five (Liv. 2.58; Diod. 2.38), and B.C. 454 to ten (Liv. 3.30; Dionys. A. R. 10.30), who were elected in equal proportions from the five classes of the Servian Constitution (Ascon. in Cornel. p. 77): this change was readily acquiesced in and perhaps even suggested by the patricians, who foresaw in the larger number increased chances of disagreement, and were more likely to win over to their own side one of many than one of few plebeian magistrates. Possibly, too, the office of tribune was opened to the patricians, two of whom were tribuni plebis B.C. 448 (Liv. 3.65), though these, according to Mommsen (Röm. Staatsrecht, ii. p. 265), were only coopted members of the Collegium.

We are told by Dionysius (9.43, 44) that when Publicius failed in the first attempt to carry his measure, he added a fresh provision, enabling the Comitia Tributa to discuss and resolve on matters of public importance (cf. Zonaras, 7.17): this was carried along with his earlier proposal, and was of considerable constitutional significance: for it thus became easy for the tribunes to unite the plebeians on any matter on which they had to vote in the Comitia Centuriata, and also to consult them as to the submission of proposals for legislation to the senate: these, if approved, could then be referred in the ordinary way to the centuries, and thereby become genuine enactments of the sovereign populus (V. Max. 2.2, 7; Dionys. A. R. 10.30, 48, 52). For the further history, see PUBLILIAE and PLEBISCITUM

PUBLILIA

PUBLILIA DE SPONSU gave the kind of surety called a sponsor an actio depensi to recover twice the sum which he had paid for his principal unless reimbursed within six months, and enabled him after obtaining judgment to proceed at once by manus injectio pro judicato (Gaius, 3.127, 4.22). [INTERCESSIO]

PUBLILIAE LEGES

PUBLILIAE LEGES carried B.C. 339 by the Dictator Q. Publilius Philo: their substance is thus described by Livy (8.12): Tres leges secundissimas plebei, adversas nobilitati tulit: unam ut plebiscita omnes Quirites tenerent: alteram, ut legum quae comitiis centuriatis ferrentur, ante initum suffragium Patres auctores fierent: tertiam, ut alter utique ex plebe, quum eo ventum sit ut utrumque plebeium consulem fieri liceret, censor crearetur. The first of these seems to stand in connexion with one of the leges Valeriae Horatiae, B.C. 449, which enacted ut quod tributim plebs jussisset populum teneret (Liv. 3.55): i. e. it restored the Comitia Tributa after the second secession of the plebs, and perhaps also provided that plebiscita which had no constitutional import, or which related purely to matters of private law, should have the force of statute, even without subsequent confirmation or enactment by the centuries. In B.C. 339, the patricians having now brought themselves to take regular part in the business of the Comitia Tributa, confirmation by the centuries must have seemed a superfluity in any case; and accordingly the first Lex Publilia seems to have dispensed with it for all plebiscita whatsoever. They still, however, required to be sanctioned by the senate before they acquired complete validity; but the necessity of this seems to have been abolished by the Lex Hortensia, B.C. 287, which enacted ut eo jure, quod plebs statuisset, omnes Quirites tenerentur (Gaius, 1.3; Dig. 1, 2, 2, 8; Laelius Felix in Gel. 15.27; Plin. Nat. 16.37). There is, however, great difference of opinion as to the real import of, and the relation between, these three leges, which, if literally taken, seem all to have enacted the same thing. Walter (Geschichte des röm. Rechts, § 65) thinks that the last two dispensed with the senatorial confirmation of plebiscita which were not proposed ex senatus auctoritate; Niebuhr (2.415; 3.170, 171, 491), that the Lex Publilia did away with the necessity of confirmation by the Comitia Curiata, and that the senatorial approval was dispensed with by the Lex Hortensia: while Mommsen (Röm. Geschichte, 2.3) and Lange (1.469-473) take the accounts given to us literally, and hold the last two laws to be merely re-enactments of the Lex Valeria Horatia, which got rid of confirmation by the senate and the Comitia Curiata as well. The view adopted above is that of Puchta (Institutionen, § 59).

As to the meaning of the second Lex Publilia, there is also some difference of opinion, occasioned by our uncertainty as to the signification of Patres in the text of Livy cited above. According to one view, it simply re-affirmed the constitutional doctrine that no measure should be submitted for enactment to the Comitia Centuriata without having been previously approved by the senate: such re-affirmation seeming desirable in consequence of the recent changes in respect of plebiscita, which were sanctioned by the senate after, and not before, being passed by the Comitia Tributa. But Livy's remark that all the leges Publiliae were adversae nobilitati makes the view of Niebuhr more probable, that by Patres is meant the Comitia Curiata; the assent of which was by this statute reduced to a mere formality by the requirement that it should be given before the centuries had considered whether they should pass any given measure or not.

The third Publilian law requires no explanation. We read of a plebeian being censor as early as B.C. 351 (Liv. 7.22; 10.8, 8): but this statute required that one of the censors should always be selected from the plebs.

PUPIA

PUPIA (Cic. ad Q. Fratr. 2.13; ad Fam. 1.4) enacted that the senate should not sit on dies Comitiales. Previously it could deliberate on any day whatsoever (see Cic. Fam. 12.5. 5; ad Q. Fratr. 2.1, &c.; ad Att. 4.2; Liv. 39.39). Its date was perhaps B.C. 224.

QUINTIA

QUINTIA a lex proposed by T. Quintius Crispinus (consul B.C. 9) for the preservation of the Aquaeductus. It is preserved by Frontinus (de Aquaeduct. Roman.).

REGIA

REGIA properly LEX DE IMPERIO PRINCIPIS. The nature of the imperium, and the mode in which it was conferred, are explained under IMPERIUM Augustus united in his own person most of the republican powers and magistracies, though they were bestowed upon him by the populus separately and at different times. After holding the consulship for nine years in succession, he received the proconsulare imperium and the potestas consularis and tribunicia for life: the powers of the censorship were granted him at first for five years, but were periodically renewed without interruption: he was also Pontifex Maximus and Princeps Senatus, whence, according to some, he took the title Princeps by which the earlier emperors were known, and which personally he preferred to the style of Imperator, which, though it belonged to him, he never asserted within the city of Rome. [PRINCEPS] The practice of investing the emperor with these various powers or authorities by distinct leges was followed for a considerable time. The preservation of the Lex de imperio Vespasiani (which seems to have been only a senatusconsultum representing the old Lex Curiata de imperio) has led to the belief that in the time of that emperor all the powers enjoyed by Augustus were conferred on the sovereign by a single statute. The fragment which is extant (Haubold, Spangenberg, Monum. Legal. p. 221) empowers Vespasian to make treaties, originate senatusconsulta, propose persons to the people and the senate for election to magistracies, extend the pomoerium, and make edicts with the force of law: it releases him from the same laws from which Augustus, Tiberius, and Claudius had been released; and provides that all that he had done before its enactment should have the same effect as if it had been done by the people. But, sweeping as the form seems to be, it is clear that the senate continued even after Vespasian to dispense the various prerogatives of sovereignty, one by one, with affected hesitation. It was not really till the time of Alexander Severus that the whole of the imperial powers (including the proconsulare imperium, the principatus senatus, and the tribunicia potestas) were conferred on the emperor uno ictu, and Severus himself remarks upon this as a novelty ( quae omnia novo exemplo uno die in me contulistis, Lamprid. Alex. Sev. 1): but from his time the practice became usual, the formal imperium however being bestowed first by a separate resolution of the senate (cf. Capitol. Max. et Balb. 8; Vopisc. Prob. 2). For the meaning of legibus solutus as applied to the emperor, see Mommsen, Röm. Staatsrecht, ii. p. 728, and Merivale, Hist. of the Romans under the Empire, iii. p. 466 sq.

The Lex de Imperio is in the Corpus Juris of Justinian sometimes called Lex Regia, an expression which occurs in Dig. 1, 4, 1, pr. (Ulpian), transcribed in Inst. 1.2, 6, and in Cod. 1, 17, 1, 7. The title of Dominus was applied to the emperor as early as Trajan, but the phrase lex regia does not appear to occur before the third century, when to avoid the comparison between rex and imperator would have been mere affectation. For the whole subject, see D. C. 53.16-19; Tac. Hist. 1.47, 4.3, 6; and Merivale, Hist. chap. 31.

REGIAE

REGIAE (LEX p. 32 a supr.; and JUS CIVILE PAPIRIANUM).

REMMIA

REMMIA (Cic. pro Rosc. Am. 19, 55). [CALUMNIA]

RHODIA

RHODIA a term used to denote those portions of the Rhodian maritime code (referred to by Strabo xiv. p.652; and Cic. pro lege Manilia, 18, 54) which were adopted into the Roman law, and on which information may be obtained from Dig. 14, 2, and Schryver, Sur la loi Rhodia de jactu, Brussels, 1884. Its main principle was that, where property was thrown overboard to lighten and so assist in saving a ship, the loss should be portioned out among all in whose interest the sacrifice was made.

ROSCIA THEATRALIS

ROSCIA THEATRALIS carried by the tribune L. Roscius Otho, B.C. 67: it assigned to the Equites the fourteen rows of seats in the theatre next to those of the senators, who sat in the orchestra, to which apparently (Vell. 2.32, 3) they had a kind of prescriptive right (Liv. Epit. 99; D. C. 36.25; Cic. pro Murena, 19, 40; ad Att. 2.19; Juv. 14.324; Hor. Epod. 4.16). This provision was re-enacted by the Lex Julia theatralis. The statute also seems to have assigned seats in the theatre to persons who had lost their property, whether by their own fault or by misfortune (decoctores), Cic. Phil. 2.18, 44. The law caused some popular disturbances when Cicero was consul, which he allayed by a speech (ad Att. 2.1; Plut. Cic. 13).

RUBRIA

RUBRIA or GALLIAE CISALPINAE. When Cisalpine Gaul ceased to be a province and became part of Italy, it was necessary to provide for the administration of justice, as the usual forms of provincial administration would cease with the determination of the provincial mode of government. This was done (B.C. 49, Mommsen and Rudorff; B.C. 42, Savigny and Puchta) by a plebiscitum proposed by an otherwise unknown tribune, named Rubrius, of which a portion was discovered in 1760 on a tablet in the ruins of Veleia, which is preserved in the Museum at Parma. The whole lex probably covered five Tables, and was divided into chapters, of which we have caps. 20-22 complete, and parts of the 19th and 23rd: it apparently followed the order of the praetorian edict, and regulated the judicial competence and procedure of the Cisalpine municipia. Its policy seems to have been restrictive: e. g. it is provided that the municipal magistrates shall have jurisdiction to try by judices (in the ordinary Roman fashion) all suits in which the sum involved does not exceed 15,000 sesterces, and some even irrespective of their amount: as for actions to which their jurisdiction does not extend, they may conduct the preliminary inquiry, but must remit them for trial to the praetor at Rome. The 19th chapter relates to operis novi nuntiatio; the 20th, to damnum infectum; the 21st and 22nd, to the jurisdiction, especially restricting the right of imprisoning for money debts; and the 23rd, to the judicium familiae erciscundae.

The text of the lex is lithographed in Ritschl's Inscriptions, vol. i. Tab. xxxii., and may also be found in Mommsen's Inscriptions, vol. i. No. 205, as well as in the earlier editions of Carli, Pietro di Lama, and Haubold (Spangenberg). The subject is expressly handled by Savigny (Zeitschrift, ix.) and Puchta, Kleine civil. Schriften, 1851: cf. Huschke, Ueber die Klagformeln in der Lex Rubria; Gaius, pp. 203-242; Hugo, Civil. Magazin, vol. ii. pp. 431-496; and Dirksen, Obs. ad selecta legis Gall. Cisalp. capita, Berlin, 1812.

RUPILIAE

RUPILIAE These are not leges proper, but regulations for the organisation of Sicily, comprised in a decretum issued by P. Rupilius, its proconsul (B.C. 131), in accordance with instructions given him by tie ten legati sent by the senate, as was usual (Liv. 45.17; Appian, Iber. 99, Pun. 135; Sall. Jugurtha, 16) when the organisation of a province was being settled (Cic. in Verr. 2.13, 16, 40; Pseudo-Ascon. p. 212: cf. V. Max. 6.9, 8). There is frequent mention in Cicero's second speech against Verres of the regulations (leges) of Rupilius in respect of the Sicilian judicial procedure, e. g. one by which he there established the supposed principle of the Lex Pinaria, requiring an interval of thirty days between the proceedings in jure and the appointment of a judex (cap. 15). Other leges of the same person, relating to the co-optation of the senate of Heraclia, where he had established a colony, are mentioned in Verr. 2.50, 125; and as to res frumentaria, in Verr. 3.40, 91. (See Marquardt, Röm. Staatsverwaltung, i. p. 341.)

RUTILIA

RUTILIA related to the appointment of the tribuni militum (Festus, s. v. Rufuli; Liv. 8.5; Ascon. in Verr. 1.10, p. 112, Orelli).

SACRATAE

SACRATAE (mentioned or referred to by Liv. 2.33, 3.55, 7.41, &c.; and Cic. pro Sest. 7, 16, 30, &c.; de Off. 3.31, 111; de Leg. 2.7, 18, &c.). The term seems properly to have been used of laws to which a religious sanction was attached, so that the person who was convicted of violating them became sacer: Sacratae leges sunt, quibus sanctum est, qui quid adversus eas fecerit, sacer alicui deorum sit cum familia pecuniaque (Festus). As to the nature of the sanction, something more may be gathered from Festus, s. v. Sacer mons: At homo sacer is est, quem populus judicavit ob maleficium, neque fas est eum immolari: sed qui occidit parricidii non damnatur, nam lege tribunicia prima cavetur: si quis eum qui eo plebei scito sacer sit occiderit parricida ne sit. Among such leges sacratae were the Lex Valeria de provocatione, the statute affirming the inviolability of tribuni plebis (Liv. 2.8, 33, 3.55; Cic. de Leg. 3.4, 11), the Lex Icilia de Aventino (Liv. 3.32) and the Lex militaris referred to by Liv. 7.41. See Ernesti's note cited by Orelli, Cicero, viii. p. 257; Ihering, Geist des röm. Rechts, pp. 273-276.

SAENIA

SAENIA DE PATRICIORUM NUMERO AUGENDO, enacted in the fifth consulship of Augustus (Tac. Ann. 11.25; Mon. Ancyr. Pilae prioris, tab. 2. See CASSIA).

SALPENSANA

SALPENSANA a lex of the Emperor Domitian, A.D. 81-84, regulating the constitution of the Latin colony of Salpensa in Baetica.

SATURA

SATURA [LEX p. 33 b supr.]

SCATINIAE

SCATINIAE another reading for Atiniae in Cic. Phil. 3.6, 16.

SCANTINIA

SCANTINIA a lex of unknown date, enacted for the suppression of unnatural crime (Auson. Epigr. 89; Juv. 2.44; Cic. Fam. 8.1. 2, 14; Suet. Domit. 8), which was treated by the Lex Julia de adulteriis merely as stuprum (Dig. 48, 5, 34, 1; Collatio, 5.2; Paul. Sent. rec. 2.26, 13), and punished by partial confiscation of property, flogging, and relegatio (Inst. 4.18, 4). For these death was substituted by imperial constitutions (Coil. 5.3; Cod. 9, 9, 31).

SCRIBONIA

SCRIBONIA of unknown date, enacted that praedial urban servitudes should not be acquirable by usucapio (Dig. 41, 3, 4, 29): rustic servitudes could never be so acquired (apart from the praedia to which they were annexed), owing to the impossibility of applying to them the notion of possession (Dig. 8, 1, 14, pr.). The statute, however, did not prohibit the extinction of a servitude by lapse of time, which the Romans call usucapio libertatis (Dig. 41, 3, 4, 29). But the prescriptive acquisition of servitudes was re-introduced through the praetorian doctrine of longi temporis possessio. [SERVITUTES; USUCAPIO.] See Unterholtzner, Verjahrungslehre, 2. § § 195-197.

SCRIBONIA ALIMENTARIA

SCRIBONIA ALIMENTARIA (Cael. ad Fam. 8.6, 5).

SCRIBONIA VIARIA

SCRIBONIA VIARIA carried by the tribune C. Scribonius Curio, B.C. 51. Its motive and purport are explained by Appian, App. BC 2.26 sq.: cf. Orelli's Cicero, viii. pp. 259, 260.

SEMPRONIA AGRARIA

SEMPRONIA AGRARIA carried by Tiberius Gracchus when tribune, B.C. 133. In settling its provisions he was aided by the advice of Crassus, then Pontifex Maximus, Mucius Scaevola, then Consul and later Pontifex Maximus himself, and Appius Claudius (Plut. Tib. Gracchus, 9); their main objects being to relieve the poverty of the humbler Roman citizens, and to establish a population of free and independent yeomen over the vast tracts of public land, the enjoyment of which the patricians had practically appropriated, notwithstanding the Lex Licinia, and which were at that date but sparsely peopled by shepherds, herdsmen, and a few slave cultivators. Its main enactment was that no person should hold more than 500 jugera of ager publicus (Liv. Epit. 58; Aurel. Victor de Vir. ill. 64), with an additional 250 jugera for each of two sons: but in no case was the holding to exceed 1000 jugera. From the estates recovered from the present tenants, as being in excess of the maximum fixed by the statute, holdings were to be provided for the poorer and landless citizens, which they were to have no power of alienating or even letting (Appian, App. BC 1.9, 10); the taxes assessed on the land were to be paid by the tenant. The execution of the statute was entrusted to a commission of three, which was to be elected every year (Appian, loc. cit.), the first three commissioners being Tiberius himself, his brother C. Gracchus, and Appius Claudius; but it was attended with great difficulties. The ager publicus had been held by private persons for generations as private property, had often changed hands by sale or assignment, and had been improved and built upon. Proposals were originally made for the payment of compensation for buildings and unexhausted improvements (Plut. loc. cit.; Appian, App. BC 1.11); but these, it would appear, were withdrawn.

The execution of the measure was stopped by a senatusconsultum which extinguished the powers of the commissioners to whom it had been entrusted; but it was revived by the Lex Sempronia of C. Gracchus, B.C. 123. The senate, however, practically rendered it a dead letter by employing Livius Drusus, another of the tribunes, to bring forward agrarian proposals even more popular with the proletariate than that of Gracchus; especially one permitting alienation of the holdings, whereby the tenants got money instead of land, and the rich were enabled to buy back the estates of which they had been temporarily deprived. (Plut. C. Gracchus; Appian, App. BC 1.21 ff.: for the whole subject, see Merivale's Fall of the Roman Republic, chap. i.)

SEMPRONIA

SEMPRONIA DE CAPITE CIVIUM, carried by Caius Gracchus, B.C. 123: it re-affirmed the old legal principle that no judgment should be pronounced involving the life or freedom of a citizen without the assent of the Roman people (Cic. pro Rabirio, 4, 8; in Cat. 4, 5; in Verr. 5.63, 163; Gel. 10.3). See Ahren's Excursus on the statute, cited by Orelli, Cicero, vol. viii. pp. 264, 265.

SEMPRONIA

SEMPRONIA DE PECUNIA CREDITA or DE FENORE, passed by the tribune M. Sempronius Tuditanus, B.C. 193. It was occasioned by the fact of citizens lending money in the names of non-cives in order to evade the laws against usury, to which it subjected the Socii and Latini (Liv. 35.7).

SEMPRONIA

SEMPRONIA DE PROVINCIA ASIA provided that the taxes of the Roman province of Asia should be let out to farm by the censors (Cic. in Verr. 3.6, 12: cf. ad Att. 1.17, 9): probably a different lex from that which next follows. [DECUMAE]

SEMPRONIA

VALERIA DE MANUS INJECTIONE. [VALLIA.]

VALERIA

VALERIA DE SULLA DICTTORE, carried by L. Valerius Flaccus, B.C. 82, giving the force of law to all Sulla's acts (Cic. de Lege agr. 3.2, 7; de Leg. 1.15, 42; pro Rosc. Am. 43, 126; Plut. Sull. 33).

VALERIAE

VALERIAE proposed and carried B.C. 508 by the consul P. Valerius, with the object of relieving himself from the suspicion of aiming at the kingly power and increasing his own popularity: means by which he acquired the name of Publicola or Poplicola, by which he is generally known. The first and best known of his laws is that which reduced the powers of the magistrate (de Provocatione--de Multa) by enacting that every citizen, whether patrician or plebeian, should have an appeal (provocatio) to the Comitia (curiata, Walter, Geschichte des röm. Rechts, § 40; Schwegler, 21.17, 25.12; centuriata, Mommsen, Röm. Geschichte, 2.1, and Huschke, Rein, Becker-Marquardt, &c.) from any magisterial sentence by which he was condemned to death or flogging (Cic. de Rep. 2.31, 54; V. Max. 4.1; Liv. 2.30), or to payment of any fine larger than two sheep and five oxen (Plut. Popl. 11). Cicero (de Rep. 2.31, 54) says that this was the first lex passed at the Comitia Centuriata. The right of appeal only applied to Rome and its precincts within a mile of the city, for the imperium of the consuls beyond this boundary was unlimited ( neque enim provocationem esse longius ab urbe mille passuum, Liv. 3.20). The second Lex Valeria of Publicola declared accursed anyone who formed designs to grasp the kingly power, and made both him and his property sacer [SACRATAE LEGES]: Dionys. A. R. 5.19, 70; Plut. Popl. 12.

VALERIAE HORATIAE

VISELLIA

VISELLIA A.D. 23, rendered libertini liable to a criminal prosecution who fraudulently attempt to exercise the rights of ingenui (Cod. 9, 21; 10, 32, 1): it also enabled Latini Juniani to acquire the civitas by service in the Roman guards (vigiles) for six years, which was subsequently reduced to three by a senatusconsultum (Ulpian, Reg. 3.5).

[J.B.M]

From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.