Livius Drusus and the Courts
1972; Classical Association of Canada; Volume: 26; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/1087834
ISSN1929-4883
Autores Tópico(s)Legal principles and applications
ResumoTwo recent attempts have been made to solve the old conundrum concerning the apparent incompatibility of Appian's account of Livius Drusus' reform of the criminal courts (BCiv. 1. 35), when this is understood (rightly, as I believe) to mean the transfer of the latter to the senate enlarged by three hundred equites, and his statement that the equites were at the same time to be made liable to charges of dorodokia and were highly indignant at the idea. E. S. Gruen, Roman Politics and the Criminal Courts, 149-78 B.C. (Cambridge, Mass. 1968) 209, has reasserted Mommsen's view that the latter provision was retrospective in purpose, being aimed at the jurors who had condemned Rutilius Rufus; but not simply retrospective, since he holds that it was an extension of the lex Sempronia ne quis iudicio circumveniatur to which Drusus was resorting, which could thus also be applied to equestrians who might in the future corrupt a jury from outside. E. J. Weinrib, on the other hand, Historia 19 (1970) 414 f., holds that the provision was neither an extension of this law nor retrospective in purpose, but that it was a rider attached to a single lex iudiciaria whereby equites were to become liable for the acceptance of bribes when serving in certain courts in which they were to continue to sit after 91 B.c.-only the court for repetundae, and possibly that for maiestas and peculatus, were to be completely in the hands of the enlarged senate. Weinrib's thesis is argued with much care and detail and there is much that is attractive in it. We shall suggest here that he is probably right in his interpretation of the dorodokia provision in Appian but indicate grounds for doubt concerning the latter part of this thesis. In denying that the dorodokia provision had any connection with the lex ne quis iudicio circumveniatur Weinrib places great emphasis on Cicero's well-known references to it in the pro Cluentio and pro Rabirio Postumo, where it is exclusively the receiving of money by jurors, not the giving of money to jurors (such as was more particularly covered by the lex ne quis iudicio circumveniatur) which is explicitly mentioned as the offence which was to be penalized. Noting that Cluentius could not possibly have been guilty of the former offence, but only of the latter in 74 B.c. (cf. U. Ewins, JRS 50 [1960] 99), he argues that Cicero would not have failed to assert that the giving of bribes was covered by Drusus' provision, if such had really been the case. It could be felt, indeed, that too much emphasis is put on this point, for although Cluentius could not have received bribes in 74 there were equestrian jurors once again in the criminal courts in 66-and again in 54, when Rabirius was accused of
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