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The Extortion Procedure Again

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

A. N. Sherwin-White
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Extract

Mrs. I. Henderson has recently presented a novel interpretation of the function of the Quaestio Repetundarum, partly in contradiction of my own discussion elsewhere of the evidence for the penalty of the extortion laws. I there argued that the penalty remained financial from the Lex Calpurnia to the Lex Cornelia, and that the frequent, but not universal, withdrawal into exile of condemned persons was due mainly to fear of fresh prosecution on more serious charges arising from the extortion case and reinforced by the praeiudicium, and that only the Lex Iulia transformed custom into law by specifying the capital penalty for the more heinous forms of extortion. Against this Mrs. Henderson maintains that the penalty for extortion under the Acilian and later laws was normally capital, though some-times less than capital, and explains this dualism by a new interpretation of the powers of the Gracchan Judices, which if accepted calls for a general change of ideas about the development of the Quaestio system.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1-2 , November 1952 , pp. 43 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © A. N. Sherwin-White 1952. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Henderson, M. I., ‘The Process de Repetundis,’ JRS 1951, 71–88Google Scholar. The bibliography given ibid. and in Sherwin-White, A. N., ‘Poena Legis Repetundarum,’ BSR XVII, 1949, 5Google Scholar, need not here be repeated. Items will be cited in their place, but Greenidge, A. H. J., Legal Procedure of Cicero's Time (Oxford 1901Google Scholar), should be added. Throughout ‘Judices’ with a J is used in preference to ‘Jurors’ for the judges of the Quaestiones Publicae.

2 Pro Caecina 100. Cicero, pro Balbo 28–9, de Domo 78. For calamitas of a non-capital condemnation see pro Sulla 91.

3 ‘quod si civi Romano licet esse Gaditanum sive exsilio sive postliminio sive reiectione huius civitatis,’ summarizing the whole of 28, where Dicatio is prior to Exilium.

4 Pro Balbo 27–8: ‘Neque si velit mutare non potest, modo adsciscatur ab ea civitate cuius esse … velit,’ is the general rubric. De Domo 78: ‘non prius hanc civitatem amittebant quam erant in eam recepti quo vertendi hoc est mutandi soli causa venerant.’ Pro Caecina 100 also. Cf. Strachan-Davidson, , Problems of the Roman Criminal Law (Oxford 1912) 11, 72Google Scholar. In the early Republic the formality was effected more simply through the ius mutandae civitatis common to all Latin States (cf. Sherwin-White, A. N., Roman Citizenship, Oxford 1939, 32Google Scholar). For adscriptio see pro Archia 8–10, ad Fam. XII, 30.

5 Pro Balbo 28 gives a remarkably short list of ‘renouncers’. Appius Claudius (de Domo 83–4) seems to have remained a citizen after withdrawal in face of a threatened iudicium publicum. Metellus Numidicus was waiting at Rhodes and Tralles (Livy, Epit. 69, Val. Max. IV, 1, 13) for his recall, like Cicero later, despite the interdict.

6 cf. Strachan-Davidson, o.c. II, 33 f., and 54–5. The annual interdict forbidding residence at Rome of condemned persons suggests rarity of execution; II in Verrem II, 100. For the advantages of a local citizenship see the case of Memmius, ad Fam. XIII, 19, 2. In de Domo 78—as against pro Caecina 100 (neces)—pressure of the interdict, not specific fear of death, induces the change of status. Only those who think, with Strachan-Davidson, that the interdict was itself the death sentence will identify the two motives.

7 Livy XLIII, 2. Henderson, art. cit. 80.

7a Livy XLII, 21, 5–8.

8 Velleius II, 8, 1. ‘C. Cato consularis … repetundarum ex Macedonia damnatus est.’ Henderson, art. cit. 85.

9 ibid. 7–8: ‘prima … Carthago condita est … subinde … Narbo Martius. Mandetur deinde memoriae … C. Cato … circa eadem tempora duo Metelli … triumphaverunt … turn Cimbri …’

10 Below, p. 51.

11 cf. Sherwin-White, , BSR XVII, art. cit. 7Google Scholar; the only surprise in Cato's case is his continued status as a senator—the small fine astonished only a later age accustomed to Verrine exactions.

12 Henderson, art. cit. 72–3. Dio fr. 97; Cicero, de Or. I, 228–9Google Scholar.

13 As for the alleged implications of Crassus' speech quoted Cic. de Or. I, 225Google Scholar, as against Henderson, art. cit. n. 3, it may still be argued that Cicero's gloss recognizes the metaphor as such.

14 Lex Acilia 57–8, 66–7.

15 ad Herennium 1, 11, 20; Lex Acilia 56.

16 Henderson, art. cit. 76–8.

17 ibid. 77: ‘the reus might be the same in both trials, as in pro Cluentio 116.’

18 It is also possible for such a person, if a senator, to be directly charged on a fresh indictment of extortion, as in ad Fam. VIII, 8, 3, on which see Greenidge, o.c. 503–4 nn.

19 ‘Itaque et maiestatis absoluti sunt permulti quibus damnatis de pecuniis repetundis lites maiesatis essent aestimatae.’ Essent perplexed Greenidge, o.c. 502, n. 4, but it is simply concessive.

20 Pro Cluentio 115, with 103–4.

21 Henderson, art. cit. 77, sees as the kernel of lis maiestatis only the taking of money, e.g. frumentum cellae nomine imperatum, in a way that tended to diminish the ‘majesty of the Roman People’. But a man might be sued for the restoration of a bribe given for the doing of a specific act, like Gabinius' invasion of Egypt, ‘contra rem publicam.’ Cf. also the activities of Jugurtha's friends, below, p. 51. H. rightly explains lis capitis and lis maiestatis as quasi-technical terms.

22 Pro Cluentio 104, 114.

23 The extortion law dealt with the senatorial Judex who took a bribe ob rem iudicandam, the law of circumvention with the senator who arranged the corruption of a whole court, cf. 100: ‘Staienum ab Oppianico pecuniam accepisse ut iudicium corrumperet’; 102: ‘si … Oppianicum iudici ademendas sententias dedisse pecuniam iudicatum est.’ See also 92 and 136. Before Sulla the distinction of function would be clear, since the only senatorial judges were tne iudices privati. The object of the original Gracchan bill may well have been to check corruption at the root by striking, as in the later laws de ambitu, not at the recipients but at the principals.

24 Lex Acilia 56.

25 Below pp. 50, 53, f. The suggestion, art. cit. 77, that the charge ‘quo ea pecunia pervenerit’ (pro Rab. Post. 8) was normally capital, is made on the false assumption that, in pro Rab. Post. 12, this was cited in the Lex Iulia under the head ‘de pecunia capta ob rem iudicandam’. But Cicero, ibid. 12–19, is talking not about the Lex Iulia, but about past attempts to subject the Equites to the extortion law. The order of topics is: 12, ‘quo ea pecunia,’ 13, a proposal of Pompeius, 14–15, warning of Glaucia, etc., to the Equites, 16, Drusus' bill about bribery. The phrasing ‘lex Iulia iubet persequi’ does not suggest that the charge, or better claim, was capital even in the Julian law; cf. BSR XVII, 13.

26 Art. cit. 81–5 contains the main statement of position. Cf. 84: ‘New judges who … knew the law and could apply it to the indictment preferred. The poenae depend on the charges … and are authorized by the indicium.’ And 85: ‘A tribunal of the Plebs having, once. the case is admitted, undefined powers as a court of impeachment.’

27 Mommsen, in the Strafrecht, is more interested in systems than in origins, yet derives many particular aspects of public from private procedure (nn. 28–33, 35–7 below, and, for the extortion Quaestio, o.c. 721–5). In general he regards the new style of Quaestio Publica as introduced by the Lex Calpurnia, and derives it from a combination of the magisterial Quaestio with the older iudicium publicum (175, 186, 201–2), of which for him the action for extortion was only one example (192). He perhaps underestimates the specific influence of the extortion procedure. Strachan-Davidson, o.c. 1, 74, 11, 49 f., firmly derived the function of the Judices from their origin in civil procedure, and Greenidge, A. H. J., Legal Procedure of Cicero's Time (Oxford 1901), 415–16, 440, 459Google Scholar, briefly marked the parallelism of the whole procedure.

28 Lex Acilia 19–26. cf. Mommsen, o.c. 381–2. Cicero, pro Roscio 4–7, 11.

29 cf. Mommsen, c.c. 189. For a Ciceronian example, pro Rosc. Com. 15, 42.

30 Lex Acilia 9–11.

31 cf. Mommsen, o.c. 382–4, comparing the administrative delatio in aerarium. It may well have arisen in the course of magisterial Quaestiones, such as that de Bacchanalibus, in which the reus was not known beforehand.

32 Lex Acilia 6, 19, 56. cf. Mommsen, o.c. 388–9, but there is no reason to distinguish two alternative procedures of actio and delatio at this point in the law.

33 Lex Acilia, 1–8.

34 Below, p. 51.

35 cf. Strachan-Davidson, o.c. II, 75 f., for whom the whole procedure from delatio to litium aestimatio is in iure. Mommsen, o.c. 387–8, also finds a ‘civil’ origin for the interrogatio (Lex Acilia 35, Cic., de Domo 77).

36 cf. Greenidge, o.c. 266. The plaintiff's initiative is clear in Lex Acilia 20–5.

37 Greenidge, o.c. 270; Mommsen, o.c. 395.

38 cf. Greenidge, o.c. 272.

39 cf. Mommsen, o.c. 179, contrasting the damno of the iudicium populi with the condemno of the Recuperatores, which is a joint verdict. For these terms in civil procedure of the Ciceronian age see pro Rosc. Com. 25, 26, 36, pro Caec. 6, 7. Whatever the precise date and function of the Lex Aebutia, which some scholars attribute to c. 150–120 B.C., it would seem to be agreed that the essential formulary procedure was developed, particularly through the usages of the recuperatorial system, in the latter half of the second century. For a recent survey cf. A. Berger, P-W Suppl. VII s.v. ‘Lex Aebutia’. On the intermixture of legis actio and formula in the Ciceronian age see Greenidge, o.c. 161 ff.

40 cf. Mommsen, o.c. 448–9; Greenidge, o.c. 276.

41 Lex Acilia 60, 61, 69.

42 Strachan-Davidson, o.c. II, 43 ff. The idea is not fully worked out in Mommsen, o.c. 175 f., 446.

43 cf. also Mommsen, o.c. 213, 442–3.

44 In two passages dealing with the Aestimatio and its preliminaries—Lex Acilia 59, cited in the text, and 57, ‘praedes facito det de consili … sententia,’—the Consilium can only be the Judices. But in 60, dealing with execution after the end of the case, Mr. Last has suggested to me that the reference may rather be to the usual consilium of the praetor's advisers. In 75 (82) de praevaricatione the Judices act as the praetor' s Consilium, though the word is not used.

45 Strachan-Davidson, o.c. II, 128. Pro Clu. 74–5, is explicit, cf. Mommsen, o.c. 443—opportunities for undue influence were thus removed.

46 Contra, Greenidge, o.c. 496. Discussion is foreign to the Roman idea of consilium, the giving of sententiae to the consultant on request.

47 Lex Acilia 44, 49–52.

48 ibid. 46–8.

49 Mommsen, o.c. 208, n. 1, equates the term with praeesse iudicio, cf. ad Herenn. IV, 35, 47. In II in Verr. I, 155 it is used of the Praetor Urbanus in a recuperatorial iudicium publicum. It is correctly restored in Lex Acilia 46 from ibid. 70, pace H., art. cit. n. 78.

50 Lex Acilia 19, 60, 61, 62, 63.

51 As in Cic. Phil. I, 21–3Google Scholar, on which Strachan-Davidson, o.c. II, 48, presents arguments not met by H., art. cit. 86. On provocatio see below, p. 53.

52 Strachan-Davidson, o.c. 45. Mommsen never quite adjusts his view that the Judices derive from the older iudicium publicum (o.c. 175, 192 ff.) to his definition of the Consilium as only advisory, and domestic in origin (ibid. 149, 213, 442).

53 Mommsen, o.c. 147 ff.; Strachan-Davidson, o.c. 1, 225.

54 Cic. Brutus 85: ‘cognoscerent et statuerent consules.’ Livy XLII, 21, 5; ‘qui eam rem quaereret animadverteretque,’ ibid. 22, 3; ‘statueret ac iudicaret.’

55 Mommsen, o.c. 149 f.

56 Lex Acilia 44; ad Herennium IV, 36, 48; Cic. ad Fam, VII, 8, 3Google Scholar cover the period; cf. also Brutus 85–6, 11 in Verrem 1, 73, 75.

57 Mommsen, o.c. 183, thought testium denuntiatio characteristic only of the older iudicium publicum, but in the evidence it is always associated with the recuperatorial form of this. Cf. Wenger, P-W s.v. ‘Recuperatores’, col. 426, 428. Strachan-Davidson, o.c. 1, 212 ff. finds it in private suits in municipal law. For the oath cf. Mommsen, o.c. 395.

58 Henderson, art. cit. 83, n. 81.

59 Pro Murena 2: ‘cum omnis deorum … potestas … translata sit ad vos.’

60 ‘(Populus Romanus) omnem suam de nobis potestatem tradidit vobis.’

61 So Henderson, art. cit. 86, states: ‘Sulla clarified in writing what was true before: that for the poenae the laws, not the iudices, are responsible,’ but still maintains that the Judices in effect selected the right penalty by their condemnatio, because for her the ‘lex’, loc. cit., is not the law of a quaestio but that created by ‘judicia populi’.

62 Below, p. 53.

63 Below, p. 53.

64 ‘The private claim initiates the case and is then deferred to the Litium Aestimatio.’ ‘The reus is condemned not on claims proven.’ Art. cit. 75, n. 26, 77, 79, 81.

65 Lex Acilia 32–5; cf. the trials of Metellus Numidicus and Scaevola for detailed rationes in the main trial: pro Balbo 11; de Or. II, 281. For the Lex Cornelia, below, p. 53 f., and for the Lex Iulia, pro Rab. Post. 9.

66 Lex Acilia 58–9.

67 Mommsen, o.c. 725.

68 Lex Acilia 57.

69 Lex Acilia 62 anticipates that when the defendant has not given praedes the sale of goods may produce less than the total aestimatio. For absence of claimants, ibid. 64, and for measures anticipating difficulty of collection, ibid. 60–3.

70 Art. cit. n. 26 and 84, n. 85.

71 It occurs between two sections de testibus, and may concern the fining of absent Judices, not elsewhere provided for; cf. Pliny, , Epist. IV 29, 2Google Scholar, for survival of this, and Mommsen, o.c. 214, n. 1.

72 II in Verr. V, 23–4, ‘statuite quanti hoc putetis et quam multos redemisse … aestimate harum omnium rerum pretia … haec omnia sero redemit Apollonius …’ Art. cit. 79, n. 53.

73 An act might be construed as extortionate on alternative grounds, not all of which were ‘capital’, cf. below, p. 55, on pro Flacco 27–31.

74 Henderson, art. cit., n. 41 seems to object to this explanation, put forward in BSR XVII, art. cit. 11, because for her these were capital charges which arose only during the aestimatio.

75 Henderson, ibid. 85, regards the Mamilian trials as extortion cases.

76 Sallust, is clear, BJ 40, 1Google Scholar: ‘uti quaereretur in eos quorum consilio Iugurtha senati decreta neglexisset quique ab eo … pecunias accepissent … qui de pace aut bello cum hostibus pactiones fecissent.’

77 ibid. 32, 1; cf. 31, 25: ‘non peculatus … factus est neque … sociis ereptae pecuniae.’ The Quaestio de Auro Tolosano, classed by Cicero with the Jugurthine affair, de Nat. Dear, III, 74, may have been established for similar reasons.

78 Mommsen, o.c. 198, n. 1; Henderson, art. cit. 85.

79 The reference to the murder trial of the Caelii of Tarracina by a court of Judices some years before Sulla is decisive. Cic. pro Rosc. Amer. 64–5; Val. Max. VIII, 1, 13. The interruption of the Quaestio ‘longo intervallo’ (Cic. o.c. II) refers only to the civil wars. Cf. Strachan-Davidson, o.c. I, 162, n. 6; 11, 20.

80 Brutus 128.

81 cf. Strachan-Davidson, o.c. II, 40 f.; Cic. 11 in Verrem II, 77Google Scholar.

82 Henderson, art. cit. 81.

83 ibid. 72, with n. 6, 82, with n. 73 and n. 101. The argument is primarily against Strachan-Davidson, o.c. 11 41, 48. The present reply is an attempt to confirm his position with additional arguments.

84 So Strachan-Davidson, o.c. II, 41–43. Henderson, art. cit., n. 6, in effect admits the point.

85 cf. Greenidge's remarks in Roman Public Life 126. Lex Acilia 12, and Lex Agraria (Bruns FIR7 II) passim: ‘ex lege plebeive scito quod C. Sempronius … rogavit.’ Sallust's carelessness is notorious, cf. BJ 40, 1: ‘C. Mamilius … rogationem ad populum promulgat,’ but may not reflect his source.

86 Greenidge, Legal Procedure of Cicero's Time, 519 f. Roman Public Life (London, 1901), 239 ff., 248Google Scholar. Strachan-Davidson, o.c. 11, 19 f., 41 ff. The recall of Popilius Laenas and Metellus Numidicus by tribunician bills is of the age; Cicero, pro Plancio 69; post Red. in Sen. 38; Brutus 128.

87 For the bias cf. Sallust BJ 40, 65, 5; Cic. pro Rab. Post. 14.

88 Lex Acilia 48, 69–70 (contrasting 45–6, multa suprema), though possibly the exaction of the fine was left to a iudicium publicum (for the procedure cf. II in Verr. 1, 155). On multae cf. Greenidge, Legal Procedure of Cicero's Time, 335, Strachan-Davidson, o.c. I, 173. Mommsen, o.c. 181 f.

89 De Leg. Ag. II, 33.

90 cf. Strachan-Davidson, o.c. 139, n. 1. Plut. C. Gracchus 4, and Cicero, pro Rab. perduell. reo 12 are the only direct evidence, with implications of pro Sestio 61 and in Cat. IV, 10.

91 In pro Sestio 61 senators pronouncing a capital sentence sine iudicio are liable under the Lex Sempronia—yet as Jurors are free of it.

92 Wenger, L., Institutes of the Roman Law of Civil Procedure (New York 1940), 210Google Scholar, with n. 13; cf. Strachan-Davidson, o.c. 1, 40 f.

93 Pro Cluentio 148. Cf. E. Levy, ‘Die römische Kapitalstrafe,’ Sitz. d. Heidelb. Akad. Wiss., phil. hist. Kl., 1930–1, 14 ff., 26 ff.

94 Cic. o.c. 151, 153; pro Rab. Post. 16.

95 Henderson, art. cit. 76; I in Verrem 56.

96 II in Verr. I, 27.

97 For obiectio libidinum see pro Fonteio 37–40; Div. in Caec. 37–9: for corona, II in Verr. V, 163, pro Cluentio 90–3, pro Flacco 66: irrelevant charges, pro Cluentio 97–9, 114. All under the Cornelian law. Cf. Greenidge, o.c. 472.

98 Pro Flacco 23, cf. 27–33, 34, 39, 44, 52–5, 66–9, 90. Of two borderline querelae the first (45), about ‘homines clarissimos … hoc praetore circumventos’, is picked out by Cicero from a document about another charge, and was not itself a formal charge. The second (84–9), that Flaccus claimed the inheritance of Valeria, is rated as pecunia capta.

99 Pro Fonteio 2, 3–4, 12, 17, 19, 20, and below, p. 55.

100 In Verrem 11, 80.

101 III, 40, cited in text. 71: ‘quid est aliud capere et conciliare pecunias in quo te lex tenet.’ 194: ‘utrum tibi pecuniae coactae conciliatae videntur adversus leges.’ 218: ‘cum iudices sitis de pecunia capta.’ Also Verres' admission, 225: ‘coegi pecunias maximas cellae nomine.’

102 III, 83. The principle of certa lex is familiar in the rhetorical writers, cf. ad Herennium I, 12, 22; 11, 12, 18; Cic., Rhet. I, 10, 16Google Scholar.

103 Cicero finds the offence of Maiestas not in the maltreatment of subjects but in the removal of Roman trophies: ‘est maiestatis quod imperi nostri … monumenta evertere … ausus est.’

104 V, 1–5, 25, 29–32.

105 ibid. 43; cf. 4, 10–11, 22–4, 45, 60, 64.

106 ibid. 79: ‘est certus locus certa lex certum tribunal quo hoc reservetur.’ Even the disgraceful defeat is reduced to the level of extortion, 131: ‘naves inanis fuisse dico.’ 133: ‘te pretio remiges militesque dimisisse arguo.’

107 ibid. 116, 118–19, 134.

108 ibid. 127.

109 cf. ibid. 139: ‘reliqua est ea causa quae … non recepta sed innata neque delata ad me … est.’ 153: ‘meum … crimen avaritiae te nimiae coarguit, tua defensio … crudelitatis.’ 170, scelus but not contra leges.

110 ibid. 145, 154.

111 ibid. 111, 219.

112 For the distinction see ad Herennium 1, 16, 26–17, 27, well illustrated by Cicero, Rhet. 11, 87 ff.

113 ibid. 111, 194, cf. 225: ‘reperietis quinquiens tanto … amplius istum quam quantum … licitum sit civitatibus imperasse.’

114 ibid. 217. For the phrase ibid. 194, 223, 224.

115 Pro Flacco 33: ‘crimen … videri solet cum aliquis (novos) sumptus … instiruit.’ Cf. pro Fonteio 20: ‘pecuniam permagnam ratione ista (sc. novo vectigali) potuisse cogi confiteor.’