Legall Procedure of Cicero's Time (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ...which the state and the individual should protect their rights. The sphere-of the secular law administered by the king must not be measured by the meagreness of its nomenclature. The leading conceptions are perduellio and Perdueiiw parricidium, but these terms included many offences that cMiumTM were not properly either treason or murder. Perduellio-included any hostile attempt to injure the state by an attack against the whole body politic or against a magistrate or even against a simple citizen when the assailant adopted the attitude of a public enemy'. This was pre-eminently the sphere for the exercise of the criminal powers of the king regarded as the military head of the community. His jurisdiction in treason springs from the protection which he guarantees the state against internal enemies and from his position as maintainer of discipline over the members of his army. But, as the Roman people is an army even-inside the walls, discipline within the city is an elastic conception. How widely it might be extended is shown by the tradition that the murder of a sister by the soldier Horatius was treated as perduellio. Parricidium, whatever may be its true derivation or original meaning, came at an early period to imply the slaying of a free citizen who was uncondemned; but it is not improbable that other capital offences, which could not be interpreted either as acts of treason or as breaches of religious law, may have been called by this name as falling under the cognizance of the regal delegates known as quaestores parricidii2. 1 Ulpian in Dig. 48, 4, 11 ' perduellionis reus est hostili animo adversus rem publicam vel principem animatus, ' a late reflection of an early truth. 'Festus, p. 221. Parricide as the murder of a relative would probably...