United States or Kenya ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The tribunes, whether those who aimed at re-election or those who attempted to prevent it, had either declared a justitium or threatened to veto every attempt made by a magistrate of the people to hold an electoral assembly; and the consequence of this impasse was that, when the year drew to a close, no new magistrates were in existence and the consul Albinus was still absent from his African command.
After this they returned to Rome; the order for the justitium was discharged. The sky seemed to be all on fire; and other prodigies either actually presented themselves to their sight, or exhibited imaginary appearances to their affrighted minds.
The news of this disaster excited at Rome an alarm greater than suited the importance of the affair; for, as if the army had been destroyed, a justitium was proclaimed, guards mounted at the gates, and watches set in every street: and armour and weapons were heaped on the walls. All the younger citizens being compelled to enlist, the dictator was ordered to join the army.
Fourthly, because Sulpicius had resisted the proclamation of a justitium that device by which the Senate had virtually, though not legally, retained in its own hands the power of discussing any measure before it was submitted to the people therefore for the future no measure was to be submitted to the people till it had been previously discussed by the Senate.
Sulpicius accordingly proposed a law to this effect, which was followed by a great disturbance, upon which the consuls Pompeius and Sulla proclaimed a Justitium such as was usual on festivals. A Justitium signifies a stopping of all legal proceedings: during a Justitium nothing could be done; and the consuls adopted this measure to prevent the proposed law of Sulpicius from being carried.
But Sulla in his Memoirs says that he did not fly for refuge to Marius, but withdrew there to consult with him about the matters which Sulpicius was attempting to make him assent to against his will by surrounding him with bare swords and driving him on towards the house of Marius, and that finally he went from the house of Marius to the Rostra, and removed, as they required him to do, the Justitium.
When all business was purposely deferred, so that nothing should be transacted through means of the plebeian consul, silence was observed on all matters, and a state of inaction like to a justitium; except that, the tribunes not suffering it to pass unnoticed that the nobility had arrogated to themselves three patrician magistracies as a compensation for one plebeian consul, sitting in curule chairs, clad in the prætexta like consuls; the prætor, too, administering justice, and as if colleague to the consuls, and elected under the same auspices, the senate were in consequence made ashamed to order the curule ædiles to be elected from among the patricians.
The Latin justitia or justitium according to some scholars is compounded of jus, right, and sisto or steti, to place, or to cause to stand, and hence the whole word may be held to signify the maintenance of jus or right. With the question of jus or right correctly answered, the problem of justice is practically solved.
Few of the enemy escaped from the ambuscade; all the booty was recovered; thus the return of the consul Quintius to the city put a termination to the justitium, which lasted only four days. A census was then held, and the lustrum was closed by Quintius: the number of citizens rated are said to have been one hundred and twenty-four thousand two hundred and fourteen, besides orphans of both sexes.
The difference between the conditions of life in primitive Rome and in the cosmopolitan capital of to-day did not appeal to Tiberius. The Justitium was as legitimate a method of political warfare as the Intercessio.
Word Of The Day