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Updated: June 8, 2025
The proposal, if it was one for an enlarged senate, and not for a joint panel of judices, in which a changing body of equites would act as a check on the permanent senatorial jurors, must soon have been seen to be utterly unsuited to its purpose.
But perhaps more important, and certainly more significant, is the twelfth clause of the decree which relates to the way in which the Judices Provinciarum are to be appointed. "We order," says Justinian, "that only fit and proper persons able to administer the local government shall be chosen, and this by the bishops and chief persons of each province from the inhabitants of that province."
Expedition in judgment was probably secured by dividing the commissioners into three courts, each with his panel of judices and all acting concurrently. It was still more effectually secured by the mode in which evidence was heard, tested and accepted, and by the scandalous rapidity with which judgment was pronounced.
Instead of the strict probity and perfect independence which we associate with the highest ministers of the law, the Roman judices were often canvassed, bribed, or intimidated. So flagitious had the practice become, that Cicero mentions a whole bench having been induced by indulgences of the most abominable kind to acquit Clodius, though manifestly guilty.
"Caedebatur virgis, in medio foro Messanae, civis Romanus, Judices: cum interea nullus gemitus, nulla vox alia, istius miseri inter dolorem crepitumque plagarum audiebatur, nisi haec, Civis Romanus sum." He said Yea." The circumstance to be here noticed is, that a Jew was a Roman citizen. Joseph. Antiq. lib. xiv. c. 10, sect. 13.
To meet the exigency new laws are enacted, but the king especially states that the cases must remain in abeyance until the new laws are confirmed by the judices at the next assembly in March.
The Equites were originally elected from the patricians, and were cavalry soldiers, and did not form a distinct class till the time of the Gracchi. They were composed of rich citizens, whose wealth enabled them to become judices. They had the privilege of wearing a gold ring, and had seats reserved for them, like the Senate, at the theatre and circus.
The importance of this concurrence of the judices in all the king's decrees and official acts is illustrated by the fact that cases are rare in which this concurrence remains unmentioned.
But as my kinsman was still hors de combat, and incapable of further action, being unwitting, too, of the real cause of his disaster, Inchgrabbit and Strathtyrum, in their discretion as seconds, or belli judices, deemed it better that we should keep a still sough, and that Sir Hew should never be informed concerning the cause of his discomfiture.
Hitherto his addresses had been to the judges Judices; now it is to the people Quirites: "Although, Quirites, no sight has ever been so pleasant to me as that of seeing you gathered in crowds although this spot has always seemed to me the fittest in the world for action and the noblest for speech nevertheless, not my own will, indeed, but the duties of the profession which I have followed from my earliest years have hitherto hindered me from entering upon this the best path to glory which is open to any good man."
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