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Updated: June 8, 2025
The fact that this justice was administered by the nobility may have excited a certain degree of popular interest; but the question of the transference of the courts from the hands of the senatorial judices would probably never have been heard of, had not the largest item in this judicial competence had a decisively political bearing.
It is even possible that the law dates from a period anterior to the creation of the equestrian judices; but, even on this hypothesis, the exclusion of the latter from its operation was something of an anomaly; for even the civil judex of Rome, on whose analogy the jurors of the standing commissions had been created, was in early times criminally, and at a later period at least pecuniarily, liable for an unjust sentence.
Indeed, it is beyond question that, as the provinces were governed by the senatorial class, judices who had to decide cases like those of Cotta would be more fairly chosen from the equites than from the class to which Cotta belonged. He provided that the taxes should be let by auction at Rome, which would undoubtedly be a boon to the Roman capitalists and a check to provincial competition.
Plutarch says that they comprised abridgment of the soldier's term of service, an appeal to the people from the judices, and the equal partition between the Senate and equites of the privilege of serving as judices, which hitherto belonged only to the former.
The heads of the civitates were the king's judices, it is true, and assembled to assist him in judgments at his general placita in the March of each year; but they bear the character also of local lords of no mean importance, and in some cases possessed of no inconsiderable amount of power.
The judices voted by ballot, which had been the practice in Rome in such trials since the passing of the Lex Cassia B.C. 137. See the Life of Cicero, c. 29. There is a dispute as to the meaning of the term Judicia Populi, to which kind of Judicia the Lex Cassia applied.
He lost his life at the same time with Saturninus. This Servilius was a great favourite with the people. He was accused of malversation in his proconsulship of Asia, B.C. 99, convicted by the judices, who at that time were taken from the Equites, and retired to Smyrna, where he spent the rest of his days. He wrote his own Memoirs in Latin, and a history of Rome in Greek.
It is not to the Judices, or Patres Conscripti, or to the Quirites that he now addresses himself, determined by the strength of his eloquence to overcome the opposition of stubborn minds, but to Cæsar, whom he has to vanquish simply by praise.
Senators were forbidden by law to mix in commerce, though no doubt they evaded the law. Between the senatorial and moneyed class there was a natural ill-will, which Caius proceeded to use and increase. His exact procedure we do not know for certain. According to some authorities he made the judices eligible from the equites only, instead of from the Senate.
Accordingly Sabaco was cited before the judices; he explained the circumstance by saying that the heat had made him very thirsty, and he called for a cup of cold water, which his slave brought to him within the septa, and left it as soon as he had drunk the water.
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