obtained something like legal recognition, that a senator should be tried by his peers.[1] But the character of the offence was the chief determinant of the Senate's jurisdiction. Any offence of a directly political character, even in the early Principate a breach of a treaty by a foreign prince,[2] tended to come before it. It was the usual court for extortion or other misuse of powers by provincial governors;[3] it judged offences against the majesty of the state;[4] and when the majesty of the Princeps had become identified with that of the state, it might be employed as a convenient engine of judicial tyranny.[5] Its utility was assisted by the unlimited and arbitrary character of its jurisdiction. It interpreted while it judged; it might extend the incidence of a law and frame new penalties; it might even punish in cases where no penalty was fixed by law;[6] and the principle, forbidden in the quaestiones, of uniting several crimes in the same charge, was here admitted.[7] This jurisdiction was technically,, and a senator, like Calpurnius Piso in 20 A.D., might be brought before the Emperor (Tac. Ann. iii. 10). But Septimius Severus permitted a senatus consultum to be passed that the Emperor should not be allowed to put a senator to death without the will of the Senate (Dio Cass. lxxiv. 2; Vita Severi 7). The principle had been stated earlier by Hadrian (Vita Hadriani 7 "juravit se nunquam senatorem nisi ex senatus sententia puniturum").]
- ↑ There was no legal principle of the kind. According to Dio Cassius (liii. 17) the monarchical power extended so far [Greek: hôste kai entos tou pômêriou kai tous hippeas kai tous bouleutas thanatoun dynasthai
- ↑ Augustus in 29 B.C. brought Antiochus of Commagene, Tiberius in A.D. 17 Archelaus of Cappadocia before the Senate (Dio Cass. lii. 43, lvii. 17; Tac. Ann. ii. 42). In A.D. 19 Rhescuporis of Thrace was accused there (Tac. Ann. ii. 67).
- ↑ Cases of extortion are to be found in Tac. Ann. iii. 66, xii. 59; Hist. iv. 45. In A.D. 23 we find the imperial procurator (patrimonii) of Asia brought before the Senate for exceeding his powers (Tac. Ann. iv. 15).
- ↑ Tac. Ann. iv. 13 (A.D. 23) "Carsidius Sacerdos, reus tamquam frumento hostem Tacfarinatem juvisset, absolvitur, ejusdemque criminis C. Gracchus."
- ↑ Amongst the prosecutions for treason against the Princeps which disfigure the reign of Tiberius we may mention those against Libo Drusus (Tac. Ann. ii. 27 ff.), against Cremutius Cordus (ib. iv. 34, 35), and against Sejanus (Dio Cass. lviii. 9, 10).
- ↑ In A.D. 37 we find that a mother, who had caused her son to commit suicide, "accusata in senatu . . . urbe . . . in decem annos prohibita est" (Tac. Ann. vi. 49). In A.D. 61 we find interdiction from Italy pronounced against a man for a kind of praevaricatio, "quod reos, ne apud praefectum urbis arguerentur, ad praetorem detulisset" (ib. xiv. 41).
- ↑ Quintil. Inst. Or. iii. 10, 1; vii. 2, 20. For instances see Tac. Ann. ii. 50, iv. 21; Plin. Ep. ii. 11, 3 ff. In the last passage we find the question of the legality of this procedure raised ("Respondit Fronto Catius deprecatusque est ne quid ultra repetundarum legem quaereretur. . . . Magna contentio, magni utrimque clamores, aliis cognitionem senatus lege conclusam, aliis liberam solutamque dicentibus").
