Work on a new family of stories has sent me on a hunt for information about Roman criminal courts in the first century of the Principate. More specifically, I’ve been investigating the relationship between the old standing jury courts (quaestiones perpetuae) and newer tribunals such as the court of the Prefect of the City (praefectus urbi).
The standing jury courts were established during the Republic to try specific crimes (e.g., treason, bribery). They could be quite large–in the later Republic, a jury court might have over 50 jurors, including senators, equestrians, and Tribunes of the Treasury.[note]Andrew Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 160.[/note] The jury courts survived the transition to the Principate, though from Augustus’ reign onward most jurors came from outside the senatorial order.[note]John Crook, Law and Life of Rome, 90 B.C. — A.D. 212 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 71.[/note] As time went on, the jury courts had to compete with other tribunals. The Senate itself heard cases of treason and extortion by provincial magistrates,[note]For a good overview of the Senate’s judicial work, see Richard J. A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 460-487.[/note] and the Prefect of the City adjudicated criminal cases from Rome. It’s not clear when the City Prefect first acquired judicial duties, though Richard A. Bauman argues it might have been the reign of Nero.[note]Richard A. Bauman, Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome (London & New York: Routledge, 1996), 77.[/note]
For a time, the jury courts co-existed alongside the court of the City Prefect. It seems there was a certain tension in this arrangement, as this passage from Tacitus shows:
Valerius Pontius suffered the same degradation [sc., exile] for having indicted the defendants before the praetor [i.e., bringing the case before a jury court] to save them from being prosecuted in the court of the City Prefect, purposing meanwhile to defeat justice on some legal pretext and subsequently by collusion.[note]Tacitus Annals 14.41.[/note]
It’s a shame Tacitus doesn’t offer a more detailed explanation for why Pontius was so keen to maneuver cases into the jury courts, but he may have hoped their chronic congestion would allow the defendants to evade justice.[note]Bauman, 77.[/note] Also, John Crook argues in passing that the jury courts were open to ‘gerrymandering,’ but he doesn’t provide any evidence in support of this contention.[note]Crook, 72.[/note] Presumably, he means that an unscrupulous litigant (or someone acting on their behalf) could have manipulated the selection of jurors to ensure a desirable verdict, but it would be interesting to see what evidence we actually have of this practice.
My new protagonist will likely come into contact with the Roman courts from time to time, so I need to nail down the relationship between the traditional jury courts and the court of the City Prefect. If you know of any books or articles that might help me in my quest, please let me know!
Codex Lochianus 