Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Crimes and Punishments

established. Third, a two-tiered set of penalties was set up. Ordinary citizens ( humiliores ) were largely subject to the new corporal penalties, including aggravated forms of execution such as crucifixion. Elites ( honestiores ) were typically subject to fines or to the various forms of exile or (in extreme cases) to simple execution. At the very top of the social scale, the Senate began to sit as a court to try its own members whenever they were accused of criminal offenses. In the early years of the Empire, two new statutory crimi nal offenses were added to the court system. One was adultery, defined as sex between a married woman and a man other than her husband. Both parties were equally guilty, but note that a married man could have sex with, say, a slave or prostitute without committing any legal offense at all. The penalty was a fine along with restrictions on remarriage, though much of the purpose of the law seems to have been to discourage injured parties from taking the law into their own hands. There was also a new crime of interfering with the public grain supply, punishable by a schedule of fines. More important than these early statutory changes was a series of shifts and expansions within the cognitio procedure. As part of the freedom created by the new procedure, new offenses were created and particular acts were brought under the scope of previous offenses. So, for instance, arson and cas tration came to be prosecuted under what was nominally still the homicide statute. In some cases, this created considerable overlap. For instance, possession of a weapon with criminal intent could be tried under both the vis and homicide statutes.

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