Note 698 — Chapter XLVI · CONSTITUTIONAL AND JUDICIAL CHANGES AT ATHENS UNDER PERIKLES.
Reading edition
The number of Roman judices employed to try a criminal cause under the quæstiones perpetuæ in the last century and a half of the Republic, seems to have varied between one hundred, seventy-five, seventy, fifty-six, fifty-one, thirty-two, etc. (Laboulaye, Essai sur les Loix Criminelles des Romains, p. 336, Paris, 1845.)
In the time of Augustus, there was a total of four thousand judices at Rome, distributed into four decuries (Pliny, H. N. xxxiii, 1, 31).
The venality, as well as the party corruption of these Roman judices, or jurors, taken from the senatorial and equestrian orders, the two highest and richest orders in the state,—was well-known and flagrant (Appian, Bell. Civ. i, 22, 35, 37; Laboulaye, ibid. pp. 217-227; Walter, Geschichte des Römischen Rechts, ch. xxviii, sect. 237, 238; Asconius in Ciceron. Verrin. pp. 141-145, ed. Orell.; and Cicero himself, in the remarkable letter to Atticus, Ep. ad Attic. i, 16).