[2333] Lex Rep. 19-26; Mommsen, Röm. Strafr. 216 f. Ruggiero, ibid. 43, is obviously wrong.
[2334] Lex Rep. 76-8; cf. 83-5.
[2335] § 28 states that money within a specified limit might legally be received—perhaps by the patron of the accuser—from which we may infer that the law defined precisely what was permitted and what forbidden all persons participating in the trial; cf. Brassloff, in Wiener Studien, xxvi. 109 f.
[2336] Cic. Cluent. 56. 154: “Illi (senatus) non hoc recusabant, ne ea lege accusarentur, qua nunc Habitus accusatur, quae tum erat Sempronia, nunc est Cornelia” (“They did not object to being accused under that law under which Habitus is now being tried, which was then the Sempronian but is now the Cornelian statute”). The trial was before the quaestio veneficis under the Cornelian law which constituted this court and which is described as essentially identical with a Sempronian law. CIL. i. p. 200. xxxiii: (“C. Claud. Ap. F. C. N. Pulcher) ... Iudex. Q. Veneficis,” aedile 99, praetor 95, consul 92, corroborates the existence of such a court before Sulla. For other proofs, see Lengle, Sull. Verf. 36 ff.; cf. Lange, Röm. Alt. ii. 664.
[2337] P. 255, n. 1 (4), 358.
[2338] Cic. Cluent. 55. 151.
[2339] Ibid. 52. 144.
[2340] In 66 Cluentius Habitus was brought to trial before the quaestio inter sicarios et veneficos on the charge (1) of having corrupted the jurors in an earlier trial of the kind, (2) of poisoning; Cic. Cluent.; cf. Münzer, in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl. iv. 12.
[2341] The whole tenor of Cicero’s Pro Cluentio is to the effect that the knights were not bound by the provision against bribery. He had a strong motive, however, for bringing into prominence the article which provided for the punishment of magistrates and senators, and for suppressing the one, if there was one, concerning the punishment of equites; and this suppression was rendered easy by the fact that the Cornelian law then in force mentioned senatorial jurors only. Appian, B. C. i. 22. 97 (cf. 35. 158, 161), assumes that under the Sempronian law there were trials for the bribery of jurors, rendered useless, however, and finally done away with by the conspiracy and violence of the knights; cf. Lengle, Sull. Verf. 18 f. This interpretation of the known facts seems preferable to the view of Cicero, which, however, is accepted by most scholars; cf. Mommsen, Röm. Strafr. 635; Greenidge, Leg. Proced. 421; Hist. of Rome, i. 216 f.
[2342] CIL. i. 197; Ritschl. Prisc. lat. mon. epigr. tab. xix.