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Chap, xliv] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 533 restitution of three hundred thousand pounds sterling ; and such was the temper of the laws, the judges, and perhaps the accuser himself, 188 that, on refunding a thirteenth part of his plunder, Verres could retire to an easy and luxurious exile. 189 The first imperfect attempt to restore the proportion of crimes Revival of and punishments was made by the dictator Sylla, who, in the punish- midst of his sanguinary triumph, aspired to restrain the licence, rather than to oppress the liberty, of the Komans. He gloried in the arbitrary proscription of four thousand seven hundred citizens. 190 But in the character of a legislator he respected the prejudices of the times ; and, instead of pronouncing a sentence of death against the robber or assassin, the general who betrayed an army, or the magistrate who ruined a province, Sylla was content to aggravate the pecuniary damages by the penalty of exile, or, in more constitutional language, by the interdiction of fire and water. The Cornelian, and afterwards the Pompeian and Julian laws introduced a new system of criminal jurispru- dence ; 191 and the emperors, from Augustus to Justinian, dis- guised their increasing rigour under the names of the original authors. But the invention and frequent use of extraordinary fains proceeded from the desire to extend and conceal the pro- gress of despotism. In the condemnation of illustrious Komans the senate was always prepared to confound, at the will of their masters, the judicial and legislative powers. It was the duty of the governors to maintain the peace of their province by the arbitrary and rigid administration of justice ; the freedom of the city evaporated in the extent of empire, and the Spanish male- 188 He first rated at millies (800,0001.) the damages of Sicily (Divinatio in Cteci- liura, c. 5), which he afterwards reduced to quadringenties (320,0001.) — (1 Actio in Verrem, c. 18), and was finally content with tricies (24,0001.). Plutarch (in Cice- ron. torn. iii. p. 1584) has not dissembled the popular suspicion and report. 189 Verres lived near thirty years after his trial, till the second triumvirate, when he was proscribed by the taste of Mark Antony for the sake of his Corinthian plate (Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxiv. 3). 190 Such is the number assigned by Valerius Maximus (1. ix. c. 2, No. 1). Floras (iv. 21 [leg. iii. 21 (= ii. 9)]) distinguishes 2000 senators and knights. Appian (de Bell. Civil. 1. i. c. 95, torn. ii. p. 133, edit. Schweighaeuser) more accurately com- putes 40 victims of the senatorian rank, and 1600 of the equestrian census or order. 191 For the penal laws (leges Cornelise, Pompeise, Julias, of Sylla, Pompey, and the Caasars), see the sentences of Paulus (1. iv. tit. xviii.-xxx. p. 497-528, edit. Schulting), the Gregorian Code (Fragment, 1. xix. p. 705, 706, in Schulting), the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Eomanarum (tit. i. xv.), the Theodosian Code (1. ix.), the Code of Justinian (1. ix.), the Pandects (xlviii.), the Institutes (1. iv. tit. xviii.), and the Greek version of Theophilus (p. 917-926).