7. Other Developments in the Principate
The crimes prosecuted under the statutes of the late Republic and Augustus were extended and redefined by decisions of the emperor or senate.
For example, an unidentifiable decree of the senate embraced offences committed in the municipalities in the law against electoral bribery (ambitus); by then, according to Modestinus, the elections in Rome were totally controlled by the emperor.11 The ‘extortion’ or recovery law (de repetundis) was applied to the activities of those who were neither Roman magistrates nor senators. 117 New categories of violence were specified as actionable under the statute; in two rescripts of Hadrian the homicide law (de sicariis et veneficis) was interpreted to cover wounding with the intention to kill and killing through culpable negli- gence;118 Sulla’s law about forgery was refined in AD 16 by a decree of the senate in relation to wills and later by other measures, 119 as were the provisions against false and collusive accusation (calumnia and praevaricatio) through a senatorial decree of AD 61.120 A number of forms of insulting or outrageous behaviour, the majority of them probably already actionable under Sulla’s lex de iniuriis or other statutes, were singled out for investigation by cognitio and in some cases (e.g., the rape or seduction of boys or girls) for capital punishment. 121More interesting, however, is the extension of the criminal law into matters previously left to civil actions or not subject to legal action at all. By the early third century AD the cognitio procedure was being used to investigate not only offences that were actionable by prosecution before one of the criminal tribunals but also those outside that field. It is not clear whether there were any major steps in this direction or simply a piecemeal development through a series of imperial edicts or rescripts.122 Convicted hoarders of goods, including foodstuffs, who were termed dardanarii, could be ‘relegated’ or forced to do public works.123 We find the term stellionatus used to describe various refined types of fraud, including corrupt practice in the sale of goods and granting of security.124 The violation of graves became a crime. 125 Certain kinds of theft were distinguished for criminal action, including theft by night or with a weapon (capital offences under the Twelve Tables), cattle-rustling, looting, housebreaking, and theft from the baths.12
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