mans. People naturally fell into the habit of designating all
the offences enumerated in one law by the first name on the list,
which doubtless gave its style to the Law Court deputed to try them
all. All the offences tried by the Quaestio De Adulteriis would thus be
called Adultery.

I have dwelt on the history and characteristics of the Roman
Quaestiones because the formation of a criminal jurisprudence is
nowhere else so instructively exemplified. The last Quaestiones were
added by the Emperor Augustus, and from that time the Romans may be
said to have had a tolerably complete criminal law. Concurrently with
its growth, the analogous process had gone on, which I have called the
conversion of Wrongs into Crimes, for, though the Roman legislature
did not extinguish the civil remedy for the more heinous offences, it
offered the sufferer a redress which he was sure to prefer. Still,
even after Augustus had completed his legislation, several offences
continued to be regarded as Wrongs, which modern societies look upon
exclusively as Crimes; nor did they become criminally punishable till
some late but uncertain date, at which the law began to take notice of
a new description of offences called in the Digest _crimina
extraordinaria_. These were doubtless a class of acts which the theory
of Roman jurisprudence treated merely as wrongs; but the growing sense
of the majesty of society revolted from their entailing nothing worse
on their perpetrator than the payment of money damages, and
accordingly the injured person seems to have been permitted, if he
pleased, to pursue them as crimes _extra ordinem_, that is by a mode
of redress departing in some respect or other from the ordinary
procedure. From the period at which these _crimina extraordinaria_
were first recognised, the list of crimes in the Roman State must have
been as long as in any community of the modern world.

It is unnecessary to describe with any minuteness the mode of
administering criminal justice under the Roman Empire, but it is to be
noted that both its theory and practice have had powerful effect on
modern society. The Emperors did not immediately abolish the
Quaestiones, and at first they committed an extensive criminal
jurisdiction to the Senate, in which, however servile it might show
itself in fact, the Emperor was no more nominally than a Senator like
the rest. But some sort of collateral criminal jurisdiction had been
claimed by the Prince from the