peaching any person before them; and he appears to have limited the
right of intercession to their giving protection to private persons
against the unjust decisions of magistrates, as, for instance, in the
enlisting of soldiers. To degrade the Tribunate still lower, Sulla
enacted that whoever had held this office forfeited thereby all right to
become a candidate for any of the higher curule offices, in order that
all persons of rank, talent, and wealth might be deterred from holding
an office which would be a fatal impediment to rising any higher in the
state. He also required persons to be Senators before they could become
Tribunes.

* * * * *

II. _Laws relating to the Ecclesiastical Corporations._--Sulla repealed
the Lex Domitia, which gave to the Comitia Tributa the right of electing
the members of the great ecclesiastical corporations, and restored to
the latter the right of co-optatio, or self-election. At the same time,
he increased the number of Pontiffs and Augurs to fifteen respectively.

* * * * *

III. _Laws relating to the Administration of Justice._--Sulla
established permanent courts for the trial of particular offenses, in
each of which a Praetor presided. A precedent for this had been given by
the Lex Calpurnia of the Tribune L. Calpurnius Piso, in B.C. 149, by
which it was enacted that a Praetor should preside at all trials for
Repetundae during his year of office. This was called a _Quaestio
Perpetua_, and nine such _Quaestiones Perpetuae_ were established by
Sulla, namely, De Repetundis, Majestatis, De Sicariis et Veneficis, De
Parricidio, Peculatus, Ambitus, De Nummis Adulterinis, De Falsis or
Testamentaria, and De Vi Publica. Jurisdiction in civil cases was left
to the Praetor Peregrinus and the Praetor Urbanus as before, and the other
six Praetors presided in the Quaestiones; but as the latter were more in
number than the Praetors, some of the Praetors took more than one Quaestio,
or a Judex Quaestionis was appointed. The Praetors, after their election,
had to draw lots for their several jurisdictions. Sulla enacted that the
Judices should be taken exclusively from the Senators, and not from the
Equites, the latter of whom had possessed this privilege, with a few
interruptions, from the law of C. Gracchus, in B.C. 123. This was a
great gain for the aristocracy, since the offenses for which they were
usually brought to trial, such as