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Searchology Directory 12
Page 01
On October 1st we had more trouble cutting our way through, as we again found great ferns and palms, especially near streamlets of water, and quantities of fallen trees, which made us continually deviate from our direction. The forest was indeed dirty and much entangled in that section, and thus made our march painful, liane catching my feet and head all the time, tearing my ears and nose--especially when the man who walked in front of me let them go suddenly and they swung right in my face. Thorns dug big grooves into my legs, arms and hands. To make matters worse, the high fever seemed to exhaust me terribly. Worse luck, a huge boil, as big as an egg, developed under my left knee, while another of equal size appeared on my right ankle, already much swollen and aching. The huge shoes given me by the trader--of the cheapest manufacture--had already fallen to pieces. I had turned the soles of them into sandals, held up by numerous bits of string, which cut my toes and ankles very badly every time I knocked my feet against a tree or stone. My feet were full of thorns, so numerous that I had not the energy to remove them. The left leg was absolutely stiff with the big boil, and I could not bend it.
The men of the Caves supported life by hunting. But a very small part of their food supplies could have been drawn from the vegetable kingdom. When the climate was so severe that Alpine mosses grew at Schussenreid, acorns and like nuts would be about all they could procure from that source. The animals hunted by the Cave-men were principally reindeer, horses, bisons, and, occasionally mammoths and woolly rhinoceros. But they were not very choice in this matter, as they readily accepted as food any animal they could obtain by force or cunning. Wolves and foxes were not rejected, and in one cave large numbers of the bones of the common water rat were obtained. We know what animals were used as food, because we find their bones split for the purpose of procuring the marrow they contained. This was evidently to them a nutritious article of diet, since they were careful to open all the bones containing it, and bones so split are frequently the only means of detecting the former presence of man in some bone caves.
The law by which the Judices were to be taken only from the Equites, and not from the Senators, as had been the custom hitherto. This was a very important enactment, and needs a little explanation. All offenses against the state were originally tried in the Popular Assembly; but when special enactments were passed for the trial of particular offenses, the practice was introduced of forming a body of Judices for the trial of these offenses. This was first done upon the passing of the Calpurnian Law (B.C., 149) for the punishment of provincial magistrates for extortion in their government (_De Repetendis_). Such offenses had to be tried before the Praetor and a jury of Senators; but as these very Senators either had been or hoped to be provincial magistrates, they were not disposed to visit with severity offenses of which they themselves either had been or were likely to be guilty. By depriving the Senators of this judicial power, and by transferring it to the Equites, Gracchus also made the latter a political order in the state apart from their military character. The name of Equites was now applied to all persons who were qualified by their fortune to act as Judices, whether they served in the army or not. From this time is dated the creation of an _Ordo Equestris_, whose interests were frequently opposed to those of the Senate, and who therefore served as a check upon the latter.
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