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Searchology Directory 20
Page 02
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.
As if fames were the relics of seditions past; but they are no less, indeed, the preludes of seditions to come. Howsoever he noteth it right, that seditious tumults, and seditious fames, differ no more but as brother and sister, masculine and feminine; especially if it come to that, that the best actions of a state, and the most plausible, and which ought to give greatest contentment, are taken in ill sense, and traduced: for that shows the envy great, as Tacitus saith; conflata magna invidia, seu bene seu male gesta premunt. Neither doth it follow, that because these fames are a sign of troubles, that the suppressing of them with too much severity, should be a remedy of troubles. For the despising of them, many times checks them best; and the going about to stop them, doth but make a wonder long-lived. Also that kind of obedience, which Tacitus speaketh of, is to be held suspected: Erant in officio, sed tamen qui mallent mandata imperantium interpretari quam exequi; disputing, excusing, cavilling upon mandates and directions, is a kind of shaking off the yoke, and assay of disobedience; especially if in those disputings, they which are for the direction, speak fearfully and tenderly, and those that are against it, audaciously.
Nearly three hundred species of _Coleoptera_, or beetles, occupy similar positions. Almost any rotten log or stump when broken open discloses a half dozen or more "horn" or "bess beetles," _Passalus cornutus_ L., great, shining, clumsy, black fellows with a curved horn on the head. They are often utilized as horses by country children, the horn furnishing an inviting projection to which may be fastened, by a thread or cord, chips and pieces of bark to be dragged about by the strong and never lagging beast of burden. When tired of "playing horse" they can make of the insect an instrument of music; for, when held by the body, it emits a creaking, hissing noise, produced by rubbing the abdomen up and down against the inside of the hard, horny wing covers. This beetle passes its entire life in cavities in the rotten wood on which it feeds, and when it wishes a larger or more commodious home it has only to eat the more.
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