Adultery Trials and the Survival of the Quaestiones in the Severan Age

Abstract

In the late Republic and early Empire special courts were established by statute, largely by Sulla and Augustus, to deal with the following crimes: treason, adultery, murder, parricide, embezzlement, forgery of wills, public and private violence, corrupt practices in elections, extortion, injury, and interference with the corn-supply. It is commonly thought that at least some of these quaestiones were still active in the Severan period. In a recent article Kunkel granted that the courts for treason, extortion, embezzlement and ambitus (which included bribery at elections) probably lasted for only a short time under the Principate. But he considered that the quaestio or iudicium publicum was nevertheless a living institution in the time of the classical lawyers, and, in particular, that the evidence was good for the continued operation of the quaestio de adulteriis. The case for the existence of the quaestio de adulteriis may well be stronger than the case for the existence of other quaestiones; but it is still weak. In the following pages the thesis will be put forward that all the quaestiones were defunct in the Severan age.