The institution of the provocatio ad populum
The term provocatio ad populum denoted the right of a Roman citizen to appeal to the assembly of the people against sentences involving the loss of life or liberty, corporal punishment or the permanent loss of social and political rights imposed by magistrates.[488] [489] During the early archaic period the right of appealing to the comitia curiata must have been a prerogative of the patricians; it was probably granted to the plebeians after the establishment of the comitia centuriata in the late sixth century BC.
According to Roman tradition, the institution of the provocatio ad poculum received legislative recognition by the lex Valeria of 509 BC. This statute probably furnished the basis for the further recognition of the ius provocationis as a general right under subsequent legislative enactments, such as the Law of the Twelve Tables,[490] the lex Valeria Horatia of 449 BC and the lex Valeria of 300 BC. Appeals against capital sentences were submitted to the comitia centuriata, whilst appeals against pecuniary penalties to the comitia tributa. The lex Valeria Horatia is said to have been accompanied by a plebiscitum, the lex Duilia de provocatione (449 BC), which provided the death penalty for anyone seeking to abolish the tribunate or to create a magistracy whose decisions could not be subject to provocatio (magistratus sine provocatione).'[491]' Under the lex Valeria of 300 BC magistrates were prohibited from inflicting the death penalty or corporal punishment (flogging) on any citizen who raised an appeal before the people's assembly.[492] The same law, however, seems to have excluded provocatio from being raised against punishments imposed by military commanders on soldiers. The recognition of the ius provocationis as a general right by the Valerian legislation resulted in the elimination, for all practical purposes, of the distinction between cases tried before the comitia directly and cases tried before the comitia following an appeal, for provocatio was now considered implicit in any prosecution entailing capital punishment. The lex Valeria was supplemented by three successive enactments, the leges Porciae (first half of the second century BC). Although not much is known about these laws, it is believed that they extended provocatio to certain forms of corporal punishment {verberatio, castigatio) as well as to punishments imposed by military commanders on their soldiers. Moreover, under the same legislation, magistrates who violated the ius provocationis were made subject to punishment (probably capital punishment).
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