Lex Caecilia Didia

=Brief Summary=

Lex Caesila Didia was a law that was put into effect by the Consuls Q. Caecilius Metellus Nepos and Titus Didius in the year 98 BCE. [Broughton, T. Roberts S. "The Magistrates of the Roman Republic". Ed. Phillip H. Delacy. Vol II. New York: The American Philological Association, 1952. pp. 4.] This law had two provisions. The first was a minimum period between proposing and voting of Roman laws, and the second was a ban of miscellaneous provisions in a single Roman law.

The Provisions

The first provision as described in Scholia In Ciceronis Orationes Bobiensia, ‘Caecilia est autem et Didia, quae iubebant in promulgandis legibus trinundium tempus observari’. [Hildebrandt, P. "Scholia In Ciceronis Orationes Bobiensia". Stuttgart, Germany: B. G. Teubner, 1971. pp. 106.] This translated reads: both Caecilius and Didius demanded in a decree that in the proclamation of a law the period of trinundium be observed’. Lex Caesila Didia stated that there must be at least a period of trinundium between the announcement of a law and its voting process.Berger, Adolf. "Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law". "Transactions of the American Philosophical Society" Vol II, No. 43, 1953. pp. 548, 546.] Trinundium (or trinvndinvm) has two interpretations. The first is three Roman eight-day weeks or 24 days. The second is tertiae nundinae which means on the third market-day or 17 days. [Lintot, A. W. "Trinvndinvm". "The Classical Quarterly" Vol 15, No 2, Nov. 1965. pp. 281-285.]

The second provision of Lex Caesila Didia forbade 'leges saturae', which were statues dealing with heterogeneous subject matters. This meant that in a single Roman bill, there cannot be a collection of unrelated measures. From a translated version of Oratio de Domo Sua by Cicero: ‘What other force, what other meaning, I should like to know, has the Caecilian and Didian law, except this; that the people are not to be forced in consequence of many different things being joined in one complicated bill’. [Cicero, Marcus Tullius. "Oratio de Domo Sua". 53.]

Reasons For Introducing Lex Caesila Didia

Lex Caesila Didia was a direct response to the events of 100BCE and an attempt to reduce hasty legislation passed in the comitia. In 100 BCE Gaius Marius gained his sixth term as consul. Under Marius, the tribune Saturninus and the praetor Glaucia proposed and passed liberal land laws assigning African land to Marius’s Veterans. However, because of the radical nature of these bills, as well as the forcible methods Saturninus and Glaucia used in ensuring their passage, a large part of the Roman people and eventually even Marius felt alienated. As a result Saturninus’s laws were repealed, and Lex Caesila Didia was introduced. The goal was to curb the passage of radical bills with the assumption that the period of trinundium would have given Roman Citizens adequate time to understand the proposed law. [Abbot, Frank Frost. "A History and Description of Roman Political Institutions". Boston: Ginn, 1901. pp. 100.]

Bibliography

ee also

*Roman Law