upon to allow each class of judges a twelve-month's vacation in turn; and
the courts to be shut during the months of November and December. [169]

XXXIII. He was himself assiduous in his functions as a judge, and would
sometimes prolong his sittings even into the night [170]: if he were
indisposed, his litter was placed before (98) the tribunal, or he
administered justice reclining on his couch at home; displaying always
not only the greatest attention, but extreme lenity. To save a culprit,
who evidently appeared guilty of parricide, from the extreme penalty of
being sewn up in a sack, because none were punished in that manner but
such as confessed the fact, he is said to have interrogated him thus:
"Surely you did not kill your father, did you?" And when, in a trial of
a cause about a forged will, all those who had signed it were liable to
the penalty of the Cornelian law, he ordered that his colleagues on the
tribunal should not only be furnished with the two tablets by which they
decided, "guilty or not guilty," but with a third likewise, ignoring the
offence of those who should appear to have given their signatures through
any deception or mistake. All appeals in causes between inhabitants of
Rome, he assigned every year to the praetor of the city; and where
provincials were concerned, to men of consular rank, to one of whom the
business of each province was referred.

XXXIV. Some laws he abrogated, and he made some new ones; such as the
sumptuary law, that relating to adultery and the violation of chastity,
the law against bribery in elections, and likewise that for the
encouragement of marriage. Having been more severe in his reform of this
law than the rest, he found the people utterly averse to submit to it,
unless the penalties were abolished or mitigated, besides allowing an
interval of three years after a wife's death, and increasing the premiums
on marriage. The equestrian order clamoured loudly, at a spectacle in