JUDICIARY LAW
  
Florence Fragment I/B
     
( 133-87 BC )
 
 
( Johnson, Coleman-Norton & Bourne, Ancient Roman Statutes, Austin, 1961, p. 76, n. 80 ).
 
 
   This document, known as the Florentine fragment, but of unknown origin, contains on both sides of a bronze tablet fragments of judiciary laws. Apparently the second law was engraved after the first had become antiquated. Mommsen inferred that the style of the letter forms belongs to the Gracchan age (133-121 B.C.). The front is so called merely because its letters are somewhat larger and better formed than those on the back, but this is by no means a decisive criterion and one should not depend greatly on the evidence of letter forms, especially in a period whence we have few dated inscriptions. The document's lacunae are filled without indication in the translation. No record of where and when it was found remains.
  Very little can be determined about the nature of the Law on the "front" of the tablet, except that there are judicial proceedings involving the recovery of money from the defendant and apparently from anyone into whose hands the misappropriated money has come. Some reference is made to written testimony. While the reverse side is equally unsatisfactory, it is clear that the law there recorded concerns the constitution of a standing court (quaestio). Whether this law concerns the Aurelian Law is uncertain, but it would seem that the jury was drawn in equal numbers from different panels : senators, knights, treasury tribunes. See the Cyrenean edicts of Augustus for jury panels of Greeks and Romans.
 
 
ENGLISH TRANSLATION.
 
 
   . . . the praetor shall command that all jurors take the oath . . .
   He shall write the names, drawn by lot from each panel, on the balls and shall draw an equal number from each panel.
   The praetor shall provide that, when an equal number of balls has been placed in the urns, the individual lots shall be drawn individually in equal numbers from each urn.
   The name that is written on each ball shall be announced as it is drawn ; and the clerk shall enter on a tablet that is posted on the tribunal the person's name announced in accordance with this law.
   None shall erase or shall change any name on this tablet, unless the name is challenged by a plaintiff or a defendant, as is prescribed by this law.
   Likewise the praetor shall provide that all jurors shall be chosen by lot and shall order . . .
   . . . that the panel of jurors, who cast their vote when the full panel is completed, shall conform to the list on the tablet, which has been prepared and posted on the tribunal.
   The clerk shall give to each juror ballots, on which there are written two letters or none or . . . on which ballots the letters . . . of the juror . . . by this law all the ballots . . .