Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Criminal charges in Cicero’s time were tried almost exclusively by courts which consisted of a bench of jurymen presided over by a magistrate. This jury system, in which the criminal justice of the Roman Republic culminates, was gradually built up, borrowing certain elements from each of the forms of procedure which had gone before it. This proposition will be illustrated in detail in the following pages, and I hope to be able at the end of the next chapter to place it in a sufficiently clear light.