DĔCEMVĬRI, or the “ten-men,” the name of various magistrates and
functionaries at Rome, of whom the most important were:--(1)
DECEMVIRI LEGIBUS SCRIBENDIS, ten commissioners, who were appointed
to draw up a code of laws. They were entrusted with supreme power
in the state, and all the other magistracies were suspended. They
entered upon their office at the beginning of the year B.C. 451; and
they discharged their duties with diligence, and dispensed justice
with impartiality. Each administered the government day by day in
succession as during an interregnum; and the fasces were only carried
before the one who presided for the day. They drew up a body of laws,
distributed into ten sections; which, after being approved of by
the senate and the comitia, were engraven on tables of metal, and
set up in the comitium. On the expiration of their year of office,
all parties were so well satisfied with the manner in which they
had discharged their duties, that it was resolved to continue the
same form of government for another year; more especially as some
of the decemvirs said that their work was not finished. Ten new
decemvirs were accordingly elected, of whom App. Claudius alone
belonged to the former body. These magistrates framed several new
laws, which were approved of by the centuries, and engraven on two
additional tables. They acted, however, in a most tyrannical manner.
Each was attended by twelve lictors, who carried not the rods only,
but the axes, the emblem of sovereignty. They made common cause
with the patrician party, and committed all kinds of outrages upon
the persons and property of the plebeians and their families. When
their year of office expired they refused to resign or to appoint
successors. At length, the unjust decision of App. Claudius, in the
case of Virginia, which led her father to kill her with his own
hands to save her from prostitution, occasioned an insurrection of
the people. The decemvirs were in consequence obliged to resign
their office, B.C. 449; after which the usual magistracies were
re-established. The ten tables of the former, and the two tables of
the latter decemvirs, form together the laws of the Twelve Tables,
which were the groundwork of the Roman laws. This, the first attempt
to make a code, remained also the only attempt for near one thousand
years, until the legislation of Justinian.--(2) DECEMVIRI LITIBUS or
STLITIBUS JUDICANDIS, were magistrates forming a court of justice,
which took cognizance of civil cases. The history as well as the
peculiar jurisdiction of this court during the time of the republic
is involved in inextricable obscurity. In the time of Cicero it
still existed, and the proceedings in it took place in the ancient
form of the sacramentum. Augustus transferred to these decemvirs
the presidency in the courts of the centumviri. During the empire,
this court had jurisdiction in capital matters, which is expressly
stated in regard to the decemvirs.--(3) DECEMVIRI SACRIS FACIUNDIS,
sometimes called simply DECEMVIRI SACRORUM, were the members of an
ecclesiastical collegium, and were elected for life. Their chief duty
was to take care of the Sibylline books, and to inspect them on all
important occasions by command of the senate. Under the kings the
care of the Sibylline books was committed to two men (_duumviri_) of
high rank. On the expulsion of the kings, the care of these books was
entrusted to the noblest of the patricians, who were exempted from
all military and civil duties. Their number was increased about the
year 367 B.C. to ten, of whom five were chosen from the patricians
and five from the plebeians. Subsequently their number was still
further increased to fifteen (_quindecemviri_), probably by Sulla. It
was also the duty of the decemviri to celebrate the games of Apollo,
and the secular games.
DĔCENNĀLĬA or DĔCENNĬA, a festival celebrated with games every ten
years by the Roman emperors. This festival owed its origin to the
fact that Augustus refused the supreme power when offered to him for
his life, and would only consent to accept it for ten years, and when
these expired, for another period of ten years, and so on to the end
of his life.
DĔCĬMĀTĬO, the selection, by lot, of every tenth man for punishment,
when any number of soldiers in the Roman army had been guilty of
any crime. The remainder usually had barley allowed to them instead
of wheat. This punishment appears not to have been inflicted in the
early times of the republic.
DĒCRĒTUM seems to mean that which is determined in a particular case
after examination or consideration. It is sometimes applied to a
determination of the consuls, and sometimes to a determination of
the senate. A _decretum_ of the senate would seem to differ from
a _senatus-consultum_, in the way above indicated: it was limited
to the special occasion and circumstances, and this would be true
whether the decretum was of a judicial or a legislative character.
But this distinction in the use of the two words, as applied to an
act of the senate, was, perhaps, not always observed.
DĔCŬMAE (sc. _partes_) formed a portion of the _vectigalia_ of the
Romans, and were paid by subjects whose territory, either by conquest
or _deditio_, had become the property of the state (_ager publicus_).
They consisted, as the name denotes, of a tithe or tenth of the
produce of the soil, levied upon the cultivators (_aratores_) or
occupiers (_possessores_) of the lands, which, from being subject to
this payment, were called _agri decumani_. The tax of a tenth was,
however, generally paid by corn lands: plantations and vineyards, as
requiring no seed and less labour, paid a fifth of the produce. A
similar system existed in Greece also. Peisistratus, for instance,
imposed a tax of a tenth on the lands of the Athenians, which the
Peisistratidae lowered to a twentieth. At the time of the Persian
war the confederate Greeks made a vow, by which all the states
who had surrendered themselves to the enemy were subjected to the
payment of tithes for the use of the god at Delphi. The tithes of
the public lands belonging to Athens were farmed out as at Rome to
contractors, called δεκατώναι: the term δεκατηλόγοι was applied to
the collectors; but the callings were, as we might suppose, often
united in the same person. The title δεκατευταί is applied to both.
A δεκάτη, or tenth of a different kind, was the arbitrary exaction
imposed by the Athenians (B.C. 410) on the cargoes of all ships
sailing into or out of the Pontus. They lost it by the battle of
Aegospotami (B.C. 405); but it was re-established by Thrasybulus
about B.C. 391. The tithe was let out to farm.