Provisions
The Bobbio Scholiast describes the first provision: "The Caecilian and Didian law decreed that the period of trinundium be observed for promulgating laws." The Lex Caecilia Didia, then, determined how much time had to be allowed between the publication of a law and its vote in the assembly. The period of time designated by trinundium has been taken to mean either three Roman eight-day weeks (that is, 24 days) or tertiae nundinae, on the third market-day (17 days).
The second provision of the Lex Caecilia Didia forbade leges saturae, "stuffed" laws, which were statutes dealing with heterogeneous subject matters. This meant that in a single Roman bill, there could not be a collection of unrelated measures — what might in modern terms be called omnibus bills. Cicero gave an interpretation of the law in his Oratio de domo sua ("Speech concerning His House") after his return from exile: "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."
Read more about this topic: Lex Caecilia Didia
Famous quotes containing the word provisions:
“Drinking tents were full, glasses began to clink in carriages, hampers to be unpacked, tempting provisions to be set forth, knives and forks to rattle, champagne corks to fly, eyes to brighten that were not dull before, and pickpockets to count their gains during the last heat. The attention so recently strained on one object of interest, was now divided among a hundred; and, look where you would, there was a motley assemblage of feasting, talking, begging, gambling and mummery.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Drinking tents were full, glasses began to clink in carriages, hampers to be unpacked, tempting provisions to be set forth, knives and forks to rattle, champagne corks to fly, eyes to brighten that were not dull before, and pickpockets to count their gains during the last heat. The attention so recently strained on one object of interest, was now divided among a hundred; and, look where you would, there was a motley assemblage of feasting, talking, begging, gambling and mummery.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)