Of this sort were the special tribunals constituted for individual cases;( 34) the standing commissional tribunals, such as had been appointed for exactions,( 35) for poisoning and murder,( 36) perhaps also for bribery at elections and other crimes, in the course of the seventh century; and lastly, the two courts of the "Ten-men" for processes affecting freedom, and the "Hundred and five," or more briefly, the "Hundred-men," for processes affecting inheritance, also called, from the shaft of a spear employed in all disputes as to property, the "spear-court" (-hasta-).

The court of Ten-men (-decemviri litibus iudicandis-) was a very ancient institution for the protection of the plebeians against their masters.( 37) The period and circumstances in which the spear-court originated are involved in obscurity; but they must, it may be presumed, have been nearly the same as in the case of the essentially similar criminal commissions mentioned above.

As to the presidency of these different tribunals there were different regulations in the respective ordinances appointing them: thus there presided over the tribunal as to exactions a praetor, over the court for murder a president specially nominated from those who had been aediles, over the spear-court several directors taken from the former quaestors.

The jurymen at least for the ordinary as for the extraordinary procedure were, in accordance with the Gracchan arrangement, taken from the non-senatorial men of equestrian census; the selection belonged in general to the magistrates who had the conducting of the courts, yet on such a footing that they, in entering upon their office, had to set forth once for all the list of jurymen, and then the jury for an individual case was formed from these, not by free choice of the magistrate, but by drawing lots, and by rejection on behalf of the parties.

From the choice of the people there came only the "Ten-men" for procedure affecting freedom.
Sullan -Quaestiones- Sulla's leading reforms were of a threefold character.