The History of Rome, Theodor Mommsen [good english books to read txt] 📗

(i. 409) was open to it and practically amounted to conferring the franchise on all Italians.

3. "-Ad flatus sidere-," as Livy (according to Obsequens, 56) expresses it, means "seized by the pestilence" (Petron. Sat. 2; Plin. H. N. ii. 41, 108; Liv. viii. 9, 12), not "struck by lightning," as later writers have misunderstood it.

4. IV. VII. Combats with the Marsians

5. IV. VII. Sulpicius Rufus

6. IV. VII. Bestowal of Latin Rights on the Italian Celts

7. IV. V. In Illyria

8. IV. VI. Discussions on the Livian Laws

9. IV. VII. Energetic Decrees

10. Lucius Valerius Flaccus, whom the Fasti name as consul in 668, was not the consul of 654, but a younger man of the same name, perhaps son of the preceding. For, first, the law which prohibited re-election to the consulship remained legally in full force from c. 603 (IV. II. Attempts at Reform) to 673, and it is not probable that what was done in the case of Scipio Aemilianus and Marius was done also for Flaccus. Secondly, there is no mention anywhere, when either Flaccus is named, of a double consulship, not even where it was necessary as in Cic. pro Flacc. 32, 77. Thirdly, the Lucius Valerius Flaccus who was active in Rome in 669 as -princeps senatus- and consequently of consular rank (Liv. 83), cannot have been the consul of 668, for the latter had already at that time departed for Asia and was probably already dead. The consul of 654, censor in 657, is the person whom Cicero (ad Att. viii. 3, 6) mentions among the consulars present in Rome in 667; he was in 669 beyond doubt the oldest of the old censors living and thus fitted to be -princeps senatus-; he was also the -interrex- and the -magister equitum- of 672. On the other hand, the consul of 668, who Perished at Nicomedia (p. 47), was the father of the Lucius Flaccus defended by Cicero (pro Flacc. 25, 61, comp. 23, 55. 32, 77).

11. IV. VI. The Equestrian Party

12. IV. VII. Sulla Embarks for Asia

13. We can only suppose this to be the Brutus referred to, since Marcus Brutus the father of the so-called Liberator was tribune of the people in 671, and therefore could not command in the field.

14. IV. IV. Prosecutions of the Democrats

15. It is stated, that Sulla occupied the defile by which alone Praeneste was accessible (App. i. 90); and the further events showed that the road to Rome was open to him as well as to the relieving army. Beyond doubt Sulla posted himself on the cross road which turns off from the Via Latina, along which the Samnites advanced, at Valmontone towards Palestrina; in this case Sulla communicated with the capital by the Praenestine, and the enemy by the Latin or Labican, road.

16. Hardly any other name can well be concealed under the corrupt reading in Liv. 89 -miam in Samnio-; comp. Strabo, v. 3, 10.

17. IV. IX. Pompeius

18. IV. VIII. New Difficulties

Chapter X

1. III. XI. Abolition of the Dictatorship

2. -Satius est uti regibus quam uti malis legibus- (Ad Herenn. ii. 36).

3. II. I. The Dictator, II. II. The Valerio-Horatian Laws, II. III. Limitation of the Dictatorship

4. IV. VII. Legislation of Sulla

5. This total number is given by Valerius Maximus, ix. 2. 1. According to Appian (B. C. i. 95), there were proscribed by Sulla nearly 40 senators, which number subsequently received some additions, and about 1600 equites; according to Florus (ii. 9, whence Augustine de Civ. Dei, iii. 28), 2000 senators and equites. According to Plutarch (Sull. 31), 520 names were placed on the list in the first three days; according to Orosius (v. 21), 580 names during the first days. there is no material contradiction between these various reports, for it was not senators and equites alone that were put to death, and the list remained open for months. When Appian, at another passage (i. 103), mentions as put to death or banished by Sulla, 15 consulars, 90 senators, 2600 equites, he there confounds, as the connection shows, the victims of the civil war throughout with the victims of Sulla. The 15 consulars were— Quintus Catulus, consul in 652; Marcus Antonius, 655; Publius Crassus, 657; Quintus Scaevola, 659; Lucius Domitius, 660; Lucius Caesar, 664; Quintus Rufus, 666; Lucius Cinna, 667-670; Gnaeus Octavius, 667; Lucius Merula, 667; Lucius Flaccus, 668; Gnaeus Carbo, 669, 670, 672; Gaius Norbanus, 671; Lucius Scipio, 671; Gaius Marius, 672; of whom fourteen were killed, and one, Lucius Scipio, was banished. When, on the other hand, the Livian account in Eutropius (v. 9) and Orosius (v. 22) specifies as swept away (-consumpti-) in the Social and Civil wars, 24 consulars, 7 praetorians, 60 aedilicians, 200 senators, the calculation includes partly the men who fell in the Italian war, such as the consulars Aulus Albinus, consul in 655; Titus Didius, 656; Publius Lupus, 664; Lucius Cato, 665; partly perhaps Quintus Metellus Numidicus (IV. VI. Violent Proceedings in The Voting), Manius Aquillius, Gaius Marius the father, Gnaeus Strabo, whom we may certainly regard as also victims of that period, or other men whose fate is unknown to us. Of the fourteen consulars killed, three—Rufus, Cinna, and Flaccus— fell through military revolts, while eight Sullan and three Marian consulars fell as victims to the opposite party. On a comparison of the figures given above, 50 senators and 1000 equites were regarded as victims of Marius, 40 senators and 1600 equites as victims of Sulla; this furnishes a standard—at least not altogether arbitrary—for estimating the extent of the crimes on both sides.

6. The Sextus Alfenus, frequently mentioned in Cicero's oration on behalf of Publius Quinctius, was one of these.

7. II. VII. Latins. To this was added the peculiar aggravation that, while in other instances the right of the Latins, like that of the -peregrini-, implied membership in a definite Latin or foreign community, in this case—just as with the later freedmen of Latin and deditician rights (comp. IV. VII. The Bestowal of the Franchise and Its Limitations. n.)—it was without any such right of urban membership. The consequence was, that these Latins were destitute of the privileges attaching to an urban constitution, and, strictly speaking, could not even make a testament, since no one could execute a testament otherwise than according to the law of his town; they could doubtless, however, acquire under Roman testaments, and among the living could hold dealings with each other and with Romans or Latins in the forms of Roman law.

8. IV. IV. The Domain Question under the Restoration

9. That Sulla's assessment of the five years' arrears and of the war expenses levied on the communities of Asia (Appian, Mithr. 62 et al.) formed a standard for the future, is shown by the facts, that the distribution of Asia into forty districts is referred to Sulla (Cassiodor. Chron. 670) and that the Sullan apportionment was assumed as a basis in the case of subsequent imposts (Cic. pro Flacc. 14, 32), and by the further circumstance, that on occasion of building a fleet in 672 the sums applied for that purpose were deducted from the payment of tribute (-ex pecunia vectigali populo Romano-: Cic. Verr. l. i. 35, 89). Lastly, Cicero (ad Q. fr. i. i, ii, 33) directly says, that the Greeks "were not in a position of themselves to pay the tax imposed on them by Sulla without -publicani-."

10. III. XI. Separation of the Orders in the Theatre

11. IV. III. Insignia of the Equites. Tradition has not indeed informed us by whom that law was issued, which rendered it necessary that the earlier privilege should be renewed by the Roscian theatre-law of 687 (Becker-Friedlander, iv, 531); but under the circumstances the author of that law was undoubtedly Sulla.

12. IV. VI. Livius Drusus

13. IV. VII. Rejection of the Proposals for an Accomodation

14. III. XI. The Nobility in Possession of the Senate

15. How many quaestors had been hitherto chosen annually, is not known. In 487 the number stood at eight—two urban, two military, and four naval, quaestors (II. VII. Quaestors of the Fleet, II. VII. Intermediate Fuctionaries); to which there fell to be added the quaestors employed in the provinces (III. III. Provincial Praetors). For the naval quaestors at Ostia, Cales, and so forth were by no means discontinued, and the military quaestors could not be employed elsewhere, since in that case the consul, when he appeared as commander-in-chief, would have been without a quaestor. Now, as down to Sulla's time there were nine provinces, and moreover two quaestors were sent to Sicily, he may possibly have found as many as eighteen quaestors in existence. But as the number of the supreme magistrates of this period was considerably less than that of their functions (p. 120), and the difficulty thus arising was constantly remedied by extension of the term of office and other expedients, and as generally the tendency of the Roman government was to limit as much as possible the number of magistrates, there may have been more quaestorial functions than quaestors, and it may be even that at this period no quaestor at all was sent to small provinces such as Cilicia. Certainly however there were, already before Sulla's time, more than eight quaestors.

16. III. XI. The Censorship A Prop of the Nobility

17. We cannot strictly speak at all of a fixed number of senators. Though the censors before Sulla prepared on each occasion a list of 300 persons, there always fell to be added to this list those non- senators who filled a curule office between the time when the list was drawn up and the preparation of the next one; and after Sulla there were as many senators as there were surviving quaestorians But it may be probably assumed that Sulla meant to bring the senate up to 500 or 600 members; and this number results, if we assume that 20 new members, at an average age of 30, were admitted annually, and we estimate the average duration of the senatorial dignity at from 25 to 30 years. At a numerously attended sitting of the senate in Cicero's time 417 members were present.

18. II. III. The Senate. Its Composition

19. IV. VI. Political Projects of Marius

20. III. XI. Interference of the Community in War and Administration

21. IV. VII. Legislation of Sulla

22. II. III. Restrictions As to the Accumulation and the Reoccupation of Offices

23. IV. II. Attempts at Reform

24. To this the words of Lepidus in Sallust (Hist. i. 41, 11 Dietsch) refer: -populus Romanus excitus… iure agitandi-, to which Tacitus (Ann. iii. 27) alludes: -statim turbidis Lepidi rogationibus neque multo post tribunis reddita licentia quoquo vellent populum agitandi-. That the tribunes did not altogether lose the right of discussing matters with the people is shown by Cic. De Leg. iii. 4, 10 and more clearly by the -plebiscitum de Thermensibus-, which however in the opening formula also designates itself as issued -de senatus sententia-. That the consuls on the other hand could under the Sullan arrangements submit proposals to the people without a previous resolution of the senate, is shown not only by the silence of the authorities, but also by the course of the revolutions of 667 and 676, whose leaders for this very reason were not tribunes but consuls. Accordingly we find at this period consular laws upon secondary questions of administration, such as the corn law of 681, for which at other times we should have certainly found -plebiscita-.

25. II. III. Influence of the Elections

26. IV. II. Vote by Ballot

27. For this hypothesis there is no other proof, except that the Italian Celt-land was as decidedly not a province—in the sense in which the word signifies a definite district administered by a governor annually changed—in the earlier times, as it certainly was one in the time of Caesar (comp. Licin. p. 39; -data erat et Sullae provincia Gallia Cisalpina-).

The case is much the same with the advancement of the frontier; we know that formerly the Aesis, and in Caesar's time the Rubico, separated the Celtic land from Italy, but we do not know when the boundary was shifted. From the circumstance indeed, that Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus as propraetor undertook a regulation of the frontier in the district between the Aesis and Rubico (Orelli, Inscr. 570), it has been inferred that that