The history of Rome. Book IV

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 must still have been provincial land at least in the year after Lucullus' praetorship 679, since the propraetor had nothing to do on Italian soil. But it was only within the pomerium that every prolonged imperium ceased of itself; in Italy, on the other hand, such a prolonged imperium was even under Sulla's arrangement - though not regularly existing - at any rate allowable, and the office held by Lucullus was in any case an extraordinary one. But we are able moreover to show when and how Lucullus held such an office in this quarter. He was already before the Sullan reorganization in 672 active as commanding officer in this very district (p, 87), and was probably, just like Pompeius, furnished by Sulla with propraetorian powers; in this character he must have regulated the boundary in question in 672 or 673 (comp. Appian, i. 95). No inference therefore may be drawn from this inscription as to the legal position of North Italy, and least of all for the time after Sulla's dictatorship. On the other hand a remarkable hint is contained in the statement, that Sulla advanced the Roman pomerium (Seneca, de brev. vitae, 14; Dio, xliii. 50); which distinction was by Roman state-law only accorded to one who had advanced the bounds not of the empire, but of the city - that is, the bounds of Italy (i. 128).

28. As two quaestors were sent to Sicily, and one to each of the other provinces, and as moreover the two urban quaestors, the two attached to the consuls in conducting war, and the four quaestors of the fleet continued to subsist, nineteen magistrates were annually required for this office. The department of the twentieth quaestor cannot be ascertained.