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Cæcilius Metellus Pius.

[737] Plutarch, _Cato_, 55.

[738] All that follows is taken almost entirely from Asconius, the most
ancient commentator on Cicero, and is derived, it is believed, from the
_Acta Diurna_. (See the _Argument of the Oration of Cicero for Milo_,
edit. Orelli, p. 31. )

[739] Nine years after the sacrilege committed on the day of the
festival of the Bona Dea, Clodius was slain by Milo before the gate of
the temple of the Bona Dea, near Bovillæ. (Cicero, _Orat. pro Milone_,
31. )

[740] _Romphæa_. (Asconius, _Argument of the Orat. of Cicero pro
Milone_, p. 32, edit. Orelli. )

[741] Cicero, _Orat. pro Milone_ 10. --Dio Cassius, XL. 48. --Appian,
_Civil Wars_, II. 21. --(Asconius, _Argument of the Oration of Cicero pro
Milone_, p. 31, _et seq. _)

[742] _Lectus libitinæ. _ (Asconius, p. 34. )--The sense of this word is
given by Acro, a scholiast on Horace (see _Scholia Horatiana_, edit.
Pauly, tom. I. , p. 360). It corresponds with our word _corbillard_, a
hearse. We know the custom of the Romans of carrying at interments the
images of the ancestors of the dead with the ensigns of their dignities.
The fasces must have been numerous in the Clodian family.

[743] Dio Cassius, XL. 50.

[744] Dio Cassius, XL. 49.

[745] Dio Cassius, XL. 49.

[746] Appian, _Civil Wars_, II. 22.

[747] Dio Cassius, XL. 50.

[748] “The Senate and Bibulus, who was first to state his opinion,
forestalled the thoughtless resolutions of the multitude by conferring
the consulship on Pompey, in order that he might not be proclaimed
dictator; and in conferring it upon him alone, in order that he might
not have Cæsar for his colleague. ” (Dio Cassius, XL. 2. )

[749] Plutarch, _Cato_, 47.

[750] Plutarch, _Pompey_, 57.

[751] Dio Cassius, XL. 50.

[752] Dio Cassius, XL. 52. --Cicero, _Brutus_, 94; _Epist. ad Atticum_,
XIII 49. --Tacitus, _Dialog. de Oratoribus_, 38.

[753] This was the historian. He had been the paramour of Milo’s wife.
Surprised by him in the very act, he had been cruelly beaten, and
compelled to pay, without pity.

[754] Velleius Paterculus, II. 47.

[755] All this account is taken from the argument by Asconius Servius,
serving as an introduction to his Commentary on the _Oration for Milo_.
(See the edit. of Orelli, pp. 41, 42. --Dio Cassius, XL. 53. )

[756] Dio Cassius, XL. 54.

[757] Velleius Paterculus, II. 68.

[758] Plutarch, _Pompey_, 58.

[759] Dio Cassius, XL. 53.

[760] Appian, _Civil Wars_, II. 24.

[761] Dio Cassius, XL. 52.

[762] Plutarch, _Pompey_, 59.

[763] Dio Cassius, XL. 56; comp. 30.

[764] Tacitus, _Annales_, III. 28.

[765] “Shall I pronounce against Cæsar? But what then becomes of that
faith sworn, when, for this same privilege which he demands, I myself,
at his prayer at Ravenna, went to solicit Cœlius, the tribune of the
people? What do I say, at this prayer! _at the prayer of Pompey
himself_, then invested with his third consulship, of eternal memory. ”
(Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_, VII. 1.

[766] “It is he, Pompey, who has absolutely willed that the ten tribunes
should propose the decree which permitted Cæsar to ask for the
consulship without coming to Rome. ” (Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_, VIII.
3. --Dio Cassius, XL. 56. --Suetonius, _Cæsar_, 28. )

[767] Appian, _Civil Wars_, II. 25.

[768] Plutarch, _Pompey_, 55. --Valerius Maximus, IX. 5. --Appian, _Civil
Wars_, II. 23, 24.

[769] Dio Cassius, XL. 57.

[770] “ . . . He (Vercingetorix) reckoned on persuading all Gaul to take
arms while they were preparing at Rome a revolt against Cæsar. If the
chief of the Gauls had deferred his enterprise until Cæsar had the civil
war to contend with, he would have struck all Italy with no less terror
than was caused in former days by the Cimbri and the Teutones. ”
(Plutarch, _Cæsar_, 28. )

[771] “In all Gaul there are only two classes of men who count and are
considered (the Druids and the knights), for the people have hardly any
other rank than that of slaves. ” (_De Bello Gallico_, VI. 13. )

[772] Dio Cassius, XL. 50.

[773] _De Bello Gallico_, VI. 12.

[774] _De Bello Gallico_, VI. 15.

[775] _De Bello Gallico_, VI. 4.

[776] _De Bello Gallico_, VI. 12.

[777] _De Bello Gallico_, VI. 4.

[778] _De Bello Gallico_, VII. 76.

[779] _De Bello Gallico_, V. 27.

[780] _De Bello Gallico_, V. 25, 54.

[781] _De Bello Gallico_, IV. 21.

[782] _De Bello Gallico_, V. 4.

[783] _De Bello Gallico_, VII. 33.

[784] “In the beginning of spring he convoked, according to custom, the
assembly of Gaul. ” (_De Bello Gallico_, VI. 3. )

[785] Cicero appears to fear for his wife and daughter in thinking that
Cæsar’s army was filled with barbarians. (Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_,
VII. 13, A. U. C. 705. ) He wrote to Atticus that, according to Matius, the
Gauls offered Cæsar 10,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, which they would
entertain at their own expense for ten years. (Cicero, _Epist. ad
Atticum_, IX, xii. 2. )

[786] “All this,” Cœlius writes to Cicero, “is not said in public, but
in secret, in the little circle which you know well, _sed inter paucos
quos tu nosti palam secreto narrantur_. ” (Cœlius to Cicero, _Epist.
Familiar. _, VIII. 1. )

[787] Dio Cassius, XL. 59.

[788] Cicero, _Epist. Familiar. _, VIII. 10.

[789] Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_, V. 18.

[790] Cicero to Cœlius, _Epist. Familiar. _, II. 8.

[791] “I station myself for some days near Issus, on the very site of
the camp of Alexander, who was a rather better general than you and I. ”
(Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_, V. 20. )--“How ill this mission agrees with
my habits, and how just is the saying, Every one to his trade! ” (Cicero,
_Epist. ad Atticum_, V. x. 18. )

[792] Cicero had two legions, but very incomplete.

[793] Asconius, _In Pisonem_, 3. --Apian, _Civil Wars_, II. 26.

[794] Strabo, V. 177.

[795] Suetonius, _Cæsar_, 28.

[796] Appian, _Civil Wars_, II. 26.

[797] Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_, VI. 1.

[798] In speaking of Pompey’s party, Cicero exclaims: “Men who all, with
the exception of a very small number, breathed nothing but pillage, and
discourses such as made one tremble, the more as victory might convert
them into reality: not a person of rank who was not crippled with debts:
there was absolutely nothing beautiful except the cause which they
served. ” (Cicero, _Epist. Familiar. _, VII. 8. )--“They all agree, and
Crassipes with them, that yonder there are nothing but imprecations, but
threats of hatred to the rich, of war against the municipia (admire
their prudence! ), but proscriptions in mass; they are nothing but
Syllas; and you must see the tone of Lucceius, and all that train of
Greeks, and that Theophanes!
Yet this is the hope of the Republic! A
Scipio, a Faustus, a Libo, with their troops of creditors at their
heels, of what enormities are not such people capable? What excesses
against their fellow-citizens will such conquerors refuse? ” (Cicero,
_Epist. ad Atticum_, IX. 11. )

[799] Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_, VI. 1.

[800] “The Salaminians sought to borrow money at Rome to pay their
taxes, but, as the law Gabinia prohibited it, the friends of Brutus, who
offered to lend it them at four per cent. a month, demanded a
senatus-consultus for their safety, which Brutus obtained for them. ”
(Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_, V. 21. )

[801] Appian, _Civil Wars_, II. 25.

[802] Suetonius, _Cæsar_, 30.

[803] Cœlius to Cicero, _Epist. Familiar. _, VIII. 14.

[804] Dio Cassius, XLI. 6.

[805] In our opinion, Professor A. W. Zumpt (_Studia Romana_, Berlin,
1859) is the only one who has cleared up this question; and we shall
borrow of him the greatest part of his arguments. As to M. Th. Mommsen,
in a special dissertation, entitled _The Question of Right between Cæsar
and the Senate_, he proves that we must distinguish in the proconsulship
between the _provincia_ and the _imperium_. According to him, the
_provincia_ being given at the same time with the consulship, it could
be taken possession of, according to the law Sempronia, only on the
Calends of the month of January of the following year; the _imperium_,
or military command, was added to it two months later, on the Calends of
March. The _provincia_ was given by a senatus-consultus, and counted
from January to January; the _imperium_ was given by a curiate law, and
went from March to March: the _imperium_ followed the rules of the
military service; a year commenced was reputed finished, as for the
campaigns of the soldiers, and thus the two first months of 705 might
count for a complete year. The learned professor concludes that, if the
Senate had the right to deprive Cæsar of his _imperium_, it could not
take from him the command of the province before the end of the year
705, and that then Cæsar would find himself in the same position as all
the proconsuls who, during the interval between the 1st of January, the
commencement of their proconsulship, and the 1st of March, the time when
they received the _imperium_, had the _potestas_, and not the military
command. This system, we see, rests upon hypotheses which it is
difficult to admit.

[806] “Erat autem obscuritas quædam. ” (Cicero, _Pro Marcello_, 10. )

[807] The question became complicated through the difference of origin
of the powers given for each of the two Gauls. The Senate had the power
of taking away from Cæsar’s command Ulterior Gaul, which was given to
him by a senatus-consultus, but it could not deprive him of Citerior
Gaul, given by a plebiscitum, and yet it was the contrary opinion that
Cicero sustained in 698. In fact, he exclaimed then, in his _Oration on
the Consular Provinces_: “He separates the part of the province on which
there can be no opposition (because it has been given by a
senatus-consultus), and does not touch that which can be easily
attacked; and, at the same time that he dares not take away that which
has been given by the people, he is in haste to take away all, senator
as he is, that which has been given by the Senate. ” (Cicero, _Orat. de
Provinc. Consular. _, 15. --Velleius Paterculus, II. 44. --Suetonius,
_Cæsar_, 20. --Appian, _Civil Wars_, II. 13. --Dio Cassius, XXXVIII. 8. )

[808] The 1st of March was the commencement of the ancient Roman year,
the period at which the generals entered into campaign.

[809] P. Servilius, who was consul in 675, took possession of his
province a short time after he entered upon his duties as consul; he
returned in 679. Cicero (_Orat. III. in Verrem_, 90) says that he held
the command during five years. This number can only be explained by
admitting that the years 675 and 679 were reckoned as complete. L. Piso,
who was consul in 696, quitted Rome at the end of his consulship, and
returned thither in the summer of 699. Now, he was considered as having
exercised the command during three years. (Cicero, _In Pisonem_, 35,
40. ) They must, therefore, have counted as one year of the proconsulship
the few months of 695. (See Mommsen, _The Question of Right between
Cæsar and the Senate_, p. 28. )

[810] At all times the assemblies have been seen striving to shorten the
duration of the powers given by the people to a man whose sympathies
were not with them. Here is an example. The Constitution of 1848 decided
that the President of the French Republic should be named for four
years. The Prince Louis Napoleon was elected on the 10th of December,
1848, and proclaimed on the 20th of the same month. His powers ought to
have ended on the 20th of December, 1852. Now, the Constituent Assembly,
which foresaw the election of Prince Louis Napoleon, fixed the
termination of the presidency to the second Sunday of the Month of May,
1852, thus robbing him of seven months.

[811] _De Bello Gallico_, VIII. 39.

[812] Dio Cassius, XL. 59.

[813] Appian, _Civil Wars_, II. 4.

[814] “Quid ergo? exercitum retinentis, quum legis dies transierit,
rationem haberi placet? Mihi vero ne absentis quidem. ” (_Epist. ad
Atticum_, VII. 7. )

[815] Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_, VII. 9.

[816] “Absenti sibi, _quandocumque imperii tempus expleri cœpisset_. ”
(Suetonius, _Cæsar_, 26. --Cicero, _Epist. Famil. _, XIII. 11. )

[817] Cæsar, _De Bello Civili_, I. 5.

[818] “I have contended that regard should be had to Cæsar for his
absence. It was not to favour him; it is for the honour of a decision of
the people, promoted by the consul himself. ” (Cicero, _Epist.
Familiar. _, VI. 6. )

[819] Titus Livius, _Epitome_, CVIII.

[820] “Sed quum id datum est, illud una datum est. ” (_Epist. ad
Atticum_, VII. 7. )

[821] “Doluisse se, quod populi Romani beneficium sibi per contumeliam
ab inimicus extorqueretur, erepto semestri imperio in urbem
retraheretur. ” (Cæsar, _De Bello Civili_, I. 9. )

[822] See, on the period of the comitia, Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_,
III. 13; _Epist. Familiar. _, VIII. 4.

[823] Although all the facts prove that the term of the power was to
cease in 707, Plutarch (_Pompey_, 55) reckons four years of
prolongation, and Dio Cassius (XL. 44, 46) five, which shows the
difference in the estimation of dates. (Zumpt, _Studia Romana_, 85. )

[824] “I believe certainly in Pompey’s intention of starting for Spain,
and it is what I by no means approve. I have easily demonstrated to
Theophanes that the best policy was not to go away. I am more uneasy for
the Republic since I see by your letters that our friend Pompey is going
to Spain. ” (Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_, V. 11. )

[825] Cicero, _Epist. Familiar. _, VIII. 4.

[826] “But at last, after several successive adjournments, and the
certainty well acquired that Pompey consented to consider the recall of
Cæsar on the Calends of March, the senatus-consultus was passed, which I
send you. ” (Cœlius to Cicero, _Epist. Familiar. _, VIII. 8. )

[827] Cœlius to Cicero, _Epist. Familiar. _, VIII. 8.

[828] Cœlius to Cicero, _Epist. Familiar. _, VIII. 8.

[829] Cœlius to Cicero, _Epist. Familiar. _, VIII. 8, §§ 3, 4.

[830] “But the consuls, who fear being obliged, by a decree of the
Senate, to leave for the war, and who feel at the same time how
disgraceful it will be to them if this commission fall on any other but
them, will absolutely not allow the Senate to assemble; they carry it so
far as to make people suspect them of want of zeal for the Republic:
there is no knowing if it be negligence, or cowardice, or the fear of
which I have just spoken; but what is concealed under this appearance of
reserve is, that they will not have that province. ” (Cœlius to Cicero,
_Epist. Familiar. _, VIII. 10. )

[831] “With the succour of Dejotarus, the enemies may be held at bay
till the arrival of Pompey, who sends me word that they intend him for
this war. ” (Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_, VI. 1. )--“At this news of the
passage of the Euphrates, every one offers to give his advice: this man
would have them send Pompey; the other Cæsar and his army. ” (Cœlius to
Cicero, _Epist. Familiar. _, VIII. 10. )

[832] Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_, V. 20

[833] He kept this title until the moment the civil war broke out.

[834] Cicero, _Epist. Familiar. _, VIII. 4.

[835] Cœlius to Cicero, _Epist. Familiar. _, VIII. 10.

[836] “Ingeniosissime nequam. ”

[837] Cicero to Curio, _Epist. Familiar. _, II. 7.

[838] Cicero, _Brutus_, lx. 218.

[839] Suetonius, _Cæsar_, 49.

[840] Plutarch, Antony, 2. --Cicero, _Philippica_, II. xix. 48.

[841] See his biography in _Appendix D_.

[842] Cicero, _Philippica_, II. xx. 49.

[843] Appian, _Civil Wars_, II. 26. --Yet Cicero, who never spared his
adversaries, makes no mention of this act of corruption; and Velleius
Paterculus (II. 48) expresses himself as follows: “Did Curio, as has
been said, sell himself? It is a question we cannot venture to decide. ”

[844] “Æmilius Paulus built, they say, with this money the famous
basilica which bears his name. ” (Appian, _Civil Wars_, II. 26. )

[845] “It was said of him that there was no man so low but he thought
him worth the trouble of gaining. ” (Cicero, _Ad Div. _, VIII. 22. )

[846] A villa near Aricia. (Cicero, _Epist. ad Atticum_, VI. 1. )

[847] “Curio, in his ill humour at not having obtained the
intercalation, has thrown himself, with unequalled levity, into the
party of the people, and began to speak on Cæsar’s side. ” (Cœlius to
Cicero, _Epist.