cience) regards them as safeguards of the
state, because as the Optimates generally secured the places in the
augural college, it gave them a hold on elections and legislation.
Bibulus tried in vain to use these powers to thwart Caesar this year. The
_lex Caecilia Didia_ (.B.C. 98) enforced the _trinundinatio_, or three
weeks' notice of elections and laws, and forbade the proposal of a _lex
satura_, _i.e._, a law containing a number of miscellaneous enactments.
Perhaps its violation refers to the _acta_ of Pompey in the East, which
he wanted to have confirmed _en bloc_. The senate had made difficulties:
but one of the fruits of the triumvirate was a measure for doing it. The
_lex Iunia et Licinia_ (B.C. 62) confirmed the _Caecilia Didia_, and
secured that the people knew what the proposed laws were.]

[Footnote 220: As Pompey did in Asia, _e.g._, to Deiotarus of Galatia,
and about ten others. It is curious that Cicero speaks of the _pauci_
just as his opponent Caesar and Augustus after him. Each side looks on
the other as a coterie (Caesar, _B. C._ i. 22; Monum. Ancyr. i. Sec. 1)]

[Footnote 221: Theophrastus, successor of Aristotle at the Lyceum,
Athens (p. 70).]

[Footnote 222: The purple-bordered toga of the augur. Vatinius did not
get the augurship. He had some disfiguring swelling or wen.]

[Footnote 223: Himself.]

[Footnote 224: [Greek: andr' apamynesthai, hote tis proteros chalepene]
(Hom. _Il._ xxiv. 369).]

[Footnote 225: Written in Greek, perhaps by the boy himself.]

XXXVI (A II, 12)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)

TRES TABERNAE, 12 APRIL

[Sidenote: B.C. 59, AET. 47]

Are they going to deny that Publius has been made a plebeian? This is
indeed playing the king, and is utterly intolerable. Let Publius send
some men to witness and seal my affidavit: I will take an oath that my
friend Gnaeus, the colleague of Balbus, told me at Antium that he had
been present as augur to take the auspices. Two delightful letters from
you delivered at the same time! For which I do not know what I am to pay
you by way of reward for good news. That I owe you for them I candidly
confess. But observe the coincidence. I had just made my way from Antium
on to the _via Appia_ at Three Taverns,[226] on the very day of the
Cerealia (18th April), when my friend Curio meets me on his way from
Rome. At the same place and the same moment comes a slave from you with
letters. The former asked me whether I hadn't heard the news? I