originally an advocate at Rome. His services
were often sought by men of Consular rank, and before his admission to
the Senate he had had a Patrician for his client in a very celebrated
case[378].

[Footnote 377: We have here a remark on unconscious prophecies: 'Loqui
datur quod nos sensisse nescimus: sed post casum reminiscimur, quod
ignorantes veraciter dixeramus.']

[Footnote 378: 'Inferior gradu praestabat viris consularibus se
patronum et cum honoribus vestris impar haberetur, Patricius ei dictus
est in celeberrima cognitione susceptus.' The last part of this
sentence is very obscure.]

When he became Quaestor he distinguished himself by his excellent
qualities. 'He stood beside us, under the light of our Genius, bold
but reverent; silent at the right time, fluent when there was need of
fluency. He kept our secrets as if he had forgotten them; he
remembered every detail of our orders as if he had written them down.
Thus was he ever an eminent lightener of our labours[379].'

[Footnote 379: Decoratus is called by Boethius, who was his colleague
in some office, 'a wretched buffoon and informer' (nequissimus scurra
et delator. Cons. Phil. iii. 4). But Ennodius addresses him in
friendly and cordial language (Epist. iv. 17). His epitaph, which
mentions his Spoletan origin, is of course laudatory:

'Nam fessis tribuit requiem, miseros que levavit,
Justitiae cultor, largus et hospes erat.'

(Quoted in the notes to Ennodius in Migne's Patrologia.)]

The past career of the younger brother, Honoratus, who has been
advocate at Spoleto, and has had to contend with the corrupt
tendencies of Provincial judges, full of their little importance, and
removed from the wholesome control which the opinion of the Senate
exercised upon them at Rome, is then sketched; and the hope is
expressed that, in the words of the Virgilian quotation[380], this
bough upon the family tree will be found as goodly as that which it
has untimely lost.

[Footnote 380: 'Primo avulso non deficit alter' (Aen. vi. 143).]

[Sidenote: Duties of the Quaestorship.]

The letter to the Senate has an interesting passage on the duties and
responsibilities of the Quaestor.

'It is only men whom we consider to be of the highest learning that we
raise to the dignity of the Quaestorship, such men as are fitted to be
interpreters of the laws and sharers of our counsels. This is an
honour which neither riches nor high birth by itself can procure, only