our statements
may very well be all traceable to a common source; nor can they at
all lay claim to any very high credibility, seeing that for
the earlier period before the commencement of the -acta diurna-
the statements as to the natal years of even the best known and most
prominent Romans, e. g. as to that of Pompeius, vary in the most
surprising manner. (Comp. Staatsrecht, I. 8 p. 570.)

In the Life of Caesar by Napoleon III (B. 2, ch. 1) it is objected
to this view, first, that the -lex annalis- would point for
Caesar's birth-year not to 652, but to 651; secondly and
especially, that other cases are known where it was not attended
to. But the first assertion rests on a mistake; for, as
the example of Cicero shows, the -lex annalis- required only that at
the entering on office the 43rd year should be begun, not that it
should be completed. None of the alleged exceptions to the rule,
moreover, are pertinent. When Tacitus (Ann. xi. 22) says that
formerly in conferring magistracies no regard was had to age, and
that the consulate and dictatorship were entrusted to quite young
men, he has in view, of course, as all commentators acknowledge,
the earlier period before the issuing of the -leges annales---the
consulship of M. Valerius Corvus at twenty-three, and similar
cases. The assertion that Lucullus received the supreme magistracy
before the legal age is erroneous; it is only stated (Cicero, Acad.
pr. i. 1) that on the ground of an exceptional clause not more
particularly known to us, in reward for some sort of act performed
by him, he had a dispensation from the legal two years' interval
between the aedileship and praetorship--in reality he was aedile in
675, probably praetor in 677, consul in 680. That the case of
Pompeius was a totally different one is obvious; but even as to
Pompeius, it is on several occasions expressly stated (Cicero, de
Imp. Pomp, ax, 62; Appian, iii. 88) that the senate released him
from the laws as to age. That this should have been done with
Pompeius, who had solicited the consulship as a commander-in-chief
crowned with victory and a triumphator, at the head of an army and
after his coalition with Crassus also of a powerful party, we can
readily conceive. But it would be in the highest degree
surprising, if the same thing should have been done with Caesar on
his candidature for the minor magistracies, when he was of little
more importance than other political beginners; and it would b