bribing the first citizen of Rome. Roman generals often received such presents, but Scipio refused to accept these in private. He ordered the quaestor to enter every thing in his books, and he declared that he should employ the king's bounty in rewarding the bravest of his men. Cicero says that it was Attalus King of Pergamum who sent these presents, but Cicero may have made a mistake, as he often did.

Eutropius records the triumphs of Brutus and Scipio in the same passage, mentioning that of Brutus first. We cannot conclude from this that Brutus and Scipio triumphed in the same year; nor does it appear how long Brutus remained in Spain after B.c. 136, if he did remain after that year. Brutus got money in Spain, and he applied part of it to the erection of a temple and other public buildings. The entrances to these buildings were adorned with verses, the composition of the poet L. Attius a friend of Brutus, who, like many of the Roman generals, was a man of letters and no mean

orator.

CHAPTER VIII.

DOMESTIC EVENTS.

B.C. 142-135.

THE domestic events of Roman history are more instructive than the wars, but unfortunately they are very imperfectly known. Such however as we can collect are worth recording, for they show us what the Romans were at home.

L. Hostilius Tubulus was one of the praetors of the year B.C. 142, and his special commission was to inquire into and punish assassination (de sicariis). It seems that in those days as now the use of the knife or dagger was common at Rome, either in quarrels, or when the assassins were also thieves and robbers. Tubulus was charged with the high offence of taking bribes in the discharge of his office. There was not yet any mode of proceeding before a regular court in the case of a magistrate committing such an offence. The tribune P. Mucius Scaevola proposed a rogatio to the Tributa Comitia, to the effect that inquiry should be made into the charge against Tubulus; and the popular assembly passed a Lex (privilegium) that the Senate should give the consul Cn. Servilius Caepio (B.c. 141) a special commission to hear and inquire. Tubulus left Rome when Caepio was going to begin his inquiry, which shows that the Romans had no way of securing the presence of such an offender at his trial. Tubulus hoped to escape by retiring into exile, as the Romans called it, that is, leaving the territory of Rome and retiring to another community, and such an exile was not unusual. I do not know how far we can trust Asconius in his commentary on the fragments of Cicero's oration for M. Scaurus,

DOMESTIC EVENTS.

when he tells us that for his many crimes Tubulus was sent for from his place of exile, and that he took poison to prevent what he expected, his execution in prison.

In this year also there was a signal example of Roman justice, which Livy has recorded (Ep. 54). D. Junius Silanus was a son of T. Manlius Torquatus, but he had been adopted by D. Junius Silanus. The adopted son was praetor in B.C. 142 and was sent to govern the province of Macedonia. The Macedonians by their commissioners at Rome charged the praetor before the Senate with robbing them. The praetor was liable to be prosecuted under the Lex Calpurnia, but T. Manlius asked and obtained permission from the Senate to inquire first into the charges against his son. The Epitome states that Torquatus heard the cause in his own house, condemned his son, and renounced him, if that is the meaning of 'abdicavit' in the Epitome. The young man hung himself, and the father not only refused to attend the funeral, but continued his practice of waiting at home to give his advice to those who consulted him, for Torquatus was learned in the law, a jurisconsultus, as the Romans named him. The sentence, as Valerius reports it, was that Torquatus declared Silanus unworthy of the Republic and of his father's house, and ordered him to quit his presence. Valerius adds that Torquatus discharged the duty of a grave and honest judge, that the state was vindicated and Macedonia avenged. The story is probably true in the main facts, but it is miserably distorted by the ignorance of Valerius and Livy's epitomator. Torquatus had no authority over Silanus, who had by adoption become legally the son of another; and if the praetor was still in the Patria Potestas, his father was Silanus. This therefore is not an example of a Roman father's authority and of a domestic tribunal, as some have supposed. Nor was it a trial, for the Lex Calpurnia provided in such a case both the form of trial and fixed the penalty. The sentence of Torquatus, as it is reported, shows this, for it was not a sentence, but an expression of his opinion on the guilt of Silanus, which he might have pronounced without asking the permission of the Senate. The permission of the Senate to inquire, if it was asked and granted, only showed their

willingness to oblige a distinguished man, and Torquatus may have designed in this indirect way to save Silanus from the disgrace of a regular trial. If this was his object, he succeeded and left a record of Roman integrity and Stoic virtue. It has been remarked that Valerius' expression 'the state was vindicated and Macedonia avenged' is only rhetorical ornament, and so it may be: but this was all the satisfaction that Macedonia could have, for Silanus could not be tried after he was dead, and it is a mistake to assume that Torquatus' declaration about his son's guilt was in the nature of what the Romans named a Praejudicium, the precise meaning of which there may be occasion to explain hereafter.

In B.C. 139 the affairs of religion caused some trouble. Since the Romans had carried their arms into Asia, the city had been invaded by the people of the east, who came to seek their fortune in a place to which it was supposed that all the wealth of the world flowed. These men brought their religion with them, which might have been tolerated by the Romans like other foreign superstitions, if it had not interfered with their own religious system, and also tended to the corruption of manners. The worship of Jupiter Sabazius had been introduced with certain absurd and demoralizing ceremonies. The Romans had a Jupiter Optimus Maximus, from whom their omens came, and Caesar the Dictator once told the Romans that Jupiter was their only King. The Senate instructed the Praetor Peregrinus C. Cornelius Scipio Hispallus to look into the matter, and he published an edict by which he banished from the city the priests of Jupiter Sabazius. There were astrologers also, casters of nativities. and fortune-tellers, whom the Romans called Chaldaei, a pestilent race, who cheated the superstitious out of their money, as they have continued to do to the present day. This mode of divination was entirely opposed to the Roman system, which was founded on auspices or the observation of birds, and it was considered to be dangerous to the national religion. The same praetor issued an order by which the Chaldaean astrologers were commanded to leave Rome and Italy within ten days. The Romans had often before attempted

to keep their religion free from foreign corruption, but it was impossible. Jupiter Sabazius slipped in again and recovered his credit at Rome, which is proved by inscriptions of the time of the emperor Domitian. The Chaldaeans too appeared again, and they obtained a hearing even from the Roman emperor Tiberius.

Scipio in his censorship (B.c. 142) had degraded a man named Ti. Claudius Asellus, and taken his horse from him, for he was one of the equites. Mummius, Scipio's colleague, not being of the same mind as Scipio restored to Asellus his horse and his rank. Asellus was a tribune in B.C. 139, and he had now the opportunity of paying Scipio off for what he had done. It is not said what the charge was against Scipio, but he was summoned in the usual form before the people, and brought to a kind of trial, the result of which might have been a fine. Scipio treated the matter as a thing perfectly indifferent, and it would not be worth mentioning except as an example of the way in which a tribune could use his power to annoy the greatest man in Rome. The quantity of talk on the occasion was wonderful, and perhaps the people were amused. Scipio made five speeches. He was as ready with his tongue as with the sword, and he was one of the best and purest Latin speakers of the age. He assailed Asellus with all his caustic wit. The man's name was an opportunity for a joke which was not lost. It is not said how this affair ended.

We know nothing of the circumstances under which the Lex Gabinia was enacted (B.c. 139). Up to this time the people in the Comitia for the election of magistrates voted openly or declared for whom they voted. Cicero, when he contrasts the two methods of voting, speaks of them as secret and open (clam, palam); and he speaks of the open voting as being done by words (voce). Certain passages of Dionysius are quoted as evidence, that what he calls pebbles or counters (po) or whatever they may have been, were used in voting at Rome in early times. But it is evident that such could not be the way of voting for magistrates, where it would be necessary for the names of those for whom a man voted to be declared, unless each candidate had his box and