[727] Varro ap. Gell. xiii. 12 “vocationem (habent), ut consoles et caeteri, qui habent imperium; prensionem, ut tribuni plebis et alii, qui habent viatorem; neque vocationem neque prensionem, ut quaestores et ceteri, qui neque lictorem habent neque viatorem. Qui vocationem habent, idem prendere, tenere, abducere possunt.”
[728] p. 94.
[729] See Varro ap. Gell. l.c.
[730] Aediles were used in the trial of Coriolanus (Dionys. vii. 26, see p. 98); Gracchus sent one of his viatores to drag his colleague Octavius from the Rostra (Plut. Ti. Gracch. 12). Cf. Liv. xxv. 4 (case of Postumius 212 B.C.) “tribuni ... ni vades daret ... prehendi a viatore ... jusserunt.”
[731] Varro, as an antiquarian, refused to obey such a summons on the ground of its illegality (Gell. xiii. 12.)
[732] Donatus ad Ter. Ad. iv. 2, 9 “qui malam rem nuntiat, obnuntiat, qui bonam adnuntiat; nam proprie obnuntiare dicuntur augures, qui aliquid mali ominis scaevumque viderint.” Cf. Cicero Phil. ii. 33, 83; de Div. i. 16, 29 (dirarum obnuntiatio).
[733] The plebeian magistrates sometimes watched for such signs, for purposes of obstruction, and were then improperly said servare de coelo (Cic. ad Att. iv. 3, 3). The words are properly used only of the spectio. See Greenidge, “The Repeal of the Lex Aelia Fufia” in Class. Rev. vii. p. 158.
[734] p. 163.
[735] Cic. pro Sest. 36, 78; Dio Cass. xxxviii. 13. To discuss, as has been done, whether the patrician magistrates’ obnuntiatio was valid against the tribunes is to raise rather an idle question. The lex Aelia Fufia could not have artificially regulated religious belief, and the Plebs was as susceptible to auspicia as the Populus (see p. 39).
[736] Gell. xiii. 15; minor here simply means “inferior to the consul.”