[102] Cic. Cat. III. 6. § 14. On the other hand, Frontin. de colon. p. 112. Goes. Colonia Florentina deducta a III viris assignata lege Julia.—Germ. Ed.
[103] H. N. XIV. 8. 2?—Germ. Ed.
[104] This is evidently a slip of the memory, the passage of Asconius (in Pisonianam, p. 3, Orellii) running thus, Magno opere me hæsitare confiteor, quid sit quare Cicero Placentiam municipium esse dicit. Video enim in annalibus eorum qui Punicum bellum scripserunt tradi, Placentiam deductam pridie Kal. Jun., primo anno eius belli, P. Cornelio Scipione, patre Africani prioris, Ti. Sempronio Longo Coss. &c.—Germ. Ed.
[105] Conf. vol. I, p. 523.
[106] The Pontifex Maximus was included among these.
[107] Dr. Schmitz has already remarked in vol. I, p. 416, of his version (published under the title of History of Rome from the first Punic War to the death of Constantine, by B. G. Niebuhr, in a series of lectures Lond. 1844), that this number does not rest upon any direct authority. Cic. ad Att. I, 14, 5, states the number of voters in the senate in a certain affair to have been about 415, fifteen having voted on one side, and on the other, facile 400; from which we may safely conclude that the sum total must have been larger. In the I. Maccab. 8, 15, at the end, therefore, of the sixth century, the number is mentioned to have been 320; yet when we consider the other statements which are made in that passage, we must not lay too much stress upon it.—Germ. Edit.
[108] In 1827 Niebuhr expressed himself on this point in the following manner:—
“That the result of his legislation could not have satisfied him, was in the very nature of things, and therefore he who had shed so much blood to get the government into his own hands, resigned the dictatorship two years after he had been appointed to it, as he saw the uselessness of his institutions, which he had established at the cost of so many atrocities. This is the most natural way of accounting for his resignation, which has been so much talked of: it was a mistake of very judicious people, to hunt out reasons for it which were too far-fetched.”—Germ. Edit.
[109] The contradiction of this passage with that in vol. I. p. 469, in which Clitarchus is termed an elegant writer, seems to be accounted for by supposing that the expression “elegant” is in that place one of disparagement, referring to Longin. c. 3 who calls him φλοιώδης καὶ φυσῶν. Of Sisenna, Cicero says in Brutus 64, Hujus omnis facultas ex historia ipsius perspici potest, quæ, cum facile vincat omnes superiores, tum indicat tamen, quantum absit a summo, quamque hoc genus scriptionis nondum sit satis Latinis literis illustratum; and de Legg. 1, 2.—in historia puerile quoddam consectatur, ut unum Clitarchum, neque præterea quemquam de Græcis legisse videatur; so that Niebuhr calls this puerile, this affected mannerism, the horridum, inasmuch as it so greatly a summo abest.—Germ. Ed.
[110] See note in p. 292.