[1111] Ateius Capito, Treatise on the Duties of the Senator, quoted by Aulus Gellius, IV. 10.—Valerius Maximus, II. 10, § 7.
[1112] Dio Cassius, XXXVIII. 4.
[1113] Suetonius, Cæsar, 21.
[1114] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 11.
[1115] Dio Cassius, XXXVIII. 6.
[1116] The consuls, prætors, and generally all those who presided at an assembly of the people, or even who attended in quality of magistrates, had a right of veto, founded on popular superstition. This right was exercised by declaring that a celestial phenomenon had been observed by them, and that it was no longer permitted to deliberate. Jupiter darting thunder or rain, all treating on affairs with the people must be stopped; such was the text of the law, religious or political, published in 597. It was not necessary that it should thunder or rain, in fact; the affirmation of a magistrate qualified to observe the sky being enough. (Cicero, Oration for Sextius, 15.—Oration on the Consular Provinces, 19.)—(Asconius, In Piso, p. 9, ed. Orelli.)—(Orelli, Indices to his edition of Cicero, VIII. 126.)—(Index Legum, articles Laws Ælia and Fusia.)
[1117] Valerius Maximus, III. vii. 6.
[1118] Plutarch, Cato, 37.
[1119] Dio Cassius, XXXVIII. 7.—“The Campanian law contains a provision which compels the candidates to swear, in the assembly of the people, that they will never propose anything contrary to the Italian legislation upon property. All have sworn, except Laterensis, who preferred desisting from the candidature for the tribuneship to taking the oath, and much gratitude has been shown to him for it.” (Cicero, Epistles to Atticus, II. 18.)
[1120] This appears from the words of Dio Cassius (XXXVIII. 1). Several scholars are unwilling to admit the existence of two agrarian laws; yet Cicero, in his letter to Atticus (II. 7), written in April, announces that the twenty commissioners are named. In this first law (Familiar Letters, XIII. 4), he mentions the ager of Volaterra, which was certainly not in Campania. In another letter of the beginning of May (Letters to Atticus, II. 16), he speaks of Campania for the first time, and says that Pompey had approved the first agrarian law. Finally, in that written in the month of June (Letters to Atticus, II. 18), he speaks of the oath taken to the agrarian laws. Suetonius (Cæsar, 20) and Appian (Civil Wars, II. 10) mention the Julian agrarian laws in the plural. Titus Livius (Epitome of Book CIII.) speaks of the leges agrariæ of Cæsar; and Plutarch (Cato, 38) says positively: “Elated with this victory, Cæsar proposed a new law, to share among the poor and indigent citizens nearly all the lands of Campania;” and previously, in chapter 36, the same author had said of Cæsar, that he proposed laws for the distribution of the lands to the poor citizens. Thus there were positively two laws published at an interval of some months; and if the object of the second was the distribution of the ager Campanus, the first had without doubt a more general character. Dio Cassius, after having related the proposal of the first agrarian law, in which Campania was excepted, says similarly: “Besides, the territory of Campania was given to those who had three children or more” (XXXVIII. 7).