[228] Suet., Aug. 35; Dio, 52, 42. In the Monumentum (c. 25) he reckons the number of Senators who had served under him as “more than 700.” To them must be added those who had not taken active service and those who were with Antony.
[229] Dio, 52, 42. The regulation had always existed because every Senator was bound to attend if called upon, and therefore must be within reach, unless he was one of those qui reipublicæ causa abessent. (Livy, 43, 11.) Thus Cicero, defending the Senators who crossed over to join Pompey in Epirus, says to Atticus (viii. 15) that there was hardly one who had not a legal right to cross, either as having imperium, or being legatus to an imperator. The usual means of evading this was to obtain a libera legatio for a fixed time. Occasionally a man got himself named an ordinary legatus to a provincial governor, but was allowed to go elsewhere with some colourable commission. But this was an abuse. See Cicero, ad Fam. xii. 21; ad Q. Frat. ii. 9; ad Att. xv. 11. Sicily and Gallia Narbonensis were excepted as being practically Italy, or, as Cicero says, “suburban provinces.”
[230] Sueton., Aug. 36; Dio, 3, 19; Tacitus, Ann. 5, 4.
[231] ὅρον τὴν ἕκτην ὑπάτειαν αὑτοῦ προσθείς. Dio, 53, 2. See Tacitus, Ann. iii. 28.
[232] The doubt was an old one. Appian in one place affirms and in another denies that there was a lex for the second period of the triumvirs (Illyr. 28; b. c. v. 95). No other authority mentions one, and it certainly was not passed in the early months of B.C. 37, that is, till after the triumvirs had already continued their office without legal confirmation for some time. Willems (le Sénat, ii. 761) holds that there was a plebiscitum; Mommsen that there was not.
[233] Mon. Ancyr. ch. 34.
[234] In B.C. 28 he took care to transfer the consular fasces to his colleague Agrippa in alternative months, and when with soldiers to give the watchword jointly with him. (Dio, 53, 1.)
[235] I do not myself see any good reason to doubt that Dio has given at any rate the substance of these documents. It is not perhaps natural to us to suppose two men like Mæcenas and Agrippa solemnly reading speeches to the Emperor; but it was no unusual thing at Rome. Augustus himself is said to have done it, even to his wife, Livia, and frequently with others (Sueton., Aug. 84). Tacitus says it was the fashion of the time (Ann. 4, 37), as it seems to have been still earlier, for Cicero complains that his nephew, Quintus, had written an elaborate diatribe against him which he meant to deliver to Iulius Cæsar in Alexandria. (Ad Att. xi. 10.) For similar documents see Dio, 52, 1-40; 53, 3; 55, 15-21.
[236] Dio, 52, 15.
[237] The Imperial provinces were: Hispania Tarraconensis, and Lusitania, the Galliæ (beyond the Alps), including the districts afterwards called Germania, superior and inferior, Cœle-Syria, Phœnicia, Cilicia, Cyprus, Ægypt.