[198] A captive brought by Lucullus, who became a friend of Cicero and tutor to his son and nephew.
[199] One of the two yearly officers of a colony—they answer to the consuls at Rome. Therefore Cicero means, "I wish I had been a consul in a small colony rather than a consul at Rome."
[200] For distribution of land under Cæsar's law. P. Vatinius was a tribune this year, and worked in Cæsar's interests.
[201] Theopompus of Chios, the historian (Att. vi. 1, § 12). Born about B.C. 378. His bitterness censured by Polybius, viii. 11-13.
[202] The money due from the treasury to Q. Cicero in Asia. He wants it to be paid in Roman currency (denarii), not in Asiatic coins (cistophori), a vast amount of which Pompey had brought home and deposited in the treasury. So an Indian official might like sovereigns instead of rupees if he could get them.
[203] As he was a man sui iuris, Clodius's adoption into a new gens (adrogatio) would have to take place before the comitia curiata (now represented by thirty lictors), which still retained this formal business. The ceremony required the presence of an augur and a pontifex to hold it. Cicero supposes Pompey and Cæsar as intending to act in that capacity. Pompey, it seems, did eventually attend.
[204] One of the twenty commissioners under Cæsar's agrarian law. Cicero was offered and declined a place among them. The "only man," of course, refers to the intrusion on the mysteries.
[205] To Egypt.
[206] This seems also to refer to the twenty agrarian commissioners, who, according to Mommsen, were divided into committees of five, and were, therefore, spoken of indifferently as quinqueviri and vigintiviri. But it is somewhat uncertain.
[207] κατὰ τὸ πρακτικόν.