[696] Laberius is a rival jurisconsult, Valerius a writer of mimes. Though Cicero jests at the supposed comic character, "a lawyer in Britain" (as we might say, "a lawyer among the Zulus"), it does not appear that Trebatius went to Britain with Cæsar.
[697] A freedman and agent of Curio's. The question is of funeral games and an exhibition of gladiators in honour of Curio's father. Curio gave them, and involved himself in huge debt in consequence.
[698] C. Vibius Pansa had been in Gaul, and was now home to stand for the tribuneship, which he obtained for B.C. 52-51.
[699] Where he would have been in luxury.
[700] A follower of the new academy, with which Cicero was more in sympathy than with the Epicurean ethics, but apparently only partly so. The leading doctrine was the denial of the possibility of knowledge, and, applied to ethics, this might destroy all virtue.
[701] All these jesting objections to a lawyer being an Epicurean are founded on the Epicurean doctrine that individual feeling is the standard of morals, and the summum bonum is the good of the individual. The logical deduction that a man should therefore hold aloof from politics and social life, as involving social obligations and standards, was, of course, evaded in practice.
[702] For the Epicureans believed the gods to exist, but not to trouble themselves with the affairs of men. In taking an oath by Iupiter lapis the swearer took a stone in his hand and said, "If I abide by this oath may he bless me: but if I do otherwise in thought or deed, may all others be kept safe, each in his own country, under his own laws, in enjoyment of his own goods, household gods, and tombs—may I alone be cast out, even as this stone is now." Then he throws down the stone. This passage from Polybius (iii. 25) refers to treaties, but the same form seems to have been used in suits about land.
[703] Ulubræ—like other municipia—had a patronus at Rome to look after its interests. If Trebatius (who was its patronus) would take no part in politics, he would be of no use to the Ulubrani. πολιτεύεσθαι, "to act as a citizen," "to act as a member of a political body."
"I will make fast the doors and gild myself
With some more ducats."—Shakespeare..