[1211] His consulships were A.U.C. 502 and 506.—B.
[1212] Hardouin informs us, that a certain number of public officers, which varied from three to twenty, were appointed to divide the lands of the conquered people among the Roman colonists. Lemaire, vol. iii. p. 159.—B.
[1213] The commentators have endeavoured to prove, and not without some success, that Pliny is not correct in the remark, that the first elephants brought to Rome, were those which followed in the triumph of Metellus. He has himself informed us, B. viii. c. 6, that they were introduced by Curius Dentatus, in his triumph over Pyrrhus, some years before that of Metellus. The same fact is also stated by Florus, B. i. c. 18.—B.
[1214] Ovid, Fast. B. vi. l. 436, et seq., and Val. Maximus, B. i. c. 4, allude to this circumstance.—B.
[1215] This fact has been supposed by Hardouin to be controverted by the statement of Aulus Gellius, who says, B. iii. c. 18, that all the senators, who had passed the curule chair, were carried to the curia or senate-house, in a chariot. But, as Ajasson correctly observes, Aulus Gellius does not assert that the senators were carried at the public expense, which was the case with Metellus.—B.
[1216] Val. Maximus, B. vii. c. 1, details the various fortunate circumstances which occurred to Q. Metellus; he makes no mention, however, of the violent attack made upon him by Labeo; indeed, he expressly states, that his good fortune continued to the last moments of his life.—B.
[1217] Val. Maximus, ubi supra, and Velleius Paterculus, B. i. c. 11, speak of the honours obtained by the four sons of Q. Metellus; they are also alluded to by Cicero in his 8th Philippic, sec. 4., and his Tusc. Quæst. B. i. c. 35.—B.
[1218] Dalechamps remarks, that we find in the ancient historians a similar account relative to M. Drusus, who, when tribune of the people, hurried off the consul Philippus with such violence to prison, that the blood started from his nostrils: also of P. Sempronius, the tribune of the people, who, had it not been for the opposition offered by his colleague, would have carried the censor Appius Claudius to prison.
[1219] This attack of Labeo on Metellus is mentioned in the Epitome of Livy, B. lix. The tribunes of Rome were styled “sacrosancti,” and it was considered a capital crime to offer personal violence to them, under any circumstances. Hardouin remarks, that the tribune who came to the rescue of Metellus must have been a military tribune, who, in virtue of his office, had a right to claim the services of Metellus for the army.—B.
[1220] Cicero, in his oration “Pro Domo suâ,” sec. 47, refers to the consecration of the property of Metellus, as a case analogous to that of his own house, which had been similarly consecrated by Clodius.—B. It seems to have been the custom, when a person had been capitally condemned, for the tribune of the people to consecrate his property, with certain formalities, to some god or goddess; after which it could not, under ordinary circumstances, be recovered, whether the sentence was revoked or not. Cicero had been capitally condemned through the instrumentality of Clodius, and obliged to fly from Rome.