DXXXIII (F VI, 18)
TO QUINTUS LEPTA
Rome (January)
Immediately on the receipt of the letter from your servant
Seleucus I sent a note to Balbus asking him what the provision
of the law was. He answered that auctioneers in
actual business were excluded from being municipal counsellors,
retired auctioneers were not excluded.[1] Wherefore
certain friends of yours and mine need not be alarmed, for
it would have been intolerable, while those who were now
acting as haruspices were put on the roll of the senate at
Rome, all who had ever been auctioneers should be excluded
from becoming counsellors in the municipal towns.
There is no news from Spain. However, it is ascertained to be true that Pompey has a great army: for Cæsar has himself sent me a copy of a despatch from Paciæcus, in which the number was reckoned as eleven legions. Messalla has also written to Quintus Salassus to say that his brother Publius Curtius has been put to death by Pompey's order in the presence of the army, for having, as he alleged, made a compact with certain Spaniards, that if Pompey entered a particular town to get corn, they should arrest him and take him to Cæsar. As to your business in regard to your being a guarantee for Pompey, when your fellow guarantor Galba[2]*
- ↑ In the lex Iulia Municipalis, passed this year, qui præconium designationem libitinamve faciet, i.e., "auctioneers and undertakers," are excluded from any magistracy, or from being senator or decurio in a colonia, municipium, or præfectura (Bruns, Fontes Iuris Romani, p. 106). Cicero's question seems to imply that the law was not actually passed, as he would have been able to see for himself that qui faciet would not exclude those who had followed these occupations in the past. He has to apply to Cæsar's agent for information about it. Auctioneers were disliked—as brokers—because they had to do with confiscated property, as with ruined estates generally. See 2 Phil. 64, vox acerbissima præconis.
- ↑ Servius Sulpicius Galba, of whom we shall hear again. He was
