[1]: An interdict was a sort of provisional decree obtained from the praetor, chiefly in cases where the dispute is about possession, or quasi possession. The terms which he uses are called decretum when he orders any thing to be done, and interdictum when he forbids anything to be done. The mode of proceeding was, for the party aggrieved to state his case to the praetor, which was the foundation of his demand of an interdict. If the defendant admitted the plaintiff's case before the interdict was granted, or submitted to it after it was granted, the dispute was at an end. If he was dissatisfied with the interdict, he also might in his turn apply to the praetor. Whenever the praetor's original interdict did not terminate the case, he directed a further inquiry before a judex or recuperators. There were also one or two other causes for, and descriptions of, interdict. Vide Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 521, v. Interdictum.
[2]: The usual course on claiming possession of disputed property was for the claimant to present himself with his friends in the land, and then to be driven off by the occupant. This violence was vis moribus facta. On this the claimant appealed to the praetor. But Aebutius had driven Caecina off with armed men, and had used unnecessary and actual violence. This was vis contra jus moremque.
[3]: Some think that the number of miles here ought to be forty. In the trial of Cluentius, Cicero imputes to all the judges that they had been bribed with forty thousand sesterces; and of these judges Falcula was one, so that the laughter of the people must have been excited by a similarity of number between the sesterces and the miles.
[4]: The whole of this is quite untranslatable so as to give in English the sense which the Latin bears. The truth is, that it is a sort of play on the word dejicio, which is the Latin word used, and which not only means to drive away, its technical and proper meaning here, but also to throw down, which is the meaning which Cicero harps upon.
[5]: The origin, constitution, and powers of the centumviri are exceedingly obscure; they were judges, but they differed from other judges in being a definite body or collegium. According to Festus three centumviri were chosen out of each tribe, so that their actual number must have been a hundred and five. Their powers were probably limited to Rome, and at all events to Italy. It appears that they had cognisance of both civil and criminal matters. It was the practice to set up a spear in the place where the centumviri were sitting, and accordingly the word hasta or hasta centumviralis, is sometimes used as equivalent to judicium centumvirale. VideSmith, Dict. Ant. p. 212, v. Centumviri.
[6]: “The Latin here is pater patratus. When an injury had been sustained by the state, four fetiales were deputed to seek redress, who again elected one of their number to act as their representative, this individual was called pater patratus populi Romani.”—Smith Dict. Ant. p. 416, v. Fetiales.
[7]: Caius Hostilius Mancinus had been defeated by the Numantines and had made a disgraceful peace with them, which the senate refused to ratify, and delivered up Mancinus to the Numantines, in order to annul the peace legally, but they refused to receive him.
[8]: The new citizens are those who had been made citizens of Rome at the termination of the Social War a few years before.
[9]: The old editions usually have “twelve,” but eighteen is the correction of Savigny, which Orellius calls “certissima.” In the second Punic War, a.u.c. 543, of the thirty colonies of the Roman people, twelve declared that they had no means of supplying the consuls with men or money. The other eighteen remained faithful to their allegiance, and of these eighteen Ariminum was one. Vide Livy, xxvii. 9,10.