[1]: Manutius makes a mistake in fixing this consulship of Lepidus and Tullus, and by consequence, the delivery of this oration, one year earlier.
[2]: Junius had been the judge in the trial of Oppianicus. See c. xxvii.
[3]: a. u. c. 666. Twenty-two years before this time.
[4]: “The highest magistrates of a colonia were the decemviri or quatuorviri, so called as the numbers might vary, whose functions may be compared with those of the consulate at Rome, before the establishment of the praetorship. Their principal duties were the administration of justice.”—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 259, v. Colonia.
[5]: There were many triumviri, but the triumviri capitales, which are meant here, were regular magistrates elected by the people, they succeeded to many of the functions of the quaestores parricidii, and in many points they resembled the magistracy of the Eleven at Athens. Their court appears to have been near the Maenian Column. Vide Smith, Dict. Ant. p, 1009, v. Triumvir.
[6]: The term in the original is decuriones. In the colonies “the name of the senate was ordo decurionum, in later times simply ordo or curia, the members of it were decuriones or curiales. Thus in the later ages, curia is opposed to senatus, the former being the senate of a colony, and the latter the senate of Rome.”—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 259. v. Colonia.
[7]: This is quite untranslatable; it is a set of puns. Gutta is the name of one judge, Bulbus of another; but gutta also means a drop, and bulbus means an onion. He sprinkles a drop on this onion, or he pours water on the onion to boil it.
[8]: There is an epigram in the Greek anthology from which these sentiments of Cicero seem to be taken:—ou(=tos me\n pana/ristos, o(\s au)to\s pa/nta noh/sh|, e)sqlo\s d' au)= ka)/keinos, o(\s eu)= ei)po/nti pi/qhtai, o(/s de/ ke mh/t' au)/to\s noe/h|, mh/t' a)/llou a)kou/wn e)n qumw=| ba/llhtai, o(/d' au)=t' a)xrh/ios a)nh/r.
[9]: These were steps built in the forum by Marcus Aurelius Cotta, and called by his name.
[10]: The passage which follows in the text is given up by Orellius altogether corrupt, and is wholly unintelligible as it stands at present. Weiske thinks that several words have dropped out.
[11]: “The Latin is, ‘non modo in patroni, sed in laudatoris, aut advocati, loco viderat.’ In the time of Cicero the advocatus was different from the person who conducted the suit (patronus) and made the speech, though in later times this person likewise is called advocatus.”—Riddle, Lat. Dict. in voc.
[12]: Aerarii were those citizens of Rome who did not enjoy the perfect franchise. They had to pay the aes militare, and to remove a citizen in the enjoyment of the full franchise into the list of those who enjoyed a less complete one, was of course a degradation and a punishment.
[13]: In the twenty-ninth book of Livy, c. 37, an extraordinary instance is related of disagreement between the censors; for one of them, Caius Claudius Nero, degraded his colleague, Marcus Livius, and Livius in his turn degraded Caius Claudius.
[14]: “If the censors considered a knight unworthy of his rank, they struck him off of the list of knights, and deprived him of his horse, or ordered him to sell it, with the intention, no doubt, that the person thus degraded should refund to the state the money which had been advanced to him for its purchase. (Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, vol. i. p. 433.)”—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 895, v. Equites.