[1]: The comitia centuriata, or as they were sometimes called majora, were the assembly in which the people gave their votes according to the classification instituted by Servius Tullius; they were held in the Campus Martius without the city, and in reference to their military organization they were summoned by the sound of the horn, not by the voice of the lictor. All magistrates were elected in these comitia.
[2]: There had been several previous laws against bribery and corruption (de ambitu). The Lex Acilia, passed B.C. 67, imposed a fine on the offending party, with exclusion from the senate and from all public offices. The Lex Tullia, passed in Cicero's consulship, added banishment for ten years; and, among other restrictions, forbade any one to exhibit gladiators within two years of his being a candidate, unless he was required to do so on a fixed day by a testator's will.
[3]: The toga praetexta was a robe bordered with purple worn by the higher magistrates, and by freeborn children till they arrived at the age of manhood.
[4]: This refers to the time of Appius the decemvir, when the soldiers, at the call of Virginius, after the death of Virginia, occupied the Aventine, and were joined by great part of the plebs, demanding the abolition of the decemvirate.
[5]: The Latin strictly is, “pierce the eyes of ravens.” It was a proverbial expression.
[6]: Coemptio was “a ceremony of marriage consisting in a mock sale, whereby the bride and bridegroom sold themselves to each other.” Riddle in voce. “Coemptio was effected by mancipatio, and consequently the wife was in mancipio.”—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 603, § v., v. Marriage, (Roman.)
[7]: In the comitia centuriata the people voted in their centuries; the order in which the centuries voted was decided by lot, and that which gave it a vote first was called the centuria praerogativa. The question of a tribus praerogativa is a more disputed point; but on this see Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 997, v. Tribus, (Roman.)
[8]: This refers to the law of Lucius Roscius Otho, (called Roscia Lex by Horace,) by which the fourteen rows of seats next to those of the senators were reserved for the knights.
[9]: This was not the Manilian law, in support of which Cicero spoke to confer the command in Asia on Pompeius; but a law enacting that the votes should be counted without any regard to the centuries in which they were given; but this law was repealed soon after its enactment.
[10]: Cato was tribune elect.
[11]: Besides the classes into which the centuries were divided and the four supernumerary centuries of accensi, velati, proletarii, and capite censi, there were three centuries classed according to their occupation. The fabri, or carpenters, who were attached to the centuries of the first class; the cornicines, or hornblowers, and liticines, or trumpeters, who were reckoned with the fourth class.
[12]: Samian vessels were made of an inferior earthenware; Carthaginian couches were very low and narrow.
[13]: The nomenclator was a slave who accompanied the candidate in going his rounds, and told him the name of every one he met, so that he might be able to accost them as if they were personally known to himself.
[14]: He means Quintus Metellus Nepos, the same man who afterwards prevented his making an address to the people on his resigning his consulship.