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On the night preceding, the whole city was illuminated and decorated with garlands; the Forum, as morning approached, was filled with "the people," arranged in their several tribes, clothed in white robes and bearing boughs of laurel; the Praetorians, in their splendid arms, were drawn up in two lines from the further extremity of the Forum to the Rostra, to maintain the avenue of approach clear; all the roofs of the buildings on every side were thronged with crowds of spectators; at break of day Nero arrived in the attire appropriated to triumphs, accompanied by the members of the Senate and his body-guard, and took his seat on the Rostra in a curule chair.
In this contest, the last-mentioned candidate, though a young man, beat the others, who were his superiors in years, and had filled offices of honour. Before him there had not been a man for a hundred and twenty years, except Publius Cornelius Calussa, who had been created chief pontiff without having sat in the curule chair.
The Senate was a judicial and legislative body, and numbered three hundred men. All men who had held curule magistracies became members. Their decisions, called Senatus Consulta, became laws—leges. The Roman government at this time was purely oligarchic. The aristocratical clement prevailed. Nobles virtually controlled the State.
He demanded back the ancient privilege of his priesthood, which was given, together with the purple-bordered robe, and the curule chair, to the office of flamen.
The dearness of provisions also distressed the state very much, and they would have felt the extremity of want, according to the relation of those who make Fabius Maximus curule aedile that year, had not the vigilant activity of that man, such as he had on many occasions displayed in the field, been exerted then with equal zeal at home, in the management of the market, and in procuring and forming magazines of corn.
In like manner the aristocracy simply injured itself by the attempt which it made, on the passing of the Licinian laws, to save at least some remnant of its ancient privileges by means of a system of political clipping and paring. But the curule aedileship became immediately so far accessible to the plebeians, that it was held by patricians and plebeians alternately.
Among these are a torso in marble of a Roman knight, in a cuirass, and another colossal torso, with a charming little draped statue seated in a curule chair, and holding a cornucopia in the left hand; a cinerary monument, enriched with bassi-relievi, representing a human sacrifice; a bronze head of Apollo, much injured; and a Janus.
It was thus settled, that the so-called popular party as such neither could nor would govern; that only two forms of government were at all possible in Rome, a -tyrannis- or an oligarchy; that, so long as there happened to be nobody sufficiently well known, if not sufficiently important, to usurp the regency of the state, the worst mismanagement endangered at the most individual oligarchs, but never the oligarchy; that on the other hand, so soon as such a pretender appeared, nothing was easier than to shake the rotten curule chairs.
They were even held in great reverence, and enjoyed a larger term of office than the consuls, even of five years. The quæstors virtually had charge of the public money, and were the paymasters of the army. As these were curule officers, they had, by their office, admission to the Senate.
It is from Aricia that we have received the Voconian and Atinian laws; from Aricia have come many of those magistrates who have filled our curule chairs, both in our fathers' recollection and in our own; from Aricia have sprung many of the best and bravest of the Roman knights. But if you disapprove of a wife from Aricia, why do you approve of one from Tusculum?
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