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Updated: May 20, 2025
They said that now that the Senate had come to a better frame of mind, the people would willingly make concessions in their turn; but they insisted that Marcius should apologise for his conduct, or deny if he could that he had excited the Senate to destroy the constitution, that when summoned to appear he had disobeyed, and that finally he had, by beating and insulting the aediles in the market-place, done all that lay in his power to raise a civil war and make the citizens shed one another's blood.
There were no less than eighteen of them; and he adds, that some of them seemed to appeal, with piteous cries to the people; who, in compassion, saved their lives. The strong attachment of Julia appeared on the occasion of an election of aediles. The people came to blows, and some were killed so near Pompey that he was covered with blood, and forced to change his clothes.
These are both good old Roman names, and stand out the more in contrast with Narius, Mestrius, Plestinus, and Fadius, the aediles and quaestors. Neither of these quinquennales had held any office in the five preceding years at all events. One of the two quaestors of the year 33 B.C. is a L. Cornelius.
The cost of these new festal amusements was defrayed by the magistrates entrusted with the providing of the respective festivals from their own means: thus the curule aediles had, over and above the old national festival, those of the Mother of the Gods and of Flora; the plebeian aediles had the plebeian festival and that of Ceres, and the urban praetor the Apollinarian games.
Two temples were dedicated this year to Jupiter in the Capitol; one of which had been vowed by Lucius Furius Purpureo, when praetor during the Gallic war; the other by the same, when consul. Quintus Marcius Ralla, duumvir, dedicated both. Many severe sentences were passed this year on usurers, who were prosecuted, as private persons, by the curule aediles, Marcus Tuccius and Publius Junius Brutus.
For, Caius Bibulus having begun the complaint, the other Aediles took it up, and argued "that the sumptuary laws were despised; the pomp and expense of plate and entertainments, in spite of restraints, increased daily, and by moderate penalties were not to be stopped." This grievance thus represented to the Senate, was by them referred entire to the Emperor.
As this demand was insolently refused, the tribunes themselves, together with the aediles, went to bring him by force, and actually laid hands upon him. However, the patricians rallied round him, thrust away the tribunes of the people, and even beat the aediles, their assistants in this quarrel.
Leland, in his "Necessity of a Divine Revelation," thus describes the prevalence of these shows among the Romans: "They were exhibited at the funerals of great and rich men, and on many other occasions, by the Roman consuls, praetors, aediles, senators, knights, priests, and almost all that bore great offices in the state, as well as by the emperors; and in general, by all that had a mind to make an interest with the people, who were extravagantly fond of those kinds of shows.
The general subject of conversation was, however, the spectacle announced in the amphitheatre; and each new-comer was fastened upon by a group eager to know if Pompeii had been so fortunate as to produce some monstrous criminal, some happy case of sacrilege or of murder, which would allow the aediles to provide a man for the jaws of the lion: all other more common exhibitions seemed dull and tame, when compared with the possibility of this fortunate occurrence.
They also paved with square stones the roads from the Capuan gate to the temple of Mars. By the plebeian aediles likewise, Lucius Aelius Paetus and Caius Fulvius Corvus, out of money levied as fines on farmers of the public pastures, whom they had convicted of malpractices, games were exhibited, and golden bowls were placed in the temple of Ceres.
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