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Updated: June 6, 2025
He had at that time the most honorable praetorship of the year, and was named for the consulship four years after, being preferred before Cassius, his competitor. Upon the question as to the choice, Caesar, it is related, said that Cassius had the fairer pretensions, but that he could not pass by Brutus.
At Rome, he struck out the eye of a Roman knight in the Forum, only for some free language in a dispute between them. He was likewise so fraudulent, that he not only cheated some silversmiths of the price of goods he had bought of them, but, during his praetorship, defrauded the owners of chariots in the Circensian games of the prizes due to them for their victory.
THOUGH I am well assured, Sir, that you, who never omit any opportunity of exerting your generosity, are not unmindful of the request I lately made to you, yet, as you have often indulged me in this manner, give me leave to remind and earnestly entreat you to bestow the praetorship now vacant upon Attius Sura.
Thither they sent Aemilius, in the quality of praetor, not with six axes, which number other praetors were accustomed to have carried before them, but with twelve; so that in his praetorship he was honored with the dignity of a consul.
People at first had expected in silence that the consul would hold an assembly for the election of a colleague, but afterwards perceiving that Marcus Marcellus, whom they wished above all others to be consul this year, on account of his brilliant success during his praetorship, was removed to a distant quarter, as it were on purpose, a murmuring arose in the senate-house, which the consul perceiving, said "Conscript fathers, it was conducive to the interest of the state, both that Marcus Marcellus should go into Campania to make the exchange of the armies, and that the assembly should not be proclaimed before he had returned thence after completing the business with which he was charged, in order that you might have him as consul whom the situation of the republic required and yourselves prefer."
The aedileship was the particular magistracy which was saddled with this expenditure on account of its traditional connection with the conduct of the public games; and although it was neither in its curule nor plebeian form an obligatory step in the scale of the magistracies, yet, as it was held before the praetorship and the consulship, it was manifest that the brilliant display given to the people by the occupant of this office might render fruitless the efforts of a less wealthy competitor who had shunned its burdens.
Moreover the dictatorship was thrown open to plebeians in 398, as the mastership of the horse had already been in the year before the Licinian laws ; both the censorships were thrown open in 403, and the praetorship in 417; and about the same time the nobility were by law excluded from one of the censorships, as they had previously been from one of the consulships.
In the next consular elections for 700, in spite of all the exertions of the regents, Domitius was actually elected, and Cato likewise now prevailed in the candidature for the praetorship, in which to the scandal of the whole burgesses Caesar's client Vatinius had during the previous year beaten him off the field.
They alleged, that "the aedileship and praetorship were now held in contempt, and that the nobility did not make their way to the consulship through the regular gradations of offices, thus affording a trial of themselves; but, passing over the intermediate steps, pushed at once from the lowest to the highest."
Even when the rejected candidate had won favour on other grounds, the electors could salve their consciences with the reflection that the aedileship was no obligatory step in an official career, and that, where merit and not money was in question, they could show their appreciation of personal qualities in the elections to the praetorship.
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