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Updated: June 8, 2025
Its legality had been impugned by Cæsar's condemnation of Rabirius, as duovir capitalis, but to a certain extent confirmed by the failure to secure his conviction on the trial of his appeal to the people. Again in B.C. 77 the decree was passed in consequence of the insurrection of the proconsul Lepidus, who, however, escaped to Sardinia and died there.
Cicero having declined to go as his lieutenant, he had chosen Labienus, who had acted with him, when tribune, in the prosecution of Rabirius, and had procured him the pontificate by giving the election to the people. Young men of rank in large numbers had forgotten party feeling, and had attached themselves to the expedition as volunteers to learn military experience.
And then all the tombs which follow, the modern structures erected in order that the marble fragments discovered might be set in place, the old blocks of brick and concrete, despoiled of their sculptured-work and rising up like seared rocks, yet still suggesting their original shapes as shrines, /cippi/, and /sarcophagi/. There is a wondrous succession of high reliefs figuring the dead in groups of three and five; statues in which the dead live deified, erect; seats contrived in niches in order that wayfarers may rest and bless the hospitality of the dead; laudatory epitaphs celebrating the dead, both the known and the unknown, the children of Sextius Pompeius Justus, the departed Marcus Servilius Quartus, Hilarius Fuscus, Rabirius Hermodorus; without counting the sepulchres venturously ascribed to Seneca and the Horatii and Curiatii.
Pompey had befriended Auletes, and Gabinius, when Proconsul in Syria, had succeeded in restoring the king to his throne no doubt in obedience to Pompey, though not in obedience to the Senate. Auletes, when in Rome, had required large sums of money suppliant kings when in the city needed money to buy venal Senators and Rabirius had supplied him.
While Auletes still stood in need of Roman help, and saw the advantage of keeping faith with his foreign creditors, Rabirius was allowed to hold the office of royal dioecetes, or paymaster-general, which was one of great state and profit, and one by which he could in time have repaid himself his loan.
My father's pet book was the Colloquies of Erasmus; he was wont to say that those Colloquies furnished life with illustrations in every page. Out of the Colloquies of Erasmus he now answered the member. "Rabirius, wanting his servant Syrus to get up," quoth my father, "cried out to him to move. 'I do move, said Syrus.
Both Cicero and Hortensius defended Rabirius, but he was condemned by Cæsar, and, as we are told, himself only escaped by using that appeal to the people in support of which he had himself been brought to trial. In this, as in so many of the forensic actions of the day, there had been an admixture of violence and law.
In recommending the Manilian Law, I was to blazon the character of Pompey, and therefore indulged myself in all that variety of ornament which is peculiar to the second species of Eloquence. In the cause of Rabirius, as the honour of the Republic was at stake, I blazed forth in every species of amplification. But these characters are sometimes to be intermingled and diversified.
Towards the end of his speech he drew a clever picture of his unlucky client's misfortunes, and declared that he would have had to quit the Forum, i.e. to leave the Stock Exchange in disgrace, if Caesar had not come to his rescue by placing large sums at his disposal. What Rabirius did was simply to gamble on a gigantic scale, and get others to gamble with him.
In the same year he defended Rabirius Postumus, and in doing so carried on the purpose which he had been instigated to undertake by Cæsar in defending Gabinius. This Rabirius was the nephew of him whom ten years before Cicero had defended when accused of having killed Saturninus.
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