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And the story goes that they did not merely suffer death in a simple form, but were led to the altar consecrated to the former Caesar and there sacrificed, three hundred knights and many senators, among them Tiberius Cannutius who formerly during his tribuneship had assembled the populace for Caesar Octavianus.
Albinus, and that excellent citizen L. Opimius, who killed Gracchus; of which he was acquitted by the people, though he had constantly sided against them, were all condemned by their judges, who were of the Gracchan party. Very unlike him in his Tribuneship, and indeed in every other part of his life, was that infamous citizen C. Licinius Nerva; but he was not destitute of Eloquence.
In the autumn of 691, Quintus Metellus Nepos arrived from the camp of Pompeius in the capital, and came forward as a candidate for the tribuneship, with the express design of employing that position to procure for Pompeius the consulship for the year 693 and more immediately, by special decree of the people, the conduct of the war against Catilina. The excitement in Rome was great.
Sextus himself had accepted an appointment to a tribuneship in a legion of Cæsar in Gaul.
But observe the coincidence. At the same place and the same moment comes a slave from you with letters. The former asked me whether I hadn't heard the news? I said, "No." "Publius," says he, "is a candidate for the tribuneship." "You don't mean it?" "Yes, I do," says he, "and at daggers drawn with Cæsar. His object is to rescind his acts."
In these cases, therefore, we see religion, wisely used, assist in the reduction of this city, and in restoring the tribuneship to the nobles; neither of which ends could well have been effected without it. One other example bearing on the same subject I must not omit.
Harangues of this kind, listened to with approbation, induced some persons to stand for the military tribuneship, each avowing that if in office he would propose something to the advantage of the commons. Hopes were held out of a distribution of the public land, of colonies to be planted, and of money to be raised for the pay of the soldiers, by a tax imposed on the proprietors of estates.
He also wanted to found a colony of plebeians on the ruins of Carthage, and when his tribuneship was over he went to Africa to see about it; but when he came home the patricians had arranged an attack on him, and he was insulted by the lictor of the consul Opimius.
For, assailed by every argument to no purpose that they would then at length desist from obstructing the war, when they yielded neither to the public storm, nor to the odium themselves, they succeed so far as to have a decree of the senate passed for the election of military tribunes; with an express stipulation, however, that no candidate should be considered, who was tribune of the people that year, and that no one should be re-elected plebeian tribune for the year following; the senate undoubtedly pointing at the Icilians, whom they suspected of aiming at the consular tribuneship as the reward of their turbulent tribuneship of the commons.
The senate displeased by this ambitious conduct, and refusing a triumph unless Pedum was either taken or should surrender, Æmilius, alienated from the senate in consequence of this act, administered the remainder of the consulship like to a seditious tribuneship.
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