own much-derided verse, _cedant arma togae, concedat laurea laudi_, which
is defended by him, in Pis. 73 and Off. 1, 77. -- CONSUL ITERUM etc.: as
the second consulship of Fabius was in 228 B.C., while the law of Flaminius
was passed in 232 (according to Polybius), it is very difficult to
understand the statement here made. It is possible that Flaminius was one
of the commissioners for executing his own law, and that its execution
lasted over the time of Fabius' second consulship. The Flaminius here
mentioned is the same who fell as consul in 217 at the battle of lake
Trasimenus. He held large and statesman-like views on the policy of
securing Italy by planting Romans and Latins in the territory then recently
taken from the Gauls, in the neighborhood of Ariminum. This particular
measure was carried against the will of the senate, and was the first law
passed, since the _lex Hortensia_ of 287, in defiance of its wishes. It was
also the first agrarian law since the Licinio-Sextian law of 367. Polybius
dates the decline of the Roman constitution from the passing of the _lex
Flaminia_. Cf.'Rheinisches Museum', 1843, p. 573. -- SP. CARVILIO
QUIESCENTE: this Sp. Carvilius was consul in 234 when he conquered the
Corsicans and Sardinians. In 228 he was again consul, and died as augur in
212. He is said, but erroneously, to have been the first Roman who divorced
his wife. In 216, just after the battle of Cannae, he made a most
remarkable proposal, to fill up the gaps which that battle had made in the
numbers of the senate by selecting two members from each of the Latin
communities. It was almost the only occasion in the course of Roman history
when anything like modern representative government was advocated.
Carvilius was not sprung from one of the noble families, who for the most
part monopolized the higher offices of state, it is therefore not
surprising that he should have sympathized with Flaminius. -- CONTRA
SENATUS AUCTORITATEM: 'against the expressed wish of the senate' _Senatus
auctoritas_ is, strictly speaking, an opinion of the senate not formally
embodied in a decree, _senatus consultum_. Cicero, in Invent. 2, 52 says