every senator's interest that the power of the senate should be
recognised in its greatest extent, even though it should not be
exercised in every particular case.
[265] That is, the so-called thirty tyrants in the year B. C. 404.
[266] _Ea_; for this accusative, see Zumpt, S 385.
[267] _Damasippus_ was only a surname of the praetor M. Junius Brutus,
who in the year B. C. 82 put to death a great many Roman nobles of
the party of Sulla.
[268] Namely, by Sulla, after he had been made dictator.
[269] _Pleraque_; most of the ensigns and distinctions by which the
magistrates were distinguished from private persons, especially the
_toga praetexta_, _sella curulis_, _fasces_ (which were carried
by the lictors), and, above all, the splendid procession of the
_triumphatores_.
[270] _Legibus_ is here a pleonasm, and might have been omitted. We
must here repeat that Caesar makes an artful application of the
circumstance that, in all the late criminal laws, the _interdictio
aquae et ignis_ was fixed as the severest punishment, as if
thereby a person had been simply permitted to withdraw from the
republic. The _interdictio_ was a much more severe punishment,
inasmuch as the person on whom it was inflicted lost all his rights
as a citizen, and as every one was forbidden to receive him into his
house, so that he was a complete outcast. Wherever these regulations
were not carried into effect, and even in case a criminal made his
escape before the sentence was pronounced, we can see nothing but an
abuse of clemency.
[271] _Quominus_ is here used because the leading clause conveys the
idea of a hindrance; but _ne_ also might have been written.
[272] _Per municipia_, 'among the municipia.' See Zumpt, S 301.