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Caesar Strabo will have made his claim to early consideration for the presidential office of consul on the basis of public service. It was not merely military or oratorical or juristic performance that deserved the notice of the electorate but distinguished benefit to res publica in those capacities (summa dignitas). Caesar stepped forward, not as mere orator, but as destroyer of Q. Varius and ipso facto patron of his victims, whether specifically assisted by Caesar’s efforts or now in exile. The emergence of Caesar’s candidacy and a movement to recall consulatum contra leges petenti resistentem longius quam uoluit popularis aura prouexit.” The optima causa here is the uera causa of opposition to Strabo’s extraordinary candidacy which Sulpicius shared with his colleague P. Antistius (Brutus 226). It is also to be identified with unspecified bonae actiones represented as the beginnings of Sulpicius’ tribunician activity (Asconius In Comelianam 64C). 33 Asconius (25C) makes Caesar’s contention with Sulpicius over the extra-legal campaign for the consulate the causa belli ciuilis\ he makes Sulpicius’ further progress from good to evil actiones the actual initium bellorum ciuilium (64C). 5b Plutarch Sulla 10.3: the best resolution of a defective text. exiles early in 88 should be taken as no coincidence. He was their man. And they were the ones he had not saved—yet. That the exiles in question are primarily the persons condemned by the quaestio set up by Q. Varius should need no argument. It was those like L. Memmius,[1] L. Calpurnius Bestia,[2] and above all Sulpicius’ friend C. Cotta,[3] once hoped-for successor to Drusus in the tribunate, whose plight concerned so many optimates; it was not about expelled Italians whose problems were now being solved anyway by other means.[4] A proposal was brought forward at this point recalling those who had not been permitted to plead their cause.[5] Since those who had come before the Varian quaestio had been “tried”, it has been suggested that the proposal could not refer to these. But trials under mob-pressure would be polluted by that fact, at Rome as well as elsewhere. And variable pressure was applied: the accused Scaurus was actually acclaimed by the mob and his prosecution collapsed.[6] This very fact is an indicator of the vital role played by these mobs. The flexible M. Antonius[7] and the dogged and virtuous Q. Pompeius[8] were not convicted; others, many more than the few we are sure of, did not find favour; some will have anticipated their own conviction. The very fact that the term ui eiecti was later applied in another bill precisely to those who had been described as quibus causam dicere non licuisset in the first63 should put the identity of the exiles to rest: they were those who in one way or another were denied due process at trials held under the lex Varia in 90. Here Q. Pompeius is moved into the spotlight. Like Sulpicius he was a friend of the exiles, and had indeed come just short of being one of them himself. It has been suggested attractively that Pompeius is the unknown proponent of the exiles’ bill vetoed by Sulpicius and that this was the cause of the famous quarrel.[9] This must be dismissed on several considerations. 1) The quarrel is represented in our texts as Sulpicius’ grievance against Pompeius; this scenario would tend rather to give Pompeius a grievance against Sulpicius. 2) Later in the year with Sulpicius dead and Caesar apparently neutralised, when Sulla and Pompeius were in full control at Rome, the recall of C. Cotta and the exiles was not carried through, and was still resisted by the consuls.[10] Cotta languished in exile till 82 and Sulla’s second entry of Rome in arms. 3) A success for Caesar Strabo, reinforcing his claim to the consulate, was at no time in the interests of Sulla and his colleague and adjinis Pompeius, destabilising as it would do Sulla’s military prospects. It is best to conclude that the first proposal to recall the exiles vetoed by Sulpicius was put up by one of the tribunes of 88 acting in Caesar’s interest. Sulpicius was still at one with the consuls of 88 in resisting Caesar’s bid for the consulate: the rivalry of Sulpicius and Caesar and the anxieties of Sulla and Pompeius over Sulla’s command gave edge to their proper and truly optimate opposition to any destabilisation of the leges annales. But Sulpicius’ resistance could not rest on principled legality in the face of Caesar’s power in the streets. Sulpicius must match him. His fellow-tribune P. Antistius, who was later to serve the regime (as cautiously as possible) in the “Marian” years of Cinna’s continuous consulates,[11] acted with Sulpicius in arguing the case against Caesar’s claim. Did he re-introduce Sulpicius to Marius? Certainly Sulpicius now organised gangs which defeated Caesar’s in battle. Once Sulpicius was master of the streets of Rome, it was possible to take over himself the agenda of recalling the exiles relabelled as ui eiecti. [1] Probably: accused (Sisenna frg. 44 apud HRR Peter), he may or may not be the Mummius (Achaicus!) in Appian BC 1.37. On the accused under the Lex Varia, see E.S. Gruen ‘The Lex Varia’, JRS 55 (1965), 59-73. 38 Appian BC 1.37: he went into exile without pleading. [3] Cicero De oratore 3.11; Brutus 303, 305; Appian BC 1.37: in the course of an impressive defence he openly attacked the equites, who supplied the jury, and left Rome before the indices had voted. A published version was put out by L. Aelius Stilo (Brutus 205). Cotta maintained the philosophic apatheia of his uncle P. Rutilius Rufus, for whom he had spoken two years before, while his friends Caesar and Sulpicius were to turn to violence—eventually against each other. [4] For argument that the exiles were Italian allies affected by the Lex Licinia Mucia of 95, see E. Badian ‘Quaestiones Variae’, Hist. 18 (1969), 487-90, reflecting E.S. Gruen’s concerns (‘The Lex Varia’, JRS 55 [1965], 71-73), but not the pointlessness of further conjecture asserted by Gruen. bl Ad Herennium 2.45. m Asconius In Scaurianam 22C; Valerius Maximus 3.7.8. [7] Cicero Tusculan Disputations 2.57; Antonius absented himself from Rome in 90-89 (Brutus 304). He may not have been out of danger. H Cicero Brutus 304. Pompeius stayed, perhaps at some risk, to pursue the consulate at the elections of 89. To what extent did he owe such security as he enjoyed in 90 to Caesar Strabo’s organisation? content (and therefore intention) of the law proposed by Sulpicius was substantively unchanged from that which he had vetoed. The author pardons him if there were circumstances dictating his word-play (like the change in Caesar’s position after he had been driven from the streets?). It should be borne in mind that a book on rhetoric is not even likely to be a rhetorical book, and deserves all the consideration of a work of fact. The term ui eiecti echoes Cicero’s “Cotta . . . eiectus est e ciuitate” (De oratore 3.11). hl‘ R.G. Lewis “P. Sulpicius’ law to recall exiles”, CQ_ 48 (1998), esp. 199. [10] Appian BC 1.63: the pressure on the consuls seems to have come mostly from the factional supporters of those who had been expelled as enemies by the Senate after Sulla and Pompeius returned to Rome in arms: the Aurelii Cottae are unlikely to have threatened assassination! But it would be difficult to frame legislation to restore their friends, the victims of the Lex Varia, and not their enemies the Marians: both could well be described as quibus causam dicere non licuit and as ui eiecti. Yet nothing was done for Rutilius Rufus, though he could have been covered under ne quis iudicio publico circumueniatur. l,a He was index quaestionis in 86 when he contracted a marriage-alliance with the young Pompeius, before him on a charge of receiving goods out of his father’s peculation (Plutarch Pompey 4). Antistius was in good company with the consular and censor L. Marcius Philippus, the future consul Cn. Carbo and Q. Hortensius the orator in assisting the promising young man. It is interesting that Antistius was aedilicius still, not yet praetor, when he was put to death in 82 for Sullan sympathies (Velleius Paterculus 2.26; Appian BC 1.88). He may have over-calculated the risks and prospects at each stage. More information please go to Lawyers
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