In 88 B.C. the dying embers of the Social War kindled an even more dangerous civil war. Violence with gangs was no longer the final solution in Roman political struggles, but war with a regular army took its place. The link between the two wars and the critical escalation of political conflict was created by the tribunate of P. Sulpicius Rufus. Most modern accounts differ little in describing the sequence of events in his tribunate, though they vary in the interpretation (...) of his motives and policy. They agree because they accept the common basis to the narratives of Appian, Plutarch, and Velleius as true, even though they usually discard the Tendenz in these authors, through which Sulpicius is portrayed as an unscrupulous man who put his services at Marius’ disposal. It is the aim of this paper to propose that the wheat in these authors cannot be so easily separated from the chaff: that in fact the bias, which is most obvious in Plutarch’s Lives, and there can be largely ascribed to the influence of Sulla’s fjown memoirs, has not only distorted motives but misplaced and misrepresented facts. Important inconsistencies in Appian, when taken in conjunction with the little information we have outside these sources, suggest a different outline for Sulpicius’ tribunate—one which involves more uncertainties than the commonly accepted view, because it is obtained by rejecting the validity of more of our scanty source material, but which may enable us to judge more fairly not only Sulpicius and Marius but also Sulla himself. (shrink)

Cicero, after a discussion of the value of Cornelius' bill about privilegia, is clearly here dealing with the bill, ‘ut praetores ex edictis suis perpetuis ius dicerent’ . The pluperfect subjunctives suggest that he is arguing that notorious unjust judgements of previous years would not have happened, if Cornelius' bill had been then in force. Cicero, after a discussion of the value of Cornelius' bill about privilegia,' is clearly here dealing with the bill, ‘ut praetores ex edictis suis perpetuis ius (...) dicerent’ . The pluperfect subjunctives suggest that he is arguing that notorious unjust judgements of previous years would not have happened, if Cornelius' bill had been then in force. (shrink)

From a purely historical point of view Lucan's epic is important, because it represents an intermediate stage between the contemporary account by Caesar of his defeat of the Pompeians and the later versions in Plutarch, Appian, and Cassius Dio. However, it does not merely show us the development of the historical tradition about the war, in particular that part of it which did not stem ultimately from Caesar himself. It is a milestone in the development of Roman ideas about the (...) fall of the Republic. For, while we can only tentatively deduce the attitude which Augustan writers, especially Pollio and Livy, adopted towards this war, Lucan represents the views of those who had not only lived under the monarchy which was the final product of the conflict begun in 49 B.c., but had experienced its less agreeable consequences under the later Julio-Claudians. (shrink)

In a previous article I argued that the promulgatio trinundinum, regularly necessary before a vote in a legislative assembly, an election, or a iudicium populi during the late Roman Republic, was not the declaration of an interval of time but a publication of the proposed business which had to be made over three market-days or nundinae. These market-days occurred continuously at eight-day intervals, and no fresh start was made at the beginning of a year or other period. So the identification (...) of nundinae near the time when a law or other piece of public business was being transacted should provide evidence for or against my view, and further, if this view is sound, suggest more precisely the dates on which certain events occurred. (shrink)

Trinvndinvm, best known as the minimum interval prescribed between the promulgatio and rogatio of a law by the Lex Caecilia Didia of 98 B.C., but also employed in a number of other constitutional and legal contexts, is generally supposed now to mean a period of 24 days R : in other words, it is held to be three Roman eight-day weeks.