Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/245

60 B.C.] the Senate. Bibulus accompanied by two tribunes appeared in the Forum on the day appointed for the voting on the Agrarian Law, and in due order vetoed the bill. This rendered all further proceedings unlawful. But Cæsar set law at defiance; his mob drove Bibulus and the tribunes with blows from the spot, and he then submitted his proposal to the assembly and declared it to be carried. A bill so passed was, of course, invalid, and could only be sustained, even as it had been enacted, by the strong hand.

It was now clear that the personal interposition of the veto could be made only at the peril of the life of the intervening magistrate, and Bibulus was not inclined to face the risk again. But the constitution allowed the exercise of the veto in a more convenient form, namely by the allegation of religious obstacles to the business. At this period the religious, no less than the civil, veto was an essential part of the constitution, and the conditions under which it might be applied were strictly regulated by the law.

The antiquarian history of this religious veto is curious and interesting. The desire to ascertain beforehand what is the pleasure of the gods, forms only a secondary motive in Roman augury; the primary object is to win the luck to your side, to avoid anything unchancy, to catch up and appropriate any word or sight which may have a happy significance. The Romans were full of contrivances for manufacturing good luck. Like Balak, if the