Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/445

 1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 437 grant made by the elder Pompey seems to go a good deal further than this; and we are disposed to follow Signor Pais in thinking that the commander stretched his prerogative and acted ' per ambitionem et ultra praescriptum ' in thus enfranchising wholesale extra-Italian ' socii '. But we cannot follow him in thinking that this shows that the ' dediticii ' of a well-known frag- ment of Granius Licinianus (p. 21, ed. Flemisch) likewise belonged to ' exterae gentes '. The reader will naturally turn to the essay on the ' Lex lulia Municipalis ', but he will not find it very satisfying. Signor Pais inclines to the view that this enactment was a ' lex satura ', but a large part of the article is devoted, not to an examination of the inscription itself, but to a survey of the revolutionary period, intended to show (what scarcely needed to be proved) that neither Caesar nor any other statesman of the time was carefvd to observe the law and custom of the Roman constitution. He does not really come to grips with the difficult questions which have been threshed out in recent discussions of the law (or laws, or excerpts from laws) by Professors Reid and Elmore and Dr. Hardy, to mention only English scholars. The second work in the series, by Signor E. Ciaceri, covers a wider period and ranges from the relations of the Roman republic with the Ptolemaic dynasty to the Pisonian conspiracy under Nero. The essays are well furnished with documents, and the facts with regard to the tradition are lucidly presented ; but it is difficult to say that the author establishes much that is important in the shape of new results. The much-discussed trial of Rabirius in 63 B. c. is treated at considerable length. Signor Ciaceri's criticisms of other historians are often acute and well founded ; but he does not explain (as Dr. Hardy has done) the precise attitude of the democratic leaders, as revealed by the prosecution, to the doctrine of the ' Senatus consult um ultimum ', the careful and exhaustive treatment of which by Plaumann he does not seem to know. He lays much stress on the fact that Metellus Celer, whom he doubtless correctly states to have been ' praetor urbanus ' — others have held that L. Valerius Flaccus held that office in 63 B. c. — must have had an understanding with Caesar when he brought the proceedings in the ' comitia ' to a close by striking the red flag ; but it is very hard to see how this should have led to the misunderstanding with Cicero which is implied in the words * reconciliata gratia ' written by the latter early in 62 b. c. In the essays on the Catilinarian and Pisonian conspiracies we cannot find much that is original. The fact that Cicero after his return from exile used much milder language about Catiline and his associates than he had done in 63 b. c. has of course been duly noted by others ; and the narrative of the later incident does not carry us far beyond Tacitus ; the connexion of Epicharis with Annaeus Mela (recorded by Polyaenus) was given its due weight by Dr. Henderson in his Princi'pate of Nero. We are glad to see that Signor Ciaceri, in an essay on the sources of Tacitus, very properly rejects the ' Einquellenprinzip ' of Nissen ; and his suggestion that, in relating the story of the slave wars in Sicily, Diodorus, besides copying Posidonius, had a second source before him, is worthy of consideration, although Diodorus's methods were very different from those of Tacitus. H. Stuaet Jones.