Book 9
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Licinius Macer, however, attempts to show that he had given up the clerk's business for some time as he had been a tribune of the plebs, and had also twice held office as a triumvir, the first time as a triumvir nocturnus, “At a very remote age the direction of the police was entrusted to three magistrates called triumviri nocturni, because their principal duty was to watch over the safety of the City at night. Valerius Maximus speaks of one of them, P. Villius, being fined because “he had not kept with diligence his nocturnal watch,” and of other triumviri who were punished because they had not run with proper speed to extinguish a fire which had broken out in a jeweller's shop on the Via Sacra.” —Lanciani (p. 221). and afterwards as one of the three commissioners for settling a
46.4
colony. However this may be, there is no question that he maintained a defiant attitude towards the nobles, who regarded his lowly origin with
46.5
contempt. He made public the legal forms and processes which had been hidden away in the closets of the pontiffs; he exhibited a calendar written on whitened boards in the Forum, on which were marked the days on which legal proceedings were allowed; to the intense disgust of the nobility he dedicated the temple of Concord on the
