Kitap 27
8
While the public attention was fixed on more important matters an old controversy was revived on the occasion of the election of a Curio Maximus, in place of M. Aemilius. There was one candidate, a plebeian, C. Mamilius Atellus, and the patricians contended that no votes ought to be counted for him, as none but a patrician had ever yet held that dignity. The tribunes, on being appealed to, referred the matter to the senate, the senate left it to the decision of the people. C. Mamilius Atellus was accordingly the first plebeian to be elected Curio Maximus. P. Licinius, the Pontifex Maximus, compelled C. Valerius Flaccus to be consecrated, against his will, a Flamen of Jupiter. C. Laetorius was appointed one of the Keepers of the Sacred Books in place of Q. Mucius Scaevola, deceased. Had not the bad repute into which Valerius had fallen given place to a good and honourable character, I should have preferred to keep silence as to the cause of his forcible consecration. It was in consequence of his careless and dissolute life as a young man, which had estranged his own brother Lucius and his other relations, that the Pontifex Maximus made him a Flamen. When his thoughts became wholly occupied with the performance of his sacred duties he threw off his former character so completely that amongst all the young men in Rome, none held a higher place in the esteem and approbation of the leading patricians, whether personal friends or strangers to him. Encouraged by this general feeling he gained sufficient self-confidence to revive a custom which, owing to the low character of former Flamens, had long fallen into disuse; he took his seat in the senate. As soon as he appeared L. Licinius the praetor had him removed. He claimed it as the ancient privilege of the priesthood and pleaded that it was conferred together with the toga praetexta and curule chair as belonging to the Flamen's office. The praetor refused to rest the question upon obsolete precedents drawn from the annalists and appealed to recent usage. No Flamen of Jupiter, he argued, had exercised that right within the memory of their fathers or their grandfathers. The tribunes, when appealed to, gave it as their opinion that as it was through the supineness and negligence of individual Flamens that the practice had fallen into abeyance, the priesthood ought not to be deprived of its rights. They led the Flamen into the senate amid the warm approval of the House and without any opposition even from the praetor, though every one felt that Flaccus had gained his seat more through the purity and integrity of his life than through any right inherent in his office.
