Ambitus, which literally means 'a going about,' and it is well expressed by our word canvassing. In all countries, where there is popular election, solicitation of votes and bribery in some form are means by which candidates sometimes attempt to secure their election. These elections occurred annually at Rome, and so both candidates and electors had great practice in all election tricks. The Romans attempted by legislation to make men politically honest, and they succeeded as well as we have done, and no better. Some early leges' or enactments on the offence of Ambitus are mentioned. The Lex Cornelia Baebia B.C. 181 incapacitated candidates, who were convicted of bribery, from being candidates again for ten years, for we can refer to no other Lex than this the words of the scholiast on Cicero's oration Pro P. Sulla (c. 5). This law only punished the briber, so far as we know, and wisely did not touch him who took the bribe. Polybius in his sixth book seems to speak of bribery at elections, when he says that among the Carthaginians men obtain magisterial offices by open bribery or by openly giving, but among the Romans death is the penalty for this offence. Polybius wrote after the enactment of the Lex Cornelia Baebia, but we cannot admit, even if we assume that we know nothing about the penalties contained in this Lex, that death was ever the penalty at Rome for bribery or any kind of corruption effected by money. The votes at elections were given by tabellae or ballot since the enactment of the Lex Gabinia, as we have seen, and Marius in his tribunate had carried a law to prevent interference with the freedom of voting. It is not known when a regular court, or Quaestio as the Romans named it, was established for the trial of candidates who were charged with bribery at elections, but if Plutarch's account of Marius' trial is true, such a court existed in B.c. 116, but there is no record of the time when it was established. The only fact from which the bribery of Marius was inferred was this, as Plutarch tells it. Cassius Sabaco was one of the most intimate friends of Marius, and on the polling day a slave of Cassius was observed to be in the Septa mingled with the voters. If no better evidence than this were produced against an English

member of Parliament who is charged with bribery, his seat would be secure. Cassius being summoned before the court explained the presence of his slave in the Septa by saying that the heat had made him very thirsty and he called for a cup of cold water, which the slave brought and left the place as soon as his master had drunk. C. Herennius was summoned as a witness against Marius, but he declared that it was contrary to usage for a patron to give evidence against a client, and that the parents of Marius and Marius himself were originally clients of his house. The court admitted the legal excuse, but Marius contradicted Herennius, and maintained that from the moment when he was declared to be elected to a magistracy he became divested of his relation of client to his patronus. This was an admission that the Marii were originally clients of the Herennii, and they ought to have had the gentile name Herennii. Plutarch remarks that the statement of Marius was not exactly true, for it was not every magistracy which released a man who had obtained it and his family from the necessity of having a patronus, but only those magistracies to which the law assigned the curule seat. The praetorship was a curule magistracy, and Marius had been elected; but as the validity of his election would depend on the result of the trial, it might have been a nice question for the subtle lawyers of Rome whether Marius was praetor or not, if it had been necessary to decide it. The votes of the jury (judices) were equally divided, and that was an acquittal. The jury in this case then consisted of an even number, but this could not have been the case usually.

The consuls of B.C. 115 were M. Aemilius Scaurus and M. Caecilius Metellus; and in this year C. Marius exercised the office of praetor. Marius was neither skilled in the law nor was he an orator; and he made no great figure in his high office. He was a soldier and nothing more. Scaurus was of a patrician family, which had sunk so low that his father got his living by dealing in charcoal. The son, says Aurelius Victor, a very poor authority, hesitated whether he should enter on political life and aspire to the high offices of the republic or follow the business of money-dealer. He determined to make himself an orator, and thus raised him

self in the world. He made a good choice, but perhaps it was necessity more than choice which determined his course of life, for Scaurus in his own memoirs, written in three books, said that his father left him only ten slaves and a small sum of money. The charcoal man then was not in a large way of business. The son served in the army as a matter of course, both in Spain, the chief Roman school of war after the destruction of Carthage, and also in Sardinia under Orestes. In B.C. 120 he was elected praetor. In B.c. 117 he was a candidate for the consulship and failed, but he was elected in B.C. 116, and exercised his office in the following year. Thus at the age of forty-six the son of the charcoal man was consul, and soon promoted to the high rank of Princeps Senatus. The historical records of this time are nearly a blank. We only know that the consul Scaurus was at the head of an army in North Italy, and that he kept good discipline, of which Frontinus has preserved the following instance on the authority of Scaurus himself. On one occasion, the limits of the camp, where the Romans were going to pass the night, included a fruit-tree, and when the army left the place on the next day the tree and the fruit remained untouched. The example may be recommended to modern commanders, though we do not believe that they will ever have an army under such discipline as Scaurus had. The consul gained some advantages over the Alpine tribes, and had in this year a triumph over the Galli Karni, as the Fasti have it. The Carni were an Alpine people in the mountains which run parallel to the head of the Hadriatic.

Scaurus proposed two laws in his consulship, one of which was a sumptuary law, and the other was about the voting of the Libertini, or that class of men who had been manumitted and made Roman citizens; but we know nothing exact about either of these laws. Scaurus was an arrogant man. As he was passing by the Praetor P. Decius seated in his chair of office, Scaurus told the Praetor to rise, and either because he would not or had not risen till he was told, the consul tore his dress, broke his curule seat, and gave public notice that no man should apply to the Praetor's court, for Decius was either Praetor Urbanus or Praetor Peregrinus.

The censors of this year (B.c. 115) L. Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus and Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus removed two-andthirty senators out of the Senate. Among them was Cassius Sabaco, the election friend of Marius; and C. Licinius Geta, one of the consuls of B.C. 116, who, notwithstanding this temporary disgrace, was afterwards censor himself, as Cicero says. In the 'lectio senatus,' or list of the senators as settled by the censors, the name of Scaurus was first, and he was accordingly Princeps Senatus, a high honour which had never before been conferred on any man during his consulship. These censors are said to have made some reforms in theatrical matters, or whatever is meant by removing the ars ludicra' from the city and allowing only a Latin piper and a singer. This regulation certainly did not apply to public theatrical representations, but probably to such as were got up in wine-shops and inns for the amusement of the people, whose real theatre is made by themselves, and their plays, music and dancing, are the expression of the national taste. I presume that these moral censors interfered with popular amusements and tried to put them down, instead of regulating them, which is the wiser course. The censors allowed the 'ludus talorum,' or game of 'tali,' which is harmless enough so long as it is only an amusement.

The Lustrum was celebrated in B.c. 114. Three hundred and ninety-four thousand three hundred and thirty-six 'heads' were reckoned.

In the consulship of M' Acilius Balbus and C. Porcius Cato (B.c. 114) a girl named Helvia, the daughter of L. Helvius, a Roman eques, was returning from the Ludi Romani to Apulia with her father and mother. The party was overtaken by a thunder-storm in Campania, and the father seeing his daughter alarmed took her out of the carriage and placed her on one of the horses, that they might the sooner reach some shelter. The girl was in the midst of the company, when a flash of lightning killed her on the spot. Her clothes were torn away without being rent, her rings and ornaments were scattered, but the body had no signs of injury. She was stretched lifeless on the ground, all naked, with the tongue projecting a little. The horse too lay dead with his

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trappings thrown about. A death by lightning could not be a very uncommon occurrence, but the circumstances made it significant. Helvia was a young virgin, and the haruspices declared that this calamity portended some disgrace to the Vestal virgins, and to the equestrian order too, because the trappings of the horse were dispersed. The event soon showed that the interpretation of the Haruspices was right; or the chroniclers took the pains to connect with this unfortunate occurrence the events which happened afterwards.

C. Marius after his praetorship had the province of the Further Spain, the southern and western part of the peninsula. His only employment, says Plutarch, was to clear out the robbers from his province, 'which was still an uncivilized country in its habits, and in a savage state, as the Iberians had not yet ceased to consider robbery as no dishonourable occupation.' A brief notice in Appian informs us that a man named M. Marius had to deal with the Lusitani, probably not those who had been settled in the kingdom of Valencia, but those Lusitani who still occupied their native country. Marius was assisted by the Celtiberi; and to reward them for their services he settled a number of these Celtiberi with the consent of the Senate near a city named Colenda, the site of which is uncertain. Freinsheim and Pighius refer this passage of Appian (Hispan. c. 100) to C. Marius, and it is possible that they may be right; but then there must be two errors in the text of Appian, first in the name, which is M. Marius; and next in the words which mark the time when these Celtiberi were settled near Colenda. Accordingly, if Appian's text is right, this Marius must be another man of the name who was in Spain about fourteen years later. But notwithstanding the two difficulties in Appian's text, I am inclined to think that C. Marius, the propraetor, is the man whom the historian intended to desig

nate.

C. Porcius Cato, a grandson of the censor, and one of the consuls of B.C. 114, had Macedonia for his province. The Macedonian frontier was troubled by a nation named Scordisci, whom the Romans finally subdued, and the Scordisci ceased to exist as a great people. The later geographers