he now turned this into Greek and sent it to Archias, who, Cicero asserts, was deterred from writing by his envious admiration of its style1. Whether the poem of Archias was ever finished or not, we do not know, but in 44 B. C., Cicero mentions him in terms of affection 2.

§3. The circumstances and merits of the case.

For twenty-seven years after the passing of the Lex Plautia Papiria (i. e. from 89 to 62 B. C.), Archias enjoyed the privileges of a Roman citizen without molestation. He made his own will and testament in accordance with the forms of the Roman Law; with the full expectation that the Roman courts would recognise its validity. As a rule, only full Roman citizens could inherit the property of Roman citizens3, and Archias had taken possession without dispute of legacies left to him by Romans. L. Lucullus also had officially recognised him as a Roman citizen, by recommending him to the treasury more than once as deserving a reward for services done to Rome in the East1.

There can be little doubt that the prosecution of Archias arose out of the political animosities of the time, and was really directed against L. Lucullus. A jealousy had for many years existed between the two greatest generals of the time, L. Lucullus and Cn. Pompeius. It had begun in the contest the two had carried on for Sulla's favour, and had been embittered by the brilliant career of L. Lucullus in the East. When the latter returned to Rome, a large party in the Senate looked to him to deliver them from the tyranny of their professed champion Pompeius. The partisans of the two waged bitter war, and although Lucullus himself meddled little with politics, the fear of his opposition had much effect in driving Pompeius into the arms of Caesar and Crassus. For three years a series of

1 Ad Att. I. 20, 6.

2 De Div. I. § 79 noster Archias.
3 There were exceptions: see
Observe

e. g. Pro Caecina § 102.
that Archias is not described as
having voted at an election. As

he had not been subjected to the census, he was not a member of any tribe.

4 S II.

5 Plutarch, Luc. c. 4.

petty intrigues prevented Lucullus from celebrating a triumph which no one in the whole history of Rome had more honestly earned than he. At the last his triumph was only voted by the Comitia Tributa owing to a strong personal canvass carried on among the tribes by the most eminent senators1.

Lucullus triumphed in the beginning of 63 B. C. The prosecution of Archias was a small skirmish arising out of the battle about the triumph. A favourite mode of annoying a prominent man at Rome was to enter vexatious prosecutions against his friends. Political animosities were fought out in the courts as much as in the Senate or Comitia. Many associations (sodalitates, factiones) with organised bodies of spies (indices), and informers (delatores), existed, which had more or less connexion with the various political parties, and made a business of prosecutions, for the sake of the legitimate and illegitimate gains they brought3. Record of only two cases strictly resembling the case of Archias has been preserved. In both of these political motives prompted the prosecution. One is the case of L. Cornelius Balbus, whom Cicero also defended, where the prosecutor wished to harass Pompeius. In the other the defendant was a freedman of the notorious Gabinius, who was himself being tried in another court on the same day, and was acquitted. The jury who were trying the freedman, vexed at hearing of the acquittal, at once condemned the man for the sins of his master1.

As a weapon of attack against Archias, the enemies of Lucullus used the Lex Papia. It was a sort of Alien Act, expelling all foreigners from Rome, one man being excepted by name. Such έevnλária were exceptional at Rome, where foreigners were as a rule far more liberally treated than in the states

1 Plut. Luc. 37.

2 Cic. Academica II. § 3.

3 Cf. Cic. Pro Sulla § 70, Pro Murena 49, Pro Sestio § 95, Zumpt Criminal-Process d. Röm. Rep. p. 65.

Cf. Zumpt as above, p. 243. 5 That it was an act for the general expulsion of foreigners and not merely of those foreigners

who passed themselves off for citizens, follows from Cic. De Leg. Agr. I. § 13. Cf. also De Off. III. § 47, Pro Balbo § 52. It is difficult to see how such a law can have been even temporarily carried into effect. Dio Cassius, XXXVII. c. 9, limits the law to foreigners born outside Italy.

of Greece during the period of their political freedom. The Senate, as chief executive authority, occasionally for reasons of state directed the magistrates to expel from Rome certain classes of foreign residents. In this way the Greek philosophers and rhetoricians were ejected in 161 B. C.1 But the only statute passed before the Lex Papia which had the same purport, was one carried by a tribune, M. Junius Pennus, in 126 B.C., which forbade aliens to settle in Rome. Both measures were prompted rather by passing considerations of political expediency than by actual hatred of aliens. Pennus wished to clear Rome of the Italians who flocked there in the hope of benefiting by the policy of the party led by the Gracchi3. So Papius desired to remove from the capital the foreign portion of the rabble which held possession of the streets and the forum under the leadership of Catiline and his friends, and was fast making orderly government impossible. The law of Papius was really one result of a great movement against electoral corruption, which produced the numerous laws against ambitus that were passed towards the close of the Republican period.

The prosecutor was one Gratius, a man entirely unknown excepting from Cicero's speech. The work of prosecution was considered at Rome too invidious for men of distinction. The defendant evidently did not take the case seriously. L. Lucullus and his other powerful friends might have procured for him the services of all the most eminent counsel. In the similar case of Balbus, Cicero, Pompeius and Crassus all appeared for the defence. In this case Cicero alone was retained. His acceptance of the brief was intended as a public indication of his adhesion to

1 Sometimes provincial towns complained to the Senate that they were being depopulated by migrations to Rome, and the Senate ordered the magistrates to see that the emigrants returned to their place of birth. See Livy XXXIX. 3. The case mentioned Pro Balbo § 52 is similar.

2 The law of Scaevola and Crassus, mentioned by Cic. De

Off. III. § 47, only affected aliens who had wrongfully got their names placed on the burgess-roll. The same was the case with the Lex Claudia of 177 B.C. Livy XLI. 8, 9; cf. XLII. 10.

3 Cic. Brutus, § 109, cf. De Off. III. § 47.

4 Cf. Cic. De Off. II. §§ 49, 50. Quintilian XII. c. 7, §§ 3, 4

the party of L. Lucullus in the Senate, and his dissent from the partisans of Pompeius. The last-named section was naturally distasteful to Cicero, because while it professed to be conservative and aristocratic, it actually used the weapons of demagogism and mob-rule. The old aristocratic party, attached to orderly and constitutional government, was now chiefly represented in the Senate by the friends of Lucullus. But, in addition to his natural predilection for the party of Lucullus, Cicero had private and personal reasons for shewing his attachment to it by defending Archias. Since Cicero had laid down his consulship, he had been bitterly attacked by men who professed to be friends of Pompeius and had been countenanced by him, for the measures taken to suppress the Catilinarians. They had tried to establish Pompeius as a dictator for the purpose of punishing Cicero and the Senate, and the attempt had only been crushed by extreme measures on the part of the Senate. Pompeius himself had treated Cicero very coldly during the troubles of the year 63 B. C.

The arguments in the case of Archias require but little examination. The grounds on which Gratius attacked Archias were two first and chiefly, because he could not bring complete documentary evidence to prove his original admission to the citizenship; secondly, because he had never been enrolled as a citizen on the census-register. Gratius does not seem to have denied that Archias had fulfilled two of the three conditions required by the Lex Plautia Papiria1; he had a settled habitation at Rome; he had given in his name to the praetor within sixty days after the passing of the law, and his name was still to be seen, free from erasure, on the books of Metellus. But the town archives of Heraclia had perished by fire in the civil wars, so Gratius contended that the admission of Archias as citizen of Heraclia, on which he based his claim to the Roman franchise, could not be proved. This charge was easily refuted by the testimony both of the corporation of Heraclia and of M. Lucullus, who had actually witnessed and taken part in the formalities. The other objection of Gratius, referring to the census, 2 $9.

1 See above, p. 9.

is one which I venture to think none of the editors of the speech have thoroughly understood1. He cannot have meant to contend that no man could act as a citizen whose name was not on the census-roll. Such a contention would have been absurd, for, if valid, it would have disfranchised large numbers of Roman citizens for no fault of their own2. What Gratius urged was probably this: "There are two ways, and only two, by which Archias could have arrived at the Roman franchise through the franchise of Heraclia. Either as an individual he gained his citizenship under the Lex Plautia Papiria, or he must have passed into the Roman burgess-body in company with the general body of the burgesses of Heraclia, which has now ceased to be a civitas foederata, and has become a municipium under the Lex Iulia3. But I have shewn he cannot prove that he satisfied the first of the three conditions of the Lex Plautia Papiria. If he were enfranchised under the Lex Iulia, his name must be found on the census-roll, for when the franchise is conferred on a whole town, it is customary for the censors with much formality to incorporate the whole body of its burgesses with the burgess-body of Rome. Now the name of Archias is not to be found on the lists of the censors." Cicero's reply is complete. P. Licinius Crassus and L. Iulius Caesar, the censors of 89 B. C., had proposed to distribute the persons enfranchised by the Lex Iulia among eight of the old tribes, but they resigned without even beginning their work. The distribution was carried out by L. Marcius Philippus and M. Perperna in 86, but at that time Archias was in the East with L. Lucullus. The next census was taken in 70 B. C. by L. Gellius Publicola, and Cn. Lentulus Clodianus. Lucullus and Archias were again in the East. Cicero does not think it worth while to mention that there were censors in 65 and again in 64, because in both years they resigned without carrying out the census.

1

Altogether the case against Archias was weak and vexatious.

2 In the early times of the Republic when the census was regularly taken, such a contention might have been good. But be