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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
An interesting phrase in a letter of Caelius to Cicero in 51 BC, especially relevant to the standing of injured socii or their non-Roman representatives in the quaestio de repetundis at this time, has been frequently misinterpreted by commentators on Cicero. Caelius is telling Cicero of the outcome of the condemnation of C. Claudius Pulcher after his governorship of Asia and the effect this had on an associate of Claudius, M. Servilius.
1 Exceptions are Hermann, C. F., De causa Serviliana (Gottingae, 1853), p. 11Google Scholar; Mueller, C. F. W., edition, critical note ad loc.; L. A. Constans in Constans-Bayet, Cicéron Correspondance, iv, p. 57. I am grateful to Professor W. S. Watt for references to these and help on a number of linguistic points.Google Scholar
2 I cannot consider here all the textual and translation problems raised by this sentence. I would translate ‘… had cause trouble everywhere and had left nothing alone without trying to sell it’. Quoiquam taken with reliquerat yields little sense; taken with venderet it is not even Latin (Madvig, Cic. de Finibus3, 807, n. 1). Quicquam (Lambinus) taken with reliquerat gives sense, and so does quoipiam (Wesenberg, Emendationes alterae, 20) taken with venderet-‘had left nothing without trying to sell it to someone’. I suspect that Servilius had been with C. Claudius in his province and had not only offered his services to him as a collusive accuser (see below) but had tried to sell his services to both sides as a witness.
3 Both language and the logic of the affair rule out an attempt to prosecute Servilius for praevaricatio (as in lex rep. 75=82). Claudius had in fact been condemned, nor had Servilius conducted the prosecution.
4 Possibly, but far from certainly, the Pausanias of Alabanda in Fam. 13.64.1.
5 I follow Sherwin-White, A. N., JRS 62 (1972), 96–7Google Scholar, in believing that Cicero in Balb. 54 does not imply that Latins were the only non-citizens allowed to prosecute in the repetundae court after the lex Servilia of Caepio. Positive evidence, however, that the socii were allowed to prosecute depends on the identification of the lex Tarentina (Bartoccini, R., Epigraphica 9, 1947, 3 ff.) with Glaucia's lay and the presumption that it largely reproduces the clauses of the earlier Gracchan lex repetundarum regarding privileges for successful prosecutors.Google Scholar
