MORGAN. — THE PREFACE OF VITRUVIUS. 167 



civil or military officers, or certain public slaves, received while still in 

 service or working. It is thus applied to a quaestor by Cicero, Red. in 

 Sen. 35, Plancius qui omnibus provincialibus ornamentis commodisque 

 depositis totam suam quaesturam in me sustentando et conservando collo- 

 cavit. And again of a military tribune, Fam. 7, 8, 1, sum admiratus 

 cur tribunatus commoda, dempto praesertim labore militiae, contemp- 

 seris (in this case Caesar had apparently offered Trebatius a mili- 

 tary tribuneship, with exemption from duties). Frontinus in his work 

 on the Roman aqueducts describes (116 ff.) the two gangs of public 

 slaves employed upon them; one was the familia publica, the other 

 the jamilia Caesaris. Then he goes on (119): commoda publicae 

 familiae ex aerario dantur . . . Caesaris jamilia ex fisco accipit com- 

 moda. Here the word commoda is not equivalent to our "wages," 

 which are paid at regular short intervals, but it seems to denote an 

 annual lump sum given to these public slaves every year.41 And in 

 the case of the quaestor and the tribune mentioned by Cicero, the 

 word does not mean "pay," for we know that officials and officers of 

 these and the higher ranks were not, in republican times, paid what 

 we understand by salaries. Instead, they got free quarters and trans- 

 port, rations, their outfit or a lump sum covering it (vasarium), certain 

 rights of requisitioning for necessaries when in the provinces, and 

 officers on the staff or in the employ of higher magistrates expected 

 to receive from them, or from the treasury, good service rewards in 

 the way of "gratifications" or free gifts (co?igiaria, beneficia) which 

 also seem to have been paid annually in a lump sum. 42 It was 

 " chommoda" of this or any other sort 43 for which Arrius was looking 

 w T hen he went out on the staff of Crassus to Syria (Catullus 84). In 

 the second place, commoda is used in the sense of some form of gratu- 

 ity presented to soldiers on their retirement from service. So in the 

 letter of Brutus and Cassius to Antony (Cic. Fam. 11, 2, 3): ea re 

 denuntiatum esse veteranis quod de commodis eorum mense Iunio 

 laturus esses; and probably the word has this meaning in Cicero 

 himself, L. A. 2, 54, putant si quam spem in Cn. Pompeio exercitus 

 habeat aid agrorum aut aliorum commodorum. Suetonius certainly 

 thus employs it several times: cf. Aug. 49, quidquid autem ubique 

 militum esset ad certain stipendiorum praemiorumque formulam ad- 

 strinxit, definitis pro gradu cuiusque et temporibus militiae et commodis 



41 Mommsen, Staatsrecht, 3 1, 323; cf. 299, n. 2. 



42 On all this see Mommsen, ib., 294-300, and on commoda tribunatus, 

 300, n. 4. 



43 No doubt it covered a good deal of what we now call "graft." 



