190 PLINY'S Is^ATUEAL niSTOET. [Book VII. 



also, the elder, was elected to the consulate ;"' but he had 

 previously been accused, and the judges had been charged 

 to discuss the point whether he could or not lawfully be 

 scourged with rods ; he being the first foreigner," — born even 

 on the very shores of the ocean, — who obtained that honour, 

 which our ancestors denied even to the people of Latium."^ 

 Among other remarkable instances, also, we have that of L. 

 Fulvius,^ the consul of the rebellious Tusculani, who, imme- 

 diately upon his coming over to the Eomans, obtained from 

 them the same honour. He is the only individual who, in 

 the same year in which he had been its enemy, enjoyed the 

 honour of a triumph in Eome, and that too, over the people 

 whose consul he had previously been. 



Down to the present time, L. Sylla is the only man who has 

 claimed to himself the surname of '' Happy ;"^^ a name which 

 he derived, forsooth, from the bloodshed of the citizens and 

 the oppression of his country ! But what claim had he on 

 which to found his title to this happiness r Was it the power 

 which he had of proscribing and massacreing so many thou- 

 sands of his fellow-citizens ? Oh intei-pretation most disgrace- 

 ful, and which must stamp him as "Unhappy"^- to all future 

 time ! Were not the men who perished in those times, of 

 the two, to be looked upon as the more fortunate — seeing that 

 with them we sympathize, while there is no one who does not 



'' In the year a.v.c. 704. 



'^ He was a native of Gades, in Spain . A party of the Roman nobles 

 induced an inhabitant of Gades to accuse him of having illegally assumed 

 the privileges of a Eoman citizen. The cause was tried B.C. bo, and he 

 -was supported by Pompey and Crassus, and defended by Cicero. One of 

 the tests of the being a Roman citizen, was the immunity from being 

 scourged, according to the provisions of the Porcian law. So St. Paul, 

 Avho, as a citizen of Tarsus, enjoyed the rights of a Roman citizen, says 

 to the centurion, Acts xxii. 25, "Is it lawful for you to scourge a man 

 that is a Roman, and uncondemned }" 



"3 The accusation against Balbus appears to have been his illegal usur- 

 pation of the rights of a Roman citizen, being bora a foreigner. Pliny 

 has previously informed us, B. v, c. o. that he was a native of Gades or 

 Cadiz. He was elected consul a.u.c. 713. — B. 



^ L. Fulvius Curius, consul B.C. 322. In B.C. 313 he was master of 

 the hoi-se to the dictator, L. ^^milius. 



^' " Felix." Hardouin informs us, that he transmitted this surname 

 to his descendants ; among them was Felix, the governor of Judaja, before 

 whom St Paul was taken for judgment. — B. 



"- " Infelix." 



