Narrative in Eighth Book of the " Gallic War" 25 



heighten the effect of this attempted justification if such a vote 

 had come as the culmination of Curio's repeated proposals to the 

 same effect. But Hirtius was bound by the facts, whatever they 

 were. The phraseology employed, facere coepit, is conclusive 

 against our thinking of an actual vote.^'' It would seem that at 

 the moment when Curio attempted to divide the senate another 

 tribune friendly to Pompeius interposed his veto.^^ From this it 

 follows that the vote of 370 to 22 reported by Appian and Plutarch 

 belongs to a date too late for Caesar to have been informed of it 

 while with his army after the review, although it may have been 

 taken while he was on his way to Italy. As the commissioning of 

 Pompeius followed a still later meeting of the senate, it is very 

 probable that Caesar reached Italy at a date too early at least for 

 a courier with news of Pompeius's commission to meet him upon 

 his arrival. Since Hirtius's language, quo cum venisset, acts as 

 no bar to finding a connection between Caesar's presence in Italy 

 and Marcellus's arbitrary assumption of authority, and since the 

 rumor in question is very likely to have had some basis in fact, it 

 may be regarded as reasonably certain that Caesar came into Italy 

 by November 20 or 21, and that his presence there was the occa- 

 sion of the rumor which led to the arming of Pompeius. 



The rumor which we have been discussing sprang up between 

 the two meetings of the senate described by Appian. If the two 

 sessions fell on December i and 2, respectively, as is now generally 

 assumed, we have a series of three events remarkable for the ra- 

 pidity of their succession — the vote on successors to Caesar and 

 Pompeius December i, on the same day or the next the receipt of 

 news that Caesar had arrived in his Cisalpine province and would 

 attack the city, and the attempt of Marcellus to bring about a vir- 



'*For similar phraseology in connection with an attempt to pass a law, 

 cf. Att. IV, 17, 3 (16, 6) : Coepta ferri leviter, intercessum non invitis. 



*' This incident belongs to an early period in the debates on the Gallic 

 provinces (cf. App., B. C, II, 28-29). Lange placed it in June {Rom. Alt., 

 IIP, p. 396, i), basing his conclusion simply on what he conceived to be 

 the relation between B. G., VIII, 52 and 54. His mistaken identification 

 of the incident to which Hirtius alludes, c. 52, 5, with the vote of 370-22 

 led him to date the latter far too early. For veto of a tribune's relatio see 

 Willems, Le Senat, II, pp. 133, 140, 201. 



