190 
PLINY'S NATUEAL HISTOEY. 
[Book YII. 
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 Kome, 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 ? "Was it the power 
which he had of proscribing and massacreing so many thou- 
sands of his fellow-citizens ? Oh interpretation 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.u.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 Roman citizen. The cause was tried b,c. 55, 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, 
who, 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 
'^^ The accusation against Balbus appears to have been his illegal usur- 
pation of the rights of a Roman citizen, being born a foreigner. Pliny 
has previously informed us, B. v, c. 5, 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 horse to the dictator, L. ^milius. 
" Felix." Hardouin informs us, that he transmitted this surname 
to his descendants ; among them was Felix, the governor of Judi«a, before 
whom St Paul was taken for judgment. — B. 
»2 "Infelix.'' 
