(caerimonia), to Ceres, Liber and Libera; I must gain the good- will of Mother Flora for the people and plebs of Rome with the full attendance at her games; I must give the most ancient games, which first were called the Roman games, with supreme stateliness and precision, to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva; that to me the care of the holy temples, to me the supervision of the entire city is entrusted; that on account of this toil and care those ultimate rewards are given, a more advanced place in the debate of the senate, the embroidered toga, the curule chair, the right of bequeathing my portrait-bust for a record to my descen- dants." Cicero 1 gave the Cerealia about the middle of April, the Floralia at the end of that month and at the beginning of May; the Roman Games were due in September. Cicero was thirty-seven. As yet he cannot have been positively well to do. Still his practice had been with the capitalists mainly. The Lex Cincia did not reach the many ways, like legacies, through which the patronus was duly remembered. His Aedileship did not cost him so much, after all. 2 To this year (by most scholars) is assigned Cicero's defense of Fonteius. This man had governed the Roman province of Narbonensian Gaul. His administration had been almost in the same years (74-72) as that of Verres in Sicily. His colleagues in the senate, just as with Verres, had not sent him any suc- cessor for a long period. A single year was not adequate for effective exploitation. It is fortunate for the reputation of this governor that the brilliant pleader (and now at thirty-seven leader of the Roman bar) was the defender and not the prose- cutor of Fonteius. In the MSS. the Introduction (exordium) and the statement of the case (narratio) are lost. We have but portions, and the most valuable part of what is now at our disposal, was enlarged by an important find of Nie- buhr's. In the introduction, 3 Ciceroen passant, as it were, uttered a kind of imperial sentiment, to engage the Roman prejudices of his jury at once, viz. nothing was at stake in this trial but this, "that the magistrates in the provinces henceforth will not dare ____________________ | 1 | Drumann 5, 329. | | 2 | Sane exiguus sumptus aedilitatis fuit, Off. 2, 59. He had carried every one of the 35 tribes (cunctis suffragiis). | | 3 | A passage preserved by Julius Victor, Rhetores minores, ed. Halm, p. 423. | -93- |