Lex, which was proposed and carried by the consul Q. Servilius Caepio, was probably enacted early in the year B.C. 106, and before Caepio left Rome for his province. This law, which is generally named the Lex Servilia Caepionis, in order to distinguish it from a subsequent Lex Servilia of Glaucia, restored the Judicia, as the Romans termed it, to the Senate, and consequently repealed one of the laws of C. Gracchus (vol. i., p. 264). This revolution shows that the party of the Optimates had a temporary superiority in Rome. The great orator, L. Licinius Crassus, supported the proposal of Servilius in a speech in which he maintained the authority of the Senate, and inveighed against the party spirit of the equestrian order and of those who had acted as prosecutors under the law of C. Gracchus. When Crassus was a very young man, he had supported the proposal for the establishment of the colony of Narbo against the Senate, who opposed it. This apparent change in his opinions brought on Crassus the charge of political inconsistency; but it is possible that Crassus thought that the Senate did wrong in opposing the settlement of Narbo, and also that he believed that the law of C. Gracchus, which gave the office of judex, or juryman, to the Equites, had been proved by sixteen or seventeen years' trial to be a bad measure. The records of this period are so defective that it has been doubted whether this Servilia Lex of Caepio was carried; but the only fair conclusion that we can derive from the ancient authorities is, that the Lex was enacted, though it was very soon repealed. The statement that the Servilia Lex of Caepio made the judices eligible from the senators and the equites rests only on the authority of Obsequens. Crassus, says Cicero, was thirtyfour years of age when he delivered this speech for the Lex Servilia; and, he adds, "it was the year in which I was born." This speech served as a kind of oratorical lesson to Cicero, when he was a boy; but it had not been fully reported, for some of the chapters contained only the substance of what was said, and not the words.

very

By establishing the colony of Narbo the Romans secured a road from their Gallic province into Spain, and fixed themselves near the rich valley of the Garumna (Garonne). The

Volcae Tectosages occupied the upper basin of the Garonne, between the western prolongation of the Cévennes and the eastern Pyrenees. Their chief town was Tolosa (Toulouse), on the river Garonne, in the French department of the Haute Garonne. The Romans had formed some kind of alliance with the Tectosages, and had contrived to place a Roman garrison in Tolosa; but the people, encouraged by the presence of the northern barbarians, who had broken into this part of France, perhaps also being under the pressure of fear, and with some hope of ridding themselves of the Romans, rose on the garrison, and put the soldiers in chains. When Caepio came to Gallia, he advanced upon Tolosa, and some traitors let him into the city by night. The consul found a great quantity of the precious metals in Tolosa. There was a story, reported by Justinus, that the Tectosages were in the army of Brennus, and that they brought home the gold and silver which they had gained by plunder and sacrilege; but on their return these robbers were attacked by a pestilent disease, which was not stayed until they followed the advice of the priests, and sunk all the treasure in the tanks of Tolosa. It was also said, as Strabo reports, that this treasure was part of the plunder of Delphi; but Posidonius, who had travelled in Gallia, refutes this story. The temple of Delphi, he says, had been well stripped by the Phocians in the Sacred War; and whatever was left would be very little when it was distributed among the men of Brennus. But the fact is that these plunderers did not take the temple of Delphi: they were bravely repulsed. Many were killed or died of disease; and we know that the remnant of the Tectosages of Brennus made their way into Asia, and finally settled in that part which, after their nation, had the name of Galatia. Besides this, there is no certain evidence that the Gallic followers of Brennus emigrated directly from Gallia. Long before the attack on Delphi, in B.C. 279, the Galli had crossed the Alps into Italy, and had extended their incursions east of the Hadriatic into the basin of the Danube; and it is more probable that these were the barbarians who fell upon Macedonia in the reign of Ptolemaeus Ceraunus, and under Brennus made an unsuccessful

assault on Delphi. The treasure at Tolosa was the produce of the auriferous regions of the Pyrenees and of the offerings of the superstitious Celts. The amount that was found by the Romans, says Posidonius, was about fifteen thousand talents, part of which was in the temples, and part consisting of masses of gold and silver was sunk in the sacred tanks. When the Romans became masters of the country of the Tectosages they let these tanks to the publicani, or farmers general, who fished up out of them masses of hammered silver.

Caepio laid his hands on all that could be found in the town; he did not spare even the temples, an act of sacrilege which, as the Romans believed, finally brought ruin on himself and his family. The booty was sent to Massilia under an escort, but the men were waylaid and killed, and the treasure was carried off. Nobody knew how this happened, but the consul himself was accused of being the robber. The memory of Caepio was always connected with the plunder of Tolosa, and the expression "Aurum Tolosanum," the gold of Tolosa, became a proverb, which was applied to all who got money by dishonest means, and came to a bad end. Indeed, Strabo, when he is speaking of the plunder of Tolosa, expressly asserts that Caepio was driven out of Rome for plundering the temples, and ended his life miserably; but this statement does not mean that the punishment of Caepio followed immediately upon his offence.

At the elections of this year (B.c. 106) P. Rutilius Rufus and Cn. Mallius Maximus were elected consuls for the next year. Q. Lutatius Catulus was also a candidate, but the people gave their votes to Maximus, a man of no family, without merit, without talent, and mean and contemptible in all respects. Such are the terms in which Cicero, in one of his orations, speaks of this unfortunate consul, and the harsh judgment is accepted on the authority of a man who might have given Maximus a different character if it had suited the purpose for which he was then talking. The proconsular authority of Marius in Numidia was continued. Rufus stayed in Italy, and Maximus was sent into Transalpine Gallia to oppose the northern barbarians. Caepio also still remained.

there at the head of an army, which seems to show that he had not yet been censured for his conduct in the affair of Tolosa.

The incompleteness of Livy's Epitome is shown by the fact that it contains no mention of the plunder of Tolosa, though this event must have been spoken of in Livy's sixtysixth book. This book also probably recorded the election of the consuls, P. Rutilius Rufus and Cn. Mallius Maximus, and we may therefore conclude that M. Aurelius Scaurus, who is named by the Epitomator (Epit. 67) the "consul's legatus," was the legatus of the consul Maximus in Gallia. Scaurus had been consul in B.c. 108, and having now the command of an army (B.c. 105) somewhere in Transalpine Gallia, he was defeated and taken prisoner by the Cimbri. Orosius states that Scaurus was made a prisoner in the great battle in which Mallius and Caepio were defeated; but this is a mistake, or at least the assertion is contradicted by Livy's Epitome, Dion Cassius, and the fragments of Licinianus, who briefly states that Scaurus fell from his horse, and being taken prisoner, was brought before an assembly of the Cimbri, but he neither did nor said any thing unworthy of his rank, and "so he was killed, when he might have escaped." This imperfect narrative implies that he might have escaped death if he had done or said something dishonourable. The Epitome explains this by the statement that when Scaurus advised the barbarians not to attempt to cross the Alps with the view of conquering Italy, for the Romans were invincible, one of the chiefs, named Boiorix, in a fit of passion stabbed him on the spot.

Maximus being consul had the command in Transalpine Gallia, and Caepio, as already observed, was still in this country at the head of an army. The consul was on one side of the Rhone, and on the other side of the river was the proconsul Caepio, as he is called by our authorities, though it is a manifest inconsistency to speak of a consul and a man with proconsular authority being in the same province at the same time. As the two armies were on opposite sides of the river, we must suppose that the enemy was also on both sides; or one army may have been intended

to protect from invasion one side of the river, which was at that time not occupied by the barbarians. However this may be, after the defeat of Scaurus, Maximus ordered, and even entreated Caepio to join him, but Caepio at first refused, wishing, it is suggested, to gain a victory, and to have all the credit of it. When Caepio did cross the Rhone, he boasted to his soldiers that he was going to help the timid consul, but he would neither form any plan of joint operations with him, nor would he listen to the commissioners who had been sent by the Senate to exhort the two commanders to act unanimously for the interests of the state. Caepio had placed his camp between Maximus and the enemy. The barbarians seeing two armies in front, hesitated to attack them, and they sent an embassy to Maximus to see if any terms could be made. They were probably tired of their vagabond life, and would have been glad to settle in the sunny basin of the Rhone, if they could remain unmolested. The barbarian envoys on their road to the consul passed the camp of Caepio, who, it is said, was vexed because the men did not address themselves to him. He gave the envoys churlish words, and they narrowly escaped with their lives from his hands. But a fragment of Licinianus implies that the Cimbri did address themselves directly to Caepio, for it states that the men who were sent on this business expressed their wish for peace, and asked for land and corn to sow on it; but they were sent back in such an insulting way that, having no hope of peace, they attacked on the following day the camp of Caepio, which was not far from that of Maximus. Even then Caepio would not unite his army to that of Mallius, "and the greatest part of it was destroyed." This is the statement of the annalist Licinianus, and here unfortunately the fragment is imperfect, but we collect from the few words which follow that a remnant of the defeated army or armies made their escape.

Dion states that the clamour of the soldiers at last compelled Caepio and Maximus to join their forces, but greater proximity only increased the ill-will of the two commanders, and the ruin of the Roman army was the necessary consequence of divided authority and want of subordination. It