tribunician rank, and so finally to the lowest grade of all—the ex-quaestors; and it is probable that, in every grade, the rule of consulting a designated magistrate before an ex-magistrate was observed. It is obvious that this procedure, when rigidly adhered to, left the non-curule members of the Senate only an infinitesimal chance of a share in the debate. These had always been known as pedarii, in contradistinction to the curules; originally nominees of the censors, they included after the time of Sulla the former tribunes and plebeian aediles, and the members of quaestorian rank. As they were rarely reached in the debate, they seldom had the opportunity of expressing an opinion, and hence arose the erroneous notion of some antiquarians that the pedarii were given the right of voting but not the power of debate.[1] But restrictions of this kind, arising from practice and not from law, were never pressed by the Romans. The repute of a man who had not reached curule rank might exceed that of all the other senators; the principle that would open the lips of a Bibulus and close those of a Cato was recognised as mischievous in certain emergencies, and it was the latter who as tribune elect—that is, as a pedarius—moved the resolution which condemned the Catilinarian conspirators to death.[2]
From the mass of opinions elicited in the course of the debate, the president might choose any that he pleased to submit to the judgment of the house. The safeguard of the individual senator was here found in the number of the presiding magistrates. As a rule the same order was followed in putting sententiae to the vote as had been observed in eliciting them; but out of an aggregate of opinions that, with differences of detail, gave practically the same advice, the president might choose that which he considered most to the point or best worded as the one to be submitted to his council. It was certainly an unusual step when, in the historic debate of December 5 in the year
- ↑ Festus p. 210 "(Pedarius senator) ita appellator quia tacitus transeundo ad eum, cujus sententiam probat, quid sentiat indicat." Cf. Gell. iii. 18. The explanation cited by Festus is true only so far as it expresses a usual circumstance of debate. The name pedarius is probably derived from the absence of the curule chair (Gavius Bassus ap. Gell. l.c.).
- ↑ Vell. ii. 35 "Hic tribunus plebis designatus . . . paene inter ultimos interrogatus sententiam"; Cic. ad Att. xii. 21, 1 "Cur ergo in sententiam Catonis? Quia verbis luculentioribus et pluribus rem eandem (i.e. the opinion already expressed by consulares) comprehenderat."
