Noctes Atticae

A passage taken from the Annals of Lucius Piso, highly diverting in content and graceful in style.

BECAUSE the action of Gnaeus Flavius, [*](He was the secretary of the censor Appius Claudius Caecus and became curule aedile in 303 B.C.) the curule aedile, son of Annius, which Lucius Piso described in the third book of his Annals, seemed worthy of record, and because the story is told by Piso in a very pure and charming style, I have quoted the entire passage from Piso's Annals: [*](Fr. 27, Peter2.)

Gnaeus Flavius, the son of a freedman,

he says, "was a scribe by profession and was in the service of a curule aedile at the time of the election of the succeeding aediles. The assembly of the tribes [*](The expression pro tribu is difficult, but appears in Livy ix, 46. 2 in the same connection, cum fieri se pro tribu aedilem videret. Gronovius believed that it referred to the tribus praerogativa. which voted first in order.) named Flavius curule aedile, but the magistrate who presided at the election refused to accept him as an aedile, not thinking it right that one who followed the profession of scribe should be made an aedile. Gnaeus Flavius, son of Annius, is said to have laid aside his tablets and resigned his clerkship, and he was then made a curule aedile.

This same Gnaeus Flavius, son of Annius, is said to have come to call upon a sick colleague. When he arrived and entered the room, several young nobles were seated there. They treated Flavius with contempt and none of them was willing to

v2.p.119

rise in his presence. Gnaeus Flavius, son of Annius, the aedile, laughed at this rudeness; then he ordered his curule chair to be brought and placed it on the threshold, in order that none of them might be able to go out, and that all of them against their will might see him sitting on his chair of state.

"