Note 229 — Chapter VIII · THE NEW CONSTITUTION, B.C. 30-23

Dio, 52, 42. The regulation had always existed because every Senator was bound to attend if called upon, and therefore must be within reach, unless he was one of those qui reipublicæ causa abessent. (Livy, 43, 11.) Thus Cicero, defending the Senators who crossed over to join Pompey in Epirus, says to Atticus (viii. 15) that there was hardly one who had not a legal right to cross, either as having imperium, or being legatus to an imperator. The usual means of evading this was to obtain a libera legatio for a fixed time. Occasionally a man got himself named an ordinary legatus to a provincial governor, but was allowed to go elsewhere with some colourable commission. But this was an abuse. See Cicero, ad Fam. xii. 21; ad Q. Frat. ii. 9; ad Att. xv. 11. Sicily and Gallia Narbonensis were excepted as being practically Italy, or, as Cicero says, “suburban provinces.”