It is a sheer waste
of time to attempt to harmonize these two statements.[18] Granting that
Spurius Borius and Spurius Thorius are one and the same person, the
statements still remain diametrically opposed according to a simple and
commonly accepted translation of Cicero's words: "Sp. Thorius satis valuit
in populari genere dicendi, is qui agrum publicum vitiosa et inutile lege
vectigali levavit." Mommsen makes Cicero agree with Appian by changing
"vectigali" into the instrument, and rendering[l9] "relieved the public
land from a vicious and useless law by imposing a vectigal." No other
writer agrees with Mommsen in making such a translation.
3. The third law is mentioned by Appian alone who says: "Now when the law
of Gracchus had once been evaded by these tricks, an excellent law and most
useful to the state if it could have been executed, another tribune not
long after [Greek: oupolu husteron] abolished even the vectigalia."[20]
This is evidently the same law which Cicero mentions as that of Spurius
Thorius and as he also mentions him in another place (_De Or_., II, 70,
284), we may possibly accept him as the author.
There are still extant some fragments of a bronze tablet which contains
upon its smooth surface the Lex Repetundarum and has cut upon its rough[21]
back an agrarian law.
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