at enim (objection), but, you will say. adfectus = enjoying. Catulus: Quintus Lutatius Catulus, at this time the leader of the senatorial party; an estimable man and an experienced statesman, but no soldier. The beneficia amplissima are the successive offices that had been conferred upon him. Hortensius: the leading lawyer of the time (see oration against Verres). ratione, view. auctoritates contrarias: of course there were men of influence on the side of the Manilian Law as well as opposed to it; Cicero brings forward the names of several in sect. 68, below. ipsa re ac ratione: this appeal from theoretical objections (as Cicero thinks them) to experience (i.e. in the Piratic War) would, of course, be very effective in a public assembly, for theoretical considerations weigh little with such bodies in comparison with facts. Cicero makes it doubly effective by pointing out that his opponents agree with his premises as to the necessity and magnitude of the war and the eminent ability of Pompey as a general, but that they avoid, on these merely technical grounds, what seems to him the obvious conclusion: viz. that Pompey should be appointed.
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Select Orations of. Cicero. Allen and Greenough's Edition. Revised by J. B. Greenough and G. L. Kittredge, with a special vocabulary by J. B. Greenough.
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