Publius Vatinius

Seneca says something in his book that explains it all.

"No one becomes a laughingstock who is the first to laugh at himself." And he gives the example of a Roman politician, Vatinius, a man who, says Seneca, seemed born to be mocked.

He had deformed feet and a neck covered in scars.

His enemies, among them none other than Cicero, had a field day with him, but Vatinius got in first.

Then came the law that mattered most to Caesar himself.

A trium named Vatinius passed the Lex Vatinia, the Vatinian Law, giving Caesar a five-year command over Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum.

Every one of the triumvirs got what he came for that year, and Caesar's share was an army and five years of distance from Rome.

This is where the year starts to turn against him.

Upon this point there is no difference of opinion.

Who now reads his declamations against Assytius or Drusus? His speeches against Vatinius are in the hands of the curious, particularly the second, which must be allowed to be a masterpiece.

The language is elegant, the sentiments are striking, and the ear is satisfied with the roundness of the periods.

In this specimen we see that he had an idea of just composition, but his genius was not equal to his judgment.

Crassus got the tax contract relief that his people wanted.

Pompey married Caesar's daughter, Julia, and a tribune named Vatinius.

carried a law giving Caesar a five-year command in Gaul, which is where the next decade of this story gets written.

What the three of them did in 60 BC was write down an arrangement Rome had already been running for 10 years.

Cicero's abuse is awful.

Let the reader curious in such matters turn to the diatribes against Vatinius, one of Caesar's creatures, and to that against the unfortunate proconsul Piso, or to his attacks on Gabinius who was consul together with Piso in the year of Cicero's banishment.

There are wonderful morsels in the Philippics dealing with Antony's private character, but the words which he uses against Gabinius and Piso beat all that I know elsewhere in the science of invective.

Junius could not approach him, and even Macaulay, though he has in certain passages been very bitter, has not allowed himself the latitude which Roman taste and Roman manners permitted to Cicero.

One of its adherents was P. Nigidius Figulus, praetor and Pompeian, who was a voluminous writer and enjoyed repute as astrologer, prophet and magician.

Vatinius is charged by Cicero with calling himself a Pythagorean and sacrificing little boys.

If he really did this he was a mere necromancer.

Cicero himself wrote a Timaeus, in which Nigidius figures as one of the dramatis personae.