Cicero is narrating various proposals advanced by Servius Sulpicius Rufus in an attempt to save his failing consular campaign of 63. In addition to the lex Tullia de ambitu discussed in the preceding section,Footnote ¹ he mentions this proposal that was blocked in the senate. The text printed is that of Clark, who compares [Sall.] 2.8.1, citing a law promulgated by C. Gracchus in his tribunate: ut ex confusis quinque classibus sorte centuriae vocarentur. On this basis Clark suspected that the transmitted praerogationum conceals a reference to the praerogativa (centuria), the first to vote in the comitia centuriata, traditionally chosen by lot from the centuries of the first class and the twelve classes of equites, and thus highly influential.Footnote ² Certainly this is more plausible than Mommsen's perrogationem (‘the successive asking for opinions’: OLD s.v. perrogatio), which is not attested in any classical author.

Clark also thought that the reference to the Manilian law was interpolated by a scholiast, but this is difficult to credit. Ryan is probably right to see here a reference to the lex Manilia de libertinorum suffragiis, which allowed freedmen to vote in all the tribes, a proposal that had once been made by P. Sulpicius Rufus (tr. pl. 88), possibly a brother or cousin of Servius Sulpicius' father (Asc. 64C).Footnote ³ Ryan's own conjecture, promulgationem for praerogationum, is, however, unlikely to be right: Clark's praerogativa (or some form thereof) is a much more plausible source of the transmitted text; and the promulgatio of something designated as a lex, rather than a rogatio, would seem to call for explanation. The corruption may be deeper than previously assumed.

I propose that the critical sentence should read (supplements in angular brackets):

This text would attribute a coherent programme to Sulpicius, who apparently thought a basic change in voting mechanisms, reducing the influence of the first century called upon to vote and distributing the freedmen more widely, would make bribery less effective (since more money would be needed to influence the result). Cicero will be referring (non-technically) to Servius' proposed use of the lex Manilia as a renovatio, which may be his tendentious interpretation of the proposal rather than the terms in which Sulpicius promoted it.Footnote ⁴ If that is right, then a saltation error will have led the scribe's eye from praerogati- to renovati-. If one assumes the normal abbreviations, the supplement amounts to thirty-three characters, a normal line-length for a text written in two columns per side, so that the error might have been facilitated by praerogati- and renovati- having stood one above the other.

Cicero is describing the situation that will obtain if Murena is convicted and on 1 January Rome has only one consul in office. Again, the text is that of Clark, the lacunae marked in the codices. I suggest that the following restoration of the critical portion may be along the right lines:

The first lacuna is marked by about two lines that are left free in the major witnesses. This fact suggests a mechanical loss of matter (rather than e.g. mere saltation), though it is not necessarily a reliable indicator of the extent of the loss. More matter may have been lost than the foregoing restorations indicate: they are of c. twenty characters each and so would not fill out an average line in bi-columnar format (see above). The ablative absolute with anaphora of the deictic pronoun and the change of impedio from future to past would highlight the rapidly advancing threat. For the iunctura cf. Leg. agr. 2.99: nihil vi et manu perfringi posset. The change of minatur to minabitur seems to be required by the series of futures.Footnote ⁵