XXXIII. video causas esse . . . impellerent, I see that there are (perceptible now) many motives which might then have been urging him. A passage often noticed because of the non-sequence of tenses. But the rule of sequence need not here apply. The direct statement would have been causae multae istum impellerent, many motives might have been urging him, impellerent being potential subj., implying an if dause, if they had chanced to be operative, or the like. When the statement is oblique after video, esse is a natural tense to use, as shown above ; impellerent, the original subjunctive, is not changed. So in Vatin. 5, quaero a te cur Cornelium non defenderem : I ask you why I was not to defend . . .' The above explanation is on the lines suggested by Gildersleeve and Lodge 519, and seems the best. Some explain esse as imperf. infin.
facultas : de Inv. 1.41, facultates sunt, aut quibus facilius fit aut sine quibus aliquid confici non potest. Cf. § 68, amici . . . servi . . . tempus . . . locus.
quid ad rem? sc. id pertinet ; as in Phil. 2. 72, ius postulabas ; sed quid ad rem? et alii multi, sc. Romae erant.
quasi nunc, etc. (cf. § 47, note), i.e. Cicero did not name the place of the murder in order to search all Rome (tanta multitudine) for the murderer, but as a crucial test applied to two given persons.
ceteras facultates. Cicero now shows that Magnus had a further facultas in being a professed sicarius, or in league with sicarii
commemoravit : see § 80.
opinor . . . occiderent. Cicero includes under sicarii besides the actual assassins, the men who employed them for avaricious purposes : cf. § 80, eosdem fuisse sectores collorum et bonorum aut . . . aut implies that there was no third sub-division.
eorum, consisting of those ; genitivus definitivus, Madvig, § 286, Ohs. 3. Cf. Verr. 2.5.156, quid de illa multitudine dicamus eorum qui . . . producebantur? in bonis erant occupati, sc. emendis, = sectores, who did business in property.
si eos putas . . . sin eos; i.e. from either point of view, Magnus was a sicarius or in league with sicarii For alienuot as a subst., cf. Sall. Cat. 5.4, alieni appetens, sui profusus.
in eo numero = in eorum numero, as § 126, quo in numero ; § 124, sub quo nomine.
leviore nomine, in gentler phrase, as in Tusc. 1.95.
in cuius fide sint et clientela, under whose protection and patronage.
aliquem, some one or other ; hinting at Chrysogonus.
quid postea : cf. § 80. The ensuing sentences are in the so-called figure altercatio : see § 58, note.
non continuo, it does not follow that . . ; cf. Nägelsbach Lat. Stil. § 185. l.
absum a crimine : see § 55, note.
quare, through which, referring to permulta. For the adverb instead of a pronoun, cf. ad Fam. 10. 21.1, omnia feci quare . . . resisterem, and the similar uses of dont, wo, etc., in French and German.
plures, a number of persons, viz. all who had taken part in the proscriptions.
