a monetary statute before his departure for the war[1137] proves that he began his official duties at Rome, and that Livy’s tirade to the contrary is empty rhetoric. Probably because he departed without attending to the usual auspices, his political opponents were unwilling to admit that he had entered on his office. But the army obeyed his command, his name remained in the fasti as consul, and his monetary law continued in force. Livy, while complaining at length of his failure to take the auspices, says nothing of the curiate law. His silence is significant.[1138] We cannot be certain that the lex curiata was not passed in his case; but we have no right to imagine that it was not and then draw far-reaching deductions from our fancy.[1139] A more valuable instance is that of L. Marcius, elected propraetor by the army in Spain in 212.[1140] Although he could not have had a lex curiata, the senate, while censuring the election because it transferred the auspices to the camp, did not make the want of the law a ground for declaring the magistracy illegal.[1141] A still more famous case is that of the magistrates of the year 49, who with the Pompeian party fled from Rome before carrying a lex curiata, and yet were not prevented by this circumstance from holding military commands during their year of office or from continuing in command into the following year as promagistrates.[1142] A further instance is that of Pomptinus, praetor in 63, who had no curiate law; nevertheless as propraetor in 61 he governed Narbonensis where he gained a victory over the Gauls. This fact, too, is evidence that the want of the law did not in practice debar from military commands. From 58 to 54 he waited outside the gates of Rome for a triumph. The senate would not grant it and some of the magistrates opposed his effort to obtain it. The privilege was at last given him by the comitia under pretorian presidency.[1143] Although the want of the law involved him in inconvenience, he finally accomplished his purpose without it. Appius Claudius, consul in 54, insisted that, should he fail to carry the sanctioning act, he should nevertheless, since he was in possession of a province decreed the consuls of his year in accordance with the Sempronian plebiscite, have imperium by virtue of a Cornelian statute until such time as he should re-enter the city.[1144] The law of Sulla, to which he referred, probably stated simply that the promagistrate was to retain his imperium till his return to the city, without mentioning the curiate law; and for that reason Appius believed the sanctioning act to be unnecessary. Cicero, who informs us of this matter, inclines to the interpretation of Appius. Our conclusion, accordingly, is that in practice, if not in legal theory, the lex curiata, however convenient it may have been, was not essential to the government of a province or to a military command. It remains to consider