page 109 note 1 I cannot leave unnoticed Legras' insistence on the inconsistency between line 150 of the Table, where a mere majority, ‘major pars decurionum” is required, and Ulpian's statement (Dig. 50, 9, 3), “lege autem municipali cavetur ut ordo non aliter habeatur quam duabus partibus adhibitis.” (1) The election of the ‘legati’ to carry the census papers to Rome was so trivial a matter that the provision accepting the election of a bare majority might well be an exception to a more general clause in another part of the law, requiring a quorum either for all or for the most important business. (2) The compiler of this part of the Digest has so isolated this excerpt from Ulpian's ‘de appellationibus,’ as perhaps to give a false impression of its purport. In the case of an ‘appellatio’ from a municipality the town would be represented by an actor or syndicus elected by the decuriones. There may have been a praetorian edict, afterwards incorporated in the ‘leges datae,’ to the effect that in such cases two-thirds of the decuriones were required, and to this Ulpian may be alluding. This is rendered the more probable, because both Ulpian and Paulus in their commentary on the edict, and in special reference to the election of actores, specify precisely this quorum as necessary. (Dig. iii, 4–34). There were no ‘actores civitatis’ in the technical sense at first, but it deserves notice that when officials with somewhat analogous duties have to be elected at Malaca, it is again this quorum of decuriones which is required (lex Mal. c. 63). For most of these points I am indebted to Legras himself, who seems unconscious that they dispose of one of his own arguments against identifying lines 83–158 of the Table with part of a general municipal law.
