Freedmen Bill At the beginning of his year of office as tribune (Dec. 67), he succeeded in getting a law passed (
de libertinorum suffragiis), which gave
freedmen the privilege of voting together with those who had
manumitted them (i.e. in the same tribe as their
patronus). However, this law was almost immediately declared null and void by the
Senate.
Mithridatic War and lex Manilia Later in the year 66 BC, Manilius proposed a bill, the
lex Manilia, granting
Pompey the command in the
Third Mithridatic War. From 73 to 68 BC,
Lucius Licinius Lucullus had achieved considerable success in the East, defeating both
Mithridates VI of Pontus and his ally
Tigranes the Great. However, Lucullus' troops mutinied under the leadership of
Publius Clodius Pulcher in 67 BC, allowing Mithridates and Tigranes to invade
Pontus and
Cappadocia once more. Lucullus' immediate replacement,
Manius Acilius Glabrio, was ineffective, and by the end of 67 BC Mithridates had recovered all of his former kingdom Manilius' bill recalled all three of the generals still in the East (Lucullus in Pontus, Glabrio in Bithynia, and
Quintus Marcius Rex in Cilicia). It transferred their commands and the entire conduct of the eastern war to Pompey, who was already in the East completing his campaign against the pirates (as granted by the
lex Gabinia of 67 BC). Manilius' bill was opposed by
Quintus Hortensius and
Quintus Lutatius Catulus. Crucially, however, it was supported by several eminent ex-consuls (unlike the
lex Gabinia, which had been almost universally opposed by the Senate), as a result of which it passed unanimously in the
comitia tributa. These ex-consuls included
Servilius Vatia Isauricus,
Gaius Scribonius Curio,
Gaius Cassius Longinus, and
Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus. It was also supported by
Cicero, at the time serving as
praetor, in his extant speech
pro lege Manilia (also known as
de Imperio Cn. Pompei). ==References==