A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

12. CN. or L. SICINIUS, tribune of the plebs B. C. 76, was the first magistrate who ventured to attack the law of Sulla, which deprived the tribunes of their former power. He abused the leaders of the aristocracy very freely, and especially C. Curio. His only qualification as an orator, says Cicero, was being able to make people laugh. It has been erroneously inferred, from a passage in Sallust, that he was murdered by the ruling party. (Cic. Brut. 60 ; Pseudo-Ascon. in Divin. p. 103, ed. Orelli; Quint. Inst. 11.3.129; Plut. Crass. 7 ; Sall. Hist. 3.22; Drumann, Geschichte Roms, vol. iv. p. 385.)