26. DECIMUS DRUSUS. In Dig. 1. tit. 13.2, the following passage is quoted from Ulpian:-- Ex quaestoribus quidam solebant provincias sortiri ex Senatus-consulto, quod factum est Decimo Druso et Porcina Consulibus. It has been commonly supposed that Ulpian here refers to a general decree of the senate, made in the consulship he names, and directing the mode of allotting provinces to quaestors in general. We rather believe him to mean that it was usual for the senate, from time to time, to make special decrees relating to the allotment of provinces to particular quaestors, and that he intends to give the date of an early instance in which this was aone. (Comp. Cic. Philipp. 2.20.) Had the former meaning been intended, Ulpian would probably have said ex eo Senatus-consulto, quod fuctum est. It is uncertain who Decimus Drusus was, and when he was consul. The brothers Kriegel, in the Leipzig edition of the erroneously refer his consulship to A. U. C. 745 (B. C. 9), when Nero Claudius Drusus (the brother of the emperor Tiberius) and Crispinus were consuls. Pighius (Annal. ad A. U. C. 677) proposes the unauthorized reading D. Bruto et Aemilio for D. Druso et Porcina, and in this conjecture is followed by Bach. (Hist. Jur. Rom. p. 208, ed. 6ta.) Ant. Augustinus (de Nom. Prop. Pandect. in Otto's Thesaurus, i. p. 258) thinks the consulship must have occurred in the time of the emperors, but it is certain that provinces were assigned to quaestors, ex S. C., during the republic. The most probable opinion is that of Zepernick (Ad Siccamam de Judicio Centumvirali, p. 100, n.), who holds that D. Drusus was consul suffectus with Lepidus Porcina in B. C. 137, after the forced abdication of Hostilius Marcinus.