Officially, yes. In practice orators were often rewarded with bequests, political favors, or "loans" that would never be called in (Cicero received one from Sulla, for instance).
Sounds like the modern upper middle class nepo parents...
To be honest I skim the article don’t have time to read a whole history book on Ancient Roman law—but I’m definitely interested in Ancient Rome.
But I mean this is hacker news if you want history news go somewhere else.
I'm also uncertain of what, aside from relevance, makes political/social commentary "cheap" as opposed to "expensive", or why the latter would be more desirable.
Perhaps it's based on a misguided idea that commentary must be tied in scholarship to be worthy of utterance (and that such "expensive" commentary is not just a ritualized and impotent form of social commentary). Or that history moves because of such "expensive" commentary, as opposed because of the "cheap" opinions and actions of puny laymen.
Human cultures can be very different and alien, which is especially hard to really wrap your head around when you've only experienced your own WEIRD one.
It's not, it never was, and I don't mean to say that by that they're in a "prior" stage of development than how our societies have turned out, because these processes aren't linear, but a couple of centuries ago no polity or region was a nation-state, including the ones we live in, and despite the relative recency of that we can't understand how a "country" may not be what we imagine a country to be like, when presented with an example right now.
Engaging to the past "on it’s own terms" is noble.
But refusing or failing to find patterns and analogies (lest they not be "perfect"), and to engage with the past as a store of experience to learn from, and leverage the past to inform your understanding of the present, renders the whole point of studying the past a moot endeavor.
If you read roman histories, it is full of exceptions from the law that were based on little more than mob opinion. Rules such as term limits, pay or inheritance were regularly bypassed by high-profile people if they could get the plebs into the streets.