[1] Ateius Capito worked with his fellow tribune Publius Aquillius Gallus in opposition to Crassus and Pompeius Magnus during their second joint consulship in 55 BC.
[2] In particular, the two tribunes supported Cato in attempting to block the Lex Trebonia, legislation brought by C. Trebonius to give Crassus and Pompeius each an extended five-year proconsular province.
[3] Their objections at the assembly, though strenuous, were unsuccessful: Trebonius had Cato arrested, and physical force was used to eject Ateius and Aquillius when they tried to assert their veto power.
In November 55 BC, while Crassus was on the Capitoline performing the ritual vows that preceded an army's departure, Ateius claimed to observe dirae, the worst sort of disastrous portents.
"One wonders how Ateius felt," muses historian of religion Sarah Iles Johnston, "vindicated — or aghast at the magnitude of the loss his curses had precipitated?
[9] In 50 BC, the censor Appius Claudius Pulcher, regarded as an authority on the procedures of the augural college, expelled Ateius from the senate on the grounds that he had falsified the auspicia.
[11] Ateius went further, though Cicero omits this point: because he cursed Crassus, in keeping with his own opposition to the Parthian campaign, he was blamed for contributing to the deaths of Roman soldiers.