At the beginning of the next year the consuls and praetors drew lots for their provinces. For the consuls there was nothing to be assigned save the Ligurians. The urban jurisdiction fell to Marcus Ogulnius Gallus, that between citizens and foreigners to Marcus Valerius; of the Spains, the Hither to Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, the Farther to Publius Manlius; Sicily to Lucius Caecilius Denter, Sardinia to Gaius Terentius Istra. The consuls were ordered to hold a levy. Quintus Fabius had written from Liguria that the Apuani were looking toward rebellion and that there was danger of their making an inroad into the territory of Pisa; and from the Spains they knew that the Hither was in arms and that war was being waged with the Celtiberians, while in the Farther, because the praetor had long been sick, military discipline had been loosened by luxury and idleness. On account of these things it was resolved that new armies be enrolled—four legions for Liguria, each to have five thousand two hundred foot and three hundred horse; to these were added of the allies of the Latin name fifteen thousand foot and eight hundred horse; these were to be the two consular armies. They were ordered besides to enroll seven thousand foot of the allies and the Latin name and four hundred horse and to send them to Marcus Marcellus in Gaul, to whom the command had been prorogued from his consulship. For both Spains there were ordered to be enrolled, to be led thither, four thousand foot of Roman citizens and two hundred horse, and of the allies seven thousand foot with three hundred horse. And to Quintus Fabius Labeo the command was prorogued for a year, with the army he had, among the Ligurians.

The spring was stormy that year. On the day before the Parilia, about midday, a fierce tempest arose with wind and wrought havoc in many places sacred and profane: it cast down the bronze statues on the Capitol; it tore away a door from the temple of Luna, which is on the Aventine, and fixed it on the rear walls of the temple of Ceres; it overthrew other statues in the Circus Maximus together with the columns on which they stood; the pediments of several temples it tore from their roof-ridges and foully scattered. And so that tempest was turned into a prodigy, and the haruspices ordered it to be expiated. At the same time expiation was made because it had been reported that a three-footed mule had been born at Reate, and that at Formiae the temple of Apollo at Caieta had been struck from heaven. On account of these prodigies sacrifice was made with twenty full-grown victims, and there was a supplication for one day.

During those days it was learned from a letter of the propraetor Aulus Terentius that Publius Sempronius, in the Farther province, having been sick more than a year, had died. For that reason the praetors were ordered to set out the sooner for Spain.

Then the embassies from overseas were introduced, first those of the kings Eumenes and Pharnaces and of the Rhodians, who complained of the disaster of the Sinopeans. The envoys of Philip too, and of the Achaeans and the Lacedaemonians, came about the same time. To them, after Marcius—who had been sent to look into the affairs of Greece and Macedonia—had first been heard, answers were given. To the kings of Asia and to the Rhodians the answer was that the Senate would send commissioners to inspect those matters.

Marcius had increased the anxiety about Philip: for he reported that the king had done what was pleasing to the Senate in such a way that it readily appeared he would not do so longer than necessity required. Nor was it obscure that he meant to renew the war, and that all he was now doing and saying looked to that end. First of all, he had already transferred nearly the whole multitude of the citizens from the coastal cities, with their households, into Emathia—as it is now called; once it was named Paeonia—and had handed over the cities to Thracians and other barbarians to dwell in, judging that these kinds of men would be the more faithful in a Roman war. That measure raised an immense murmur throughout all Macedonia; and as they left the homes of their fathers with their wives and children, few kept their grief silent, and amid the columns of those setting out the curses against the king were plainly heard, hatred overmastering fear. By these things his fierce spirit held all men, all places and seasons, suspect. At last he began openly to declare that nothing was safe enough for him unless he held under arrest the children of those whom he had killed, and made away with them one at one time and another at another.

That cruelty, foul in itself, the calamity of a single house made fouler. Herodicus, a chief man of the Thessalians, he had killed many years before; afterward he killed his sons-in-law too; the daughters, left in widowhood, each having one little son—Theoxena and Archo were the women’s names. Theoxena, though many sought her, spurned marriage; Archo married a certain Poris, by far the foremost man of the people of the Aenianes, and, having borne him several children, died leaving them all very small. Theoxena, that her sister’s children might be reared in her own hands, married Poris, and, as though she herself had borne them all, kept her own and her sister’s sons in the same care. When she received the king’s edict about seizing the children of those who had been killed, thinking that they would be made a sport not only to the king’s lust but to the guards’ as well, she turned her mind to a dreadful resolve and dared to say that she would rather kill them all with her own hand than that they should come into the power of Philip. Poris, abhorring the mention of so foul a deed, said that he would carry them off to Athens, to faithful guest-friends, and would himself be the companion of their flight. They set out from Thessalonica to Aenea, to the appointed sacrifice which they make every year with great ceremony to Aeneas the founder. There, the day spent in the solemn feasting, about the third watch, all being asleep, they boarded a ship made ready by Poris, as though about to return to Thessalonica; but their purpose was to cross over to Euboea. As they strove in vain against a contrary wind, however, daylight caught them near the shore, and the king’s men who were in charge of the harbor-guard sent an armed cutter to drag back that ship, with a stern order not to return without it. When they were now drawing near, Poris indeed was intent upon urging on the rowers and sailors; at times, stretching his hands to heaven, he prayed the gods to bring aid. The fierce woman meanwhile, falling back upon the deed long before premeditated, mixed the poison and drew out the sword, and, with the cup set in their sight and the swords unsheathed, said: "Death alone is our deliverance. These are the roads to death; by whichever each one’s spirit bears him, escape the king’s arrogance. Come, my boys, first you who are the elder, take the sword, or drain the cup, if a slower death pleases you." Both the enemy were at hand and the author of death pressed upon them. Slain by one death or another, half-alive they were flung from the ship. She then, embracing her husband, the companion of her death, threw herself into the sea. The king’s men took possession of the ship, empty of its owners.

The atrocity of this deed added, as it were, a fresh flame to the hatred felt for the king, so that men everywhere cursed both him and his children; and these imprecations, quickly heard by all the gods, brought it about that he should rage against his own blood. For Perseus, when he saw day by day the favor and standing of his brother Demetrius growing among the multitude of the Macedonians, and his credit with the Romans, and judged that no hope of the kingdom remained to him save in crime, bent all his thoughts to that one end. But since he did not believe himself, even for what he was plotting with a woman’s spirit, strong enough by his own strength, he set about sounding his father’s friends one by one with tangled talk. And at first some of them gave the appearance of spurning any such thing, because they placed more hope in Demetrius; then, as Philip’s hatred of the Romans grew daily—which Perseus indulged, while Demetrius opposed it with all his might—foreseeing in their minds the destruction of the unwary youth through his brother’s treachery, and judging that what was bound to come should be helped on and the hope of the more powerful fostered, they attached themselves to Perseus. The rest they put off, each to its own season; for the present it was resolved with every effort to inflame the king against the Romans and drive him to counsels of war, to which already of his own accord he had inclined his mind. At the same time, that Demetrius might day by day be the more suspected, by design they kept turning their talk to the Roman state. There, while some mocked the Romans’ manners and institutions, others their deeds, others the very look of the city, not yet adorned in either its public or its private quarters, others the leading men one by one, the unwary youth—by his love of the Roman name and by his rivalry against his brother—in defending all of it, made himself suspected by his father and exposed to accusation. And so the father held him excluded from all counsels concerning Roman affairs, and, turned wholly toward Perseus, with him debated his designs in that matter day and night. There had returned by chance those whom he had sent among the Bastarnae to summon auxiliaries, and they had brought thence noble youths and some of the royal stock, one of whom promised his sister in marriage to Philip’s son; and the alliance with that people had raised the king’s spirit. Then Perseus said: "What do those things profit? There is by no means as much safeguard in foreign aid as there is danger in treachery at home. I will not call him a traitor; assuredly we have a spy in our bosom, whose body the Romans gave back to us after he had been a hostage at Rome, while his mind they keep for themselves. The faces of almost all the Macedonians are turned upon him, and they think they will have no other king than the one the Romans shall have given them." By these words the old man’s mind, already sick of itself, was goaded, and he took those charges in more in his heart than in his face.

It chanced that the time came round for the lustration of the army, whose rite is of this kind: the head of a dog, cut through the middle, with the fore part, is set on the right of the road, and the hinder part with the entrails on the left; between this divided victim the armed forces are led across. Before the front of the column are borne the famous arms of all the kings of Macedonia from their most ancient origin; then the king himself follows with his children; next is the royal cohort and the bodyguard; the rear of the column the rest of the multitude of the Macedonians closes. At the king’s sides walked his two young sons, Perseus now in his thirtieth year, Demetrius five years younger, the one in the mid-strength of his youth, the other in its flower—the ripe offspring of a fortunate father, had his mind been sound. The custom was, the lustral rite performed, that the army should run a course, and that the two lines, divided in two parts, should clash in a mock fight. The royal youths were given as leaders to that sportive contest; but it was no image of a battle: they ran together as though they fought for the kingdom, and many wounds were dealt with the wooden weapons, nor was anything wanting but the steel to make a true semblance of war. That part which was under Demetrius was far superior. While Perseus took this ill, his prudent friends rejoiced, and said that this very thing would furnish a ground for incriminating the youth. Each of them held that day a banquet of the comrades who had run the course together, since Perseus, invited to dinner by Demetrius, had refused. On the festal day the kindly invitation and the youthful merriment drew both parties to their wine. There the recollection of the sportive contest, and jests against their adversaries, were bandied about, so that not even the leaders themselves were spared. To catch these words a spy sent by Perseus from among the guests, while he hung about too incautiously, was caught by the youths, who had chanced to step out of the dining-room, and was roughly handled. Ignorant of this, Demetrius said: "Why do we not go in revel to my brother, and soothe his anger, if any remains from the contest, by our frankness and good cheer?" All cried out that they would go, except those who feared the immediate vengeance of the spy they had beaten. When Demetrius would drag these too along, they hid steel under their garments, with which they might guard themselves should any violence be done. Nothing in domestic discord can be hidden. Both households were full of spies and informers. An informer ran ahead to Perseus, announcing that four young men were coming with Demetrius, girt with steel. Although the cause was plain—for he had heard that his guest had been beaten by them—yet, to bring the affair into infamy, he ordered the door barred, and from the upper part of the house, with the windows turned toward the street, he kept the revelers from the entrance of the door, as though they came for his murder. Demetrius, having clamored a little while, in his wine, that he was being shut out, returned to the banquet, ignorant of the whole affair.

The next day Perseus, as soon as there was opportunity of meeting his father, entered the palace, and with troubled countenance stood silent at a distance in his father’s sight. When his father asked, "Is all well?" and what that gloom might be, he said: "Know that I live as a clear gain to you. We are now assailed by my brother with snares no longer hidden: by night, with armed men, he came to the house to kill me, and, the doors being shut, I protected myself from his fury by the shelter of the walls." When he had thrown his father into a fear mingled with astonishment, "And if you can lend me your ears," he said, "I will make you hold the matter manifest." Philip indeed said he would hear, and ordered Demetrius to be called at once; and he summoned two of his elder friends, strangers to the youthful contests between the brothers and now seldom at court, Lysimachus and Onomastus, whom he might keep in his council. While the friends were coming, alone, his son standing far off, he paced up and down, turning many things over in his mind. After it was announced that they had come, he withdrew into an inner chamber with his two friends and as many bodyguards; to his sons he allowed each to bring three unarmed men in with him. There, when he had sat down, he said: "I sit, a most wretched father, a judge between two sons—the one the accuser of parricide, the other the accused—doomed to find amid my own children the stain either of a fabricated crime or of one committed. Long indeed have I feared this storm hanging over me, when I saw your looks toward one another by no means brotherly, when I caught certain words. But at times a hope crept into my mind that your angers might burn themselves out, that your suspicions might be cleared away: even enemies have laid down their arms and struck a treaty, and the private feuds of many have been ended; that some day the memory of your kinship would come over you, of the boyish frankness and the old intimacy between you, and at last of my own precepts—which, I fear, I have sung in vain to deaf ears. How often, in your hearing, cursing the examples of brotherly discord, have I recounted the horrible ends of those who by it had utterly overthrown themselves and their stock, their houses, their kingdoms! Better examples too, on the other side, I set before you: the sociable partnership between the two kings of the Lacedaemonians, salutary through many ages both to themselves and to their fatherland; that same state, after the custom arose for each to seize the tyranny for himself, brought to ruin; and again, these brothers Eumenes and Attalus, who from beginnings so slender that one might almost be ashamed of the royal name, by nothing more than their brotherly accord made their kingdom the equal of mine, of Antiochus’, of any king of this age. Not even from Roman examples did I refrain, such as I had either seen or heard: the Titus and Lucius Quinctii, who waged war against me, the Publius and Lucius Scipios, who utterly conquered Antiochus, their father and uncle, whose lifelong concord death too commingled. Neither could the crime of those men, and the ends that matched the crime, deter you from your senseless discord, nor could the good sense and the good fortune of these others bend you to soundness of mind. While I live and breathe, you have both, in hope and in shameless greed, entered upon my inheritance before its time. You wish me to live only so long until, by surviving the other, I make the one of you, by my death, king beyond dispute. You can endure neither a brother nor a father; nothing is dear, nothing sacred; in the room of all has succeeded the insatiable love of a single kingdom. Come then, defile a father’s ears, decide the matter by accusations—soon to decide it by the sword; say openly whatever of the truth you can, or whatever you care to invent; my ears are unbarred, which hereafter shall be closed to the secret charges of the one against the other." When in raging anger he had said these things, tears welled up in them all, and a long and mournful silence held.

Then Perseus: "I ought, no doubt, to have opened my door by night and welcomed the armed revelers and offered my throat to the steel, since nothing is believed unless the deed be carried through; and I, who was the target of the snares, hear the same charges as a brigand and a plotter. Not without reason do these men call you the father of one son only, Demetrius, and me a supposititious child, born of a concubine. For if with you I held the standing and the affection of a son, you would rage not against me, complaining of snares detected, but against him who had laid them; nor would our life be so cheap in your eyes that you should be moved neither by my past peril nor by the peril to come, if it go unpunished for those who plot. And so, if I must die in silence, let us be silent—praying only the gods that the crime begun against me may have its end in me, and that you be not assailed through my side. But if—as nature itself prompts those who are hemmed in a lonely place to implore the good faith even of men they have never seen—it is permitted to me too, who behold the steel drawn against me, to send forth my voice, then by you and by a father’s name (which of us holds it the more sacred you have long since perceived) I pray you so to hear me as if, roused by a voice and a wailing in the night, you had come upon me crying for help, and had caught Demetrius with armed men at dead of night in my vestibule. What then I would cry aloud, panic-stricken in the thing itself, this now, on the day after, I make my complaint. Brother, it is not after the manner of men who revel at one another’s houses by turns that we have long lived between us. You are resolved to reign, at all events. Against this hope of yours stands my age, stands the law of nations, stands the ancient custom of Macedonia, stands indeed our father’s own judgment too. These you cannot overpass save through my blood. You set every engine to work, you try everything. Thus far either my care or my fortune has withstood your parricide. Yesterday, in the lustration and the course and the mock semblance of battle, you all but made a deadly combat of it, and nothing delivered me from death save that I suffered myself and my men to be beaten. From a hostile battle, as from a brotherly game, you wished to draw me to dinner. Do you believe, father, that I would have dined among unarmed guests, to whom men came in revel armed? Do you believe there was no peril for me from swords by night, whom they all but killed with cudgels while you looked on? Why do you come at this hour of night, why as an enemy to one who is wroth, why with young men girt with steel? I dared not commit myself to you as a guest; shall I receive you, a reveler coming with armed men? Had the door stood open, you would at this very moment, father, be making ready my funeral—at the moment when you hear me complain. I do nothing as an accuser, in criminating fashion, nor by gathering doubtful things from arguments. For what? Does he deny that he came to my door with a throng, or that men girt with steel were with him? Whom I shall name, summon. They can dare all things, who have dared this; yet they will not dare to deny it. If I were leading to you men caught within my threshold with the steel, you would hold the thing as proven; take those who confess for men caught in the act. Now curse the lust of kingship, and call up the brotherly Furies. But let not your curses be blind, father; distinguish, discern the plotter and the one against whom the plot was laid; assail the guilty head. Let him who was about to slay his brother have the father’s gods, too, angry with him; let him who was about to perish by a brother’s crime have his refuge in a father’s mercy and justice. For to what else shall I flee, to whom neither the solemn lustration of your army, nor the running of the soldiers, nor my house, nor the feast, nor the night—given by nature’s bounty to mortals for rest—is safe? If, invited, I go to my brother, I must die; if I receive my reveling brother within my door, I must die: neither by going nor by staying do I escape the snares. Whither shall I betake myself? Nothing, father, have I revered but the gods and you. I have no Romans to whom to flee: they long for my ruin, because I grieve at the wrongs done you, because I am indignant at the cities, the nations, of late the seaboard of Thrace, torn from you. Neither while I am safe nor while you are safe do they hope that Macedonia will be theirs; if my brother’s crime shall carry me off, and old age you—or if not even that be awaited—they know that the king and the kingdom of Macedonia will be their own. If the Romans had left you anything outside Macedonia, I should believe that left to me too as a refuge. But there is protection enough among the Macedonians. You saw yesterday the soldiers’ onset against me. What was lacking to them but the steel? What was lacking to them by day, my brother’s guests took up by night. Why should I speak of the great part of the chief men, who have set all their hope of rank and fortune upon the Romans, and upon him who can do all things among the Romans? Nor, by Hercules, do they prefer that man only to me, his elder brother; it comes near to this, that they prefer him even to you yourself, the king and the father. For he it is by whose good office the Senate remitted your penalty, who now shields you from Roman arms, who deems it fair that your old age be bound and beholden to his youth. For him the Romans stand, for him all the cities freed from your dominion, for him the Macedonians who rejoice in the Roman peace: for me, besides you, father, what is there anywhere of hope or of help? To what end, do you suppose, look those letters now sent to you from Titus Quinctius, in which he both says that you took good counsel for your affairs in sending Demetrius to Rome, and urges that you send him back a second time, and with more envoys and with the chief men of the Macedonians? Titus Quinctius is now the author of all that fellow’s doings, and his master; him, with you disowned as father, he has set in your place; there, before all else, were the clandestine designs concocted. Helpers for those designs are sought, when he bids you send more, and the chief men of the Macedonians, along with him. Those who go from here to Rome whole and sincere, believing that they have Philip for king, return thence steeped and infected with Roman blandishments. Demetrius is all in all to them; him already, while his father lives, they hail as king. If I am indignant at this, I must straightway hear, not from others only but from you too, father, the charge of coveting the kingdom. But I, in truth, if it be laid out for judgment, do not acknowledge it. For whom do I move from his place, that I myself may succeed into his place? One only is before me, my father; and that he may long be so, I pray the gods. Surviving him—and so may I survive, if I shall so deserve, that he himself shall wish me to survive—I will receive the inheritance of the kingdom, if my father hands it on. He covets the kingdom, and covets it wickedly, who hastens to overleap the order of age, of nature, of the custom of the Macedonians, of the law of nations. ’My elder brother stands in the way, to whom by right, and by our father’s will too, the kingdom belongs: let him be taken off; I shall not be the first to seek a kingdom by a brother’s murder; my father, an old man, alone and bereaved, will fear for himself rather than avenge his son’s death. The Romans will rejoice, will approve, will defend the deed.’ These hopes are uncertain, father, but they are not empty. For so the matter stands: you can drive off the peril of my life from me by punishing those who took up the steel to kill me; but if their crime has its success, that same death of mine you will not be able to avenge."

After Perseus had made an end of speaking, the eyes of those present were cast upon Demetrius, as though he would answer at once. Then there was a long silence, since it was plain to all that, drenched in weeping, he could not speak. At last necessity itself overcame his grief, when they bade him speak, and thus he began: "All the helps that before belonged to defendants, father, the accuser has forestalled. With feigned tears, for the ruin of another, he has made my true tears suspect to you. Though he himself, ever since I returned from Rome, lies in wait day and night by secret conferences with his men, he has unprovoked put on, against me, the look not of a plotter only but of a manifest brigand and assassin. By his own danger he frightens you, that through you he may hasten the destruction of an innocent brother. He says he has nowhere on earth a refuge, that I may have, not even with you, any remnant of hope: circumvented, alone, helpless, he loads me with the odium of foreign favor—which harms rather than helps. And how like an accuser was this, that he mingled the charge of this night with the rest of his railing at my life, so that both this—what sort it is you will presently know—he might make suspect by the other tenor of our life, and that empty accusation touching my hope, my will, my designs, he might prop up by this fabricated and concocted argument of the night! At the same time he sought this also, that the accusation should seem sudden and least of all prepared, sprung, forsooth, from the fear and the sudden tumult of this night. But it behooved, Perseus, if I was a betrayer of my father and of the kingdom, if I had entered upon designs with the Romans, with the other enemies of my father, that the tale of this night should not have been waited for, but that I should have been arraigned for my treason before this; or, if that accusation, kept apart from this one, was empty, and was to display your spite against me rather than any guilt of mine, then today too it ought either to be passed over or deferred to another time, that it might be inquired into by itself—whether I had laid snares for you, or you for me, by a new and singular kind of hatred. Yet I, so far as in this sudden confusion I shall be able, will separate the things you have confounded, and will lay bare the snares of this night, whether yours or mine. He would have it appear that I formed the design of slaying him, namely that, my elder brother being removed—whose, by the law of nations, by the custom of the Macedonians, by your judgment too, as he says, the kingdom is to be—I, the younger, might succeed into the place of him whom I had slain. What then means that other part of his speech, in which he says that the Romans were courted by me, and that by reliance upon them I came into the hope of the kingdom? For if I believed there was so much weight in the Romans that they could impose whom they pleased as king of Macedonia, and trusted so far in my own favor with them, what need was there of parricide? That I might wear a blood-stained diadem by a brother’s murder? That I might be abominable and hateful to those very men with whom, by true—or at least feigned—probity, I have won what favor I have, if indeed I have any? Unless you believe that Titus Quinctius, by whose valor and counsels you now charge that I am governed, was the author to me of a brother’s murder—he who himself lives in such affection with his own brother. The same man has gathered together not the favor of the Romans only, but the judgments of the Macedonians and well-nigh the consent of all gods and men, through all of which he would believe that I shall be no match for him in the contest; the same man charges that I, as though in all else the inferior, have fled to the last hope of crime. Do you wish this to be the formula of the inquiry—that whichever of us has feared lest the other seem the worthier of the kingdom, he be adjudged to have conceived the design of crushing his brother?"

"Yet let us trace out, in whatever fashion, the order of the trumped-up charge. He has accused me of being assailed in many ways, and has crowded all the avenues of treachery into a single day. I wished to kill him by day, after the lustration, when we ran together—and that, if you please, on the very day of the lustration; I wished, when I invited him to dinner, to make away with him by poison, of course; I wished, when men girt with swords had followed me in revel, to slay him with the steel. You see what manner of times were chosen for parricide—of a game, of a banquet, of a revel. And the day, what manner of day? On which the army was being purified, on which, between the divided victim, with the arms of all the kings of Macedonia that ever were borne before us, and we two alone covering your flanks, father, we rode in the van, and the column of the Macedonians followed—on this day did I, even had I before committed anything that called for expiation, after I had been purified and cleansed by the rite, then, at that very moment, gazing upon the victim set about our march, turn over in my mind parricide, poisons, swords made ready against a revel—so that with what other rites I might afterward expiate a mind defiled with every crime? But the spirit blind with the lust of accusing, while it would make all things suspect, confounds one thing with another. For if I wished to make away with you by poison at dinner, what was less apt than, by an obstinate contest and clash, to make you angry, so that with good reason—as you did—you should refuse when invited to dinner? But when in anger you had refused, ought I, to appease you, to take pains to seek another occasion, since I had once prepared the poison; or was I, as it were, to leap from that plan to another, and slay you with the steel, and that on the same day, under the appearance of a revel? And then, in what way—if I believed you had shunned my dinner from fear of death—did I reckon that from the same fear you would not shun the revel as well?"

"It is no matter, father, for which I should blush, if on a festal day, among my equals, I made use of my wine more freely. I could wish you too would inquire with what gladness, with what sport, the banquet of yesterday was kept at my house, with even that—perverse perhaps—joy bearing us on, that in the youthful contest of arms our part had not been the inferior. Misery and fear easily shook off this surfeit; and had these not come between, we plotters would be lying steeped in sleep. If I were to storm your house, and, the house taken, to slay its master, would I not have refrained from wine for a single day, would I not have kept my soldiers sober? And, that I may not too simply defend myself alone, my brother himself too—least of all malicious and suspicious—says: ’I know nothing else, I charge nothing, except that they came to the revel with the steel.’ If I should ask whence you know this very thing, you will be forced to confess either that my house was full of your spies, or that they took up the steel so openly that all could see it. And, that he might not seem either to have made inquiry beforehand himself or now to be arguing in criminating fashion, he bade you ask of those whom he had named whether they had had the steel, so that, as in a doubtful matter, when you had asked what they themselves confess, they might be held as convicted. Why do you not order this to be asked—whether they took up the steel to slay you, whether by my authorship and knowledge? For this you wish to appear, not that which they confess and which is plain. But they say they took it up to defend themselves. Whether they did so rightly or wrongly, they themselves will render account of their own act; my cause, which is in no way touched by that act, do not mix in—or else explain whether we were going to attack you openly or in secret. If openly, why did we not all have the steel? Why none but those who beat your spy? If in secret, what was the order of the plan? When, the banquet broken up, I had departed as a reveler, four were to stay behind, that they might fall on you in your sleep—how would they have escaped notice, strangers and mine, and most of all suspect because a little before they had been in a brawl? And how, you slaughtered, would they themselves have got away? Could your house be taken and stormed with four swords?"

"Nay, why do you not, leaving aside that nocturnal fable, return to that which you grieve at, which envy burns you with? ’Why is there anywhere mention of your kingdom, Demetrius? Why do you seem to some the worthier successor to our father’s fortune than I? Why do you make my hope—which, were you not, would be certain—doubtful and full of care?’ This Perseus feels, though he does not say it; this makes him my enemy, this my accuser; this fills your house, this fills your kingdom, with charges and suspicions. But I, father, as perhaps I ought neither now to hope for the kingdom nor ever to dispute over it—because I am the younger, because you wish me to yield to the elder—so neither ought I to have done, nor do I do, that which would make me seem unworthy, unworthy of you my father, in all men’s eyes. For that I should win by my own vices, not by the modesty of yielding to one to whom it is right and lawful. You cast the Romans in my teeth, and turn into a charge the things that ought to be my glory. I neither sought to be handed to the Romans as a hostage, nor to be sent as an envoy to Rome; sent by you, I did not refuse to go. On both occasions I so bore myself as to be no shame to you, none to your kingdom, none to the nation of the Macedonians. And so the cause of my friendship with the Romans, father, was yourself. As long as peace shall abide between you and them, with me too there will be their favor; if war shall begin, the same man who as hostage, as envoy, was not unprofitable on his father’s behalf, will be to them a most bitter enemy. Nor do I today demand that the Romans’ favor profit me; I only deprecate that it harm me. It neither began in war nor is reserved for war; I was a pledge of peace, I was sent as envoy to keep the peace: let neither thing be to me a glory or a charge. If I have committed anything impious against you, father, anything wicked against my brother, I deprecate no penalty; if I am innocent, I deprecate this—that, since I cannot be consumed by the charge, I be not consumed by envy. Not today does my brother first accuse me, but today first openly, with no desert of mine toward him. If my father were angry with me, it had behooved you, the elder brother, to plead for the younger, to win pardon for my youth, for my error. Where there ought to be a safeguard, there is ruin. From banquet and revel, half-asleep almost, I have been snatched to plead a charge of parricide. Without advocates, without patrons, I am compelled to speak for myself. If I had to speak for another, I should have taken time to think out and frame my speech—when I should be risking nothing but my reputation for talent. Not knowing for what I had been summoned, I heard you, angry and bidding me plead my cause, and my brother accusing. He used against me a speech long before prepared and meditated; I had only that much time, while I was being accused, to learn what was afoot. Was I, in that one passing moment, to listen to the accuser, or to meditate my defense? Thunderstruck by a sudden and unlooked-for evil, I could scarcely grasp what was charged against me; far less can I know well enough how to defend myself. What hope should I have, but that I have a father for my judge? Before whom, even if in affection I am surpassed by the elder brother, in mercy at least I, the accused, ought not to be surpassed. For I pray you to save me for myself and for you; he demands that you slay me for his own security. What do you suppose he will do toward me, when you have handed him the kingdom, who even now thinks it fair that my blood be granted him?"

As he was saying these things, tears at once choked his breath and his voice. Philip, having removed them, conferred a little while with his friends and then pronounced that he would decide their cause neither by words nor by the disputation of a single hour, but by inquiring into the life and character of each, and by observing their words and deeds in matters great and small. By this it was made plain to all that the charge of the past night had been easily refuted, but that Demetrius’s excessive favor with the Romans was a thing suspected. These, while Philip yet lived, were sown, as it were, as the seeds of the Macedonian war, which was to be waged above all with Perseus.

Both consuls set out for Liguria, which was then the one consular province. And because they did their business there successfully, a supplication for one day was decreed. About two thousand of the Ligurians came to the farthest border of the province of Gaul, where Marcellus had his camp, begging to be received. Marcellus, having ordered the Ligurians to wait in the same place, consulted the Senate by letter. The Senate ordered the praetor Marcus Ogulnius to write back to Marcellus that it had been more proper for the consuls, whose province it was, than for itself to decide what was for the public good; and that even so it was not their pleasure, if he should receive the Ligurians by surrender, that the arms be taken from those received; and that the Senate judged it fair that they be sent to the consuls.

At the same time the praetors—Publius Manlius into Farther Spain, which he had held as a province in his earlier praetorship as well, and Quintus Fulvius Flaccus into the Hither—arrived, and Fulvius received the army from Aulus Terentius; for the Farther had been without a command through the death of the proconsul Publius Sempronius. As Fulvius Flaccus was besieging a Spanish town named Urbicua, the Celtiberians fell upon him. Several hard battles were fought there, and many Roman soldiers were both wounded and killed. Fulvius prevailed by perseverance, in that by no force could he be dragged off from the siege. The Celtiberians, worn out by the varying engagements, drew off. The city, their aid removed, was within a few days taken and plundered; the booty the praetor granted to the soldiers. Fulvius having taken this town, and Publius Manlius having only gathered into one his army, which had been scattered—no other memorable thing being done—they led their armies into winter quarters. These things were done that summer in Spain. Terentius, who had departed from that province, entered the city in ovation. There was carried in procession nine thousand three hundred and twenty pounds of silver, eighty-two pounds of gold, and sixty-seven pounds of golden crowns. In the same year there were Roman arbitrators, on the spot, between the people of Carthage and king Masinissa concerning a tract of land. Masinissa’s father Gala had taken it from the Carthaginians; Syphax had thence driven out Gala, and afterward, to gratify his father-in-law Hasdrubal, had made a gift of it to the Carthaginians; from the Carthaginians Masinissa had that year driven them out. With no less contention of spirit than when they fought with steel and battle-line, the matter was pleaded before the Romans. The Carthaginians claimed it back, because it had been their ancestors’, and had then come to them from Syphax; Masinissa said that he had both recovered and held the land of his father’s kingdom by the law of nations, and that he was the superior both in his cause and in possession; that he feared nothing in that arbitration save lest the scruple of the Romans—while they feared to seem to have indulged an allied and friendly king against their own and his common enemies—should be to his loss. The commissioners did not alter the right of possession, but referred the cause entire to the Senate at Rome.

Among the Ligurians nothing was afterward done. They had first withdrawn into trackless glades, then, the army disbanded, slipped away here and there into their villages and strongholds. The consuls too wished to disband their army, and consulted the fathers on the matter. One of them they ordered to disband his army and come to Rome to hold the election of magistrates for the year; the other to winter at Pisae with his legions. There was a report that the Transalpine Gauls were arming their youth, and it was not known into what region of Italy the multitude would pour itself. And so the consuls arranged between themselves that Gnaeus Baebius should go to the elections, because his brother Marcus Baebius was a candidate for the consulship.

The elections for proposing the consuls were held; there were created Publius Cornelius Lentulus and Marcus Baebius Tamphilus. Then were made praetors the two Quintus Fabii, Maximus and Buteo, Tiberius Claudius Nero, Quintus Petillius Spurinus, Marcus Pinarius Rusca, and Lucius Duronius. When these had entered on their magistracy, the provinces fell to them thus by lot: to the consuls Liguria; among the praetors, to Quintus Petillius the city, to Quintus Fabius Maximus the foreign jurisdiction, to Quintus Fabius Buteo Gaul, to Tiberius Claudius Nero Sicily, to Marcus Pinarius Sardinia, to Lucius Duronius Apulia; and Istria was added, because the Tarentines and Brundisians reported that the coastal lands were infested with the piracies of ships from overseas. The Massiliots complained of the same thing concerning the Ligurian ships. Armies were then decreed: four legions for the consuls, each to have five thousand two hundred Roman foot and three hundred horse, and fifteen thousand of the allies and the Latin name, with eight hundred horse. In the Spains the command was prorogued to the former praetors with the armies they had, and for reinforcement there were decreed three thousand Roman citizens, two hundred horse, and of the allies of the Latin name six thousand foot and three hundred horse. Nor was the care of naval matters neglected. The consuls were ordered to create two commissioners for that purpose, by whom twenty ships, drawn down, should be manned with naval allies—Roman citizens who had been in slavery—only freeborn men being set in command over them. Between the commissioners the guarding of the seaboard was so divided, ten ships apiece, that the promontory of Minerva should be, as it were, the hinge in the middle: the one was to guard the right part thence as far as Massilia, the other the left as far as Barium.

Many foul prodigies were both seen at Rome that year and reported from abroad. In the precinct of Vulcan and of Concord it rained blood; and the pontiffs reported that the spears had moved, and that at Lanuvium the image of Juno Sospita had wept. There was so great a pestilence in the fields and the market-towns and the places of assembly and in the city, that Libitina scarcely sufficed for the funerals. Anxious at these prodigies and disasters, the fathers decreed both that the consuls should sacrifice with full-grown victims to whatever gods seemed good, and that the decemviri should consult the books. By their decree a supplication round all the sacred couches at Rome was proclaimed for one day. On the same authority both the Senate resolved and the consuls proclaimed that throughout all Italy there should be a three days’ supplication and holiday. So great was the force of the pestilence that, when on account of the defection of the Corsicans and the war stirred up by the Ilienses in Sardinia it had been resolved to enroll eight thousand foot of the allies of the Latin name and three hundred horse, whom the praetor Marcus Pinarius should carry over with him into Sardinia, the consuls reported that so many men had died, so many were everywhere sick, that that number of soldiers could not be made up. The praetor was ordered to take what was lacking of soldiers from the proconsul Gnaeus Baebius, who was wintering at Pisae, and thence to cross over into Sardinia. To the praetor Lucius Duronius, to whom the province of Apulia had fallen, an inquiry concerning the Bacchanalia was added, of which certain remnants, as it were seeds from the former mischiefs, had already appeared in the previous year; but the inquiries before the praetor Lucius Pupius had been begun rather than brought to any end. The fathers ordered the new praetor to cut this out, lest it should again creep more widely. And the consuls, by the authority of the Senate, brought before the people a law concerning bribery.

Then they introduced embassies into the Senate, first those of the kings—of Eumenes and of Ariarathes of Cappadocia and of Pharnaces of Pontus. Nor was anything further answered them than that the Senate would send men to take cognizance of their disputes and decide them. Then the envoys of the Lacedaemonian exiles and of the Achaeans were brought in; and hope was given the exiles that the Senate would write to the Achaeans that they be restored; the Achaeans set forth, with the fathers’ assent, concerning Messene recovered and matters there composed. And from Philip, king of the Macedonians, two envoys came, Philocles and Apelles, on no matter that needed to be asked of the Senate; rather they had been sent to spy out and inquire about those conversations with the Romans of which Perseus had accused Demetrius—above all, those held with Titus Quinctius against his brother concerning the kingdom. These the king had sent as men neutral and inclined to the favor of neither; but they too were the ministers and partners of Perseus’s deceit against his brother.

Demetrius, ignorant of all save the brotherly crime that had lately broken out, at first had a hope neither great nor none of being able to reconcile his father to himself; then day by day he trusted his father’s mind the less, since he saw its ears beset by his brother. And so, looking warily to his own words and deeds, lest he heighten anyone’s suspicions, he above all abstained from every mention and contagion of the Romans, so that he did not even wish to be written to, because he perceived that it was by this kind of charge especially that his father’s mind was exasperated.

Philip, partly that the soldier might not grow worse through idleness, partly to avert the suspicion that anything was being set on foot by him concerning a Roman war, having ordered the army to Stobi in Paeonia, went on to lead it into Maedica. A longing had seized him to ascend to the summit of Mount Haemus, because he had given credit to the common opinion that from it the Pontic and the Adriatic seas at once, and the river Hister, and the Alps could be seen: to have these set before his eyes would be, he thought, of no small moment for his deliberation upon a Roman war. Having inquired of those acquainted with the region about the ascent of Haemus, since it was sufficiently agreed among all that there was no way for an army, but a way for a few lightly-equipped men by a most difficult approach, then, to soothe with familiar talk his younger son, whom he had resolved not to take with him, he first asks of him whether, since so great a difficulty of the journey was set before him, he ought to persevere in his undertaking or refrain; if nevertheless he should go on, he could not forget, in such matters, Antigonus, who, tossed by a savage storm when he had had all his people with him in the same ship, was said to have charged his children that they themselves should both remember, and so hand down to posterity, that no one should dare to risk himself, together with his whole house at once, in a doubtful case. Mindful, then, of that precept, he would not commit two sons at once to the hazard of the chance that was set before them; and since he was taking his elder son with him, he would send the younger back into Macedonia, as a support for his hopes and a guard for the kingdom. It did not escape Demetrius that he was being sent away that he might not be present at the council, when, with those places in view, his father should deliberate by what routes the nearest ways led to the Adriatic Sea and to Italy, and what the plan of the war should be. But not only was it safe to obey his father; he had even to assent, lest by obeying unwillingly he should give cause for suspicion. That his journey into Macedonia might however be safe, Didas, one of the royal praetors, who was in charge of Paeonia, was ordered to escort him with a moderate guard. Him too Perseus, like most of his father’s friends, ever since it had begun to be doubtful to no one to whom, the king’s mind being so inclined, the inheritance of the kingdom belonged, held among the conspirators against his brother’s life. For the present he gives him a charge to insinuate himself, by every kind of compliance, into the most intimate familiarity, that he might draw out all his secrets and spy into his hidden thoughts. So Demetrius departs with a guard more hostile to him than if he went alone.

Philip, having first crossed Maedica, then the wastes lying between Maedica and Haemus, came on the seventh day’s march to the foot of the mountain. There, having tarried one day to choose those whom he should take with him, on the third day he began the ascent. The toil at first was moderate on the lowest hills; the higher they climbed, the more and more wooded, and for the most part trackless, were the places that received them. They came then into a way so shadowy that, through the density of the trees and the branches thrown across one upon another, the sky could scarcely be seen. But as they drew near the ridges, all was so covered with mist—a thing rare in lofty places—that they were hindered no otherwise than on a night march. Only on the third day was the summit reached. They took nothing away, on their descent, from the common opinion—more, I believe, lest the emptiness of the journey should be a mockery, than because seas and mountains and rivers so unlike one another could be seen from a single spot. All were distressed by the difficulty of the way, and before the rest the king himself, the heavier as he was for his years. Having there sacrificed at two altars consecrated to Jupiter and the Sun, by the way by which he had ascended in three days he came down in two, fearing most the nightly colds, which at the rising of the Dog-star were like those of midwinter. Buffeted by many hardships through those days, he found things no more cheerful in the camp, where there was the utmost scarcity, as in a region shut in on every side by deserts. And so, having tarried only one day, for the rest of those whom he had had with him, he ran across thence, by a march like a flight, into the country of the Dentheleti. They were allies; but, by reason of want, the Macedonians plundered them no otherwise than the territory of enemies; for by snatching everywhere they laid waste first the farmsteads, then even certain villages, not without great shame to the king, who heard the voices of his allies vainly imploring the gods of alliance and his own name. Having taken grain thence, he returned into Maedica and set about besieging a city which they call Petra. He himself pitched his camp at the approach from the plain; his son Perseus he sent round with a moderate force to assault the city from the higher ground. The townsfolk, since terror pressed on every side, gave hostages and for the present surrendered themselves; but the same, after the army had withdrawn, forgetful of the hostages, left the city and fled to fortified places and the mountains.

Philip, his soldiers wearied by every kind of toil without any effect, and his suspicions of his son swollen by the deceit of the praetor Didas, returned into Macedonia. This man, sent as a companion, as was said before, when by flattering and showing indignation by turns he had played upon the frankness of the unwary youth—who was not unjustly angry with his own—and himself sought to share his case, offering his services unasked in everything, drew out the youth’s secrets under a pledge of faith. Demetrius was meditating flight to the Romans; for which design the praetor of Paeonia seemed to have been offered as a helper by the gods’ kindness, through whose province he had conceived a hope of being able to slip away in safety. This design is straightway both betrayed to his brother and, on his information, disclosed to his father. Letters were first carried to him as he was besieging Petra. Thereupon Herodorus—he was the chief of Demetrius’s friends—was cast into custody, and Demetrius was ordered to be watched, but with dissimulation. These things, above the rest, made the king’s coming into Macedonia a sorrowful one. He was moved both by the present charges; yet he judged that those whom he had sent to Rome to investigate everything ought to be awaited. Anxious with these cares, when he had passed several months, at last the envoys came—men who had long beforehand framed in Macedonia what they should bring back from Rome. These, above their other villainies, delivered to the king even forged letters, sealed with a counterfeit seal of Titus Quinctius. In the letter was a deprecation: if the youth, carried away by desire of the kingdom, had transacted anything with him, [he begged pardon]; Quinctius would do nothing against any of the king’s house, nor was he the man who could seem capable of being the author of any impious design. These letters gave credit to Perseus’s charges. And so Herodorus, straightway long racked, dies under the torments without disclosing anything of the matter. Perseus accused Demetrius to his father a second time. The flight prepared through Paeonia was charged against him, and that certain men had been bribed to be companions of his journey; most of all the forged letters of Titus Quinctius pressed hard. Yet nothing more grievous was openly pronounced concerning him, in order that he might rather be killed by guile—and that not from any care for him, but lest his punishment should lay bare the designs against the Romans. When Philip himself had a journey from Thessalonica to Demetrias, he sends Demetrius to Astraeum in Paeonia, with the same companion Didas, and Perseus to Amphipolis to receive the Thracian hostages. As Didas was parting from him, he is said to have given him a charge about killing his son. A sacrifice was either instituted or feigned by Didas, to celebrate which Demetrius, invited by Didas, came from Astraeum to Heraclea. At that dinner poison is said to have been given. When he had drained the cup, he at once perceived it; and soon, pains arising, having left the banquet and withdrawn to his chamber, lamenting his father’s cruelty, charging his brother with parricide and Didas with crime, he was tortured by the venom. Then a certain Thyrsis of Stuberra and Alexander of Beroea, let in, by throwing coverlets over his head and throat, choked out his breath. So the innocent youth—since his enemies had not been content even with a simple kind of death for him—is killed.

While these things were being done in Macedonia, Lucius Aemilius, his command prorogued from the consulship, at the beginning of spring led his army against the Ingaunian Ligurians. As soon as he had pitched his camp within the enemy’s borders, envoys came to him to spy under the show of seeking peace. When Paulus refused to make peace save with men who surrendered, they did not so much refuse this as say that there was need of time, that a rustic kind of men might be persuaded. To this end a truce of ten days being granted, they then begged that the soldiers should not go across the nearest mountains from the camp to forage and gather wood: those places, they said, were cultivated lands within their own borders. When they had obtained this, behind those very mountains from which they had turned the enemy away, their whole army gathered, and suddenly, with an immense multitude, they fell to assaulting the Roman camp, attacking all the gates at once. With the utmost force they assailed it the whole day, so that there was not even space for the Romans to bring out their standards, nor room to deploy the line. Crowded at the gates, they defended the camp by blocking the way rather than by fighting. About sunset, when the enemy had withdrawn, he sends two horsemen with letters to the proconsul Gnaeus Baebius at Pisae, that he should come to his aid as soon as possible, besieged as he was during a truce. Baebius had handed over his army to the praetor Marcus Pinarius on his way to Sardinia; nevertheless he both informs the Senate by letter that Lucius Aemilius is besieged by the Ligurians, and wrote to Marcus Claudius Marcellus, whose province was nearest thence, that, if it seemed good to him, he should lead his army over from Gaul into Liguria and free Lucius Aemilius from the siege. These aids were destined to be too late. The Ligurians return to the camp the next day. Aemilius, though he had known they would come and could have led out into line, kept his men within the rampart, that he might draw the matter out to the time when Baebius could come with his army from Pisae.

At Rome the letters of Baebius caused great alarm, the greater because a few days after, Marcellus, having handed over his army to Fabius and come to Rome, took away the hope that, since he was in Gaul, the army could be led over into Liguria—because there was a war with the Istrians, who were hindering the colony of Aquileia from being founded: thither Fabius had set out, and could not return thence with the war begun. One hope of succor remained, and that itself slower than the time demanded—if the consuls should make haste to go into the province. That they should do so, each of the fathers cried out for his part. The consuls said they would not go unless the levy were completed, and that not their own sloth but the violence of the disease was the cause of its being finished too slowly. Yet they could not withstand the unanimity of the Senate, but went out in their generals’ cloaks and proclaimed to the soldiers whom they had enrolled a day on which to assemble at Pisae. Leave was given them, by whatever way they went, to enroll emergency soldiers on the spot and lead them with them. And the praetors Quintus Petillius and Quintus Fabius were commanded—Petillius to enroll two emergency legions of Roman citizens and to bind by the oath all under fifty years; Fabius to require of the allies of the Latin name fifteen thousand foot and eight hundred horse. As naval duumviri were created Gaius Matienus and Gaius Lucretius, and ships were fitted out for them; and Matienus, whose province was the Gallic gulf, was ordered to lead the fleet as soon as possible to the coast of Liguria, if he could be of any use to Lucius Aemilius and his army.

Aemilius, after no aid showed itself anywhere, believing the horsemen intercepted, and judging that it should be put off no longer that he should try fortune by himself before the enemy came—who were attacking more slothfully and carelessly—drew up his army at the four gates, that at a given signal they might make a sally from all parts at once. To the four extraordinary cohorts he joined two, set Marcus Valerius the legate in command, and ordered him to burst out by the praetorian gate. At the right principal gate he drew up the hastati of the first legion; the principes of the same legion he placed in reserve; Marcus Servilius and Lucius Sulpicius, tribunes of the soldiers, were set over these. The third legion was drawn up opposite the left principal gate; only this was changed: the principes were placed in front and the hastati in reserve; Sextus Julius Caesar and Lucius Aurelius Cotta, tribunes of the soldiers, were set over this legion. Quintus Fulvius Flaccus the legate was posted with the right wing at the quaestorian gate; two cohorts and the triarii of two legions were ordered to remain on guard of the camp. The general himself went round all the gates, haranguing, and with whatever goads he could, sharpened the soldiers’ wrath—now charging the treachery of the enemy, who, peace sought and a truce given, had during the very time of the truce, against the law of nations, come to assault the camp; now teaching how great a shame it was that a Roman army should be besieged by the Ligurians, brigands rather than lawful enemies. "With what face will any of you meet—if you escape from here by another’s aid, not by your own valor—I do not say those soldiers who conquered Hannibal, who conquered Philip, who conquered Antiochus, the greatest kings and commanders of our age, but those who several times cut down these very Ligurians as they fled like cattle through trackless glades? What a Spaniard, what a Gaul, what a Macedonian or a Carthaginian would not dare, a Ligurian foe attempts: he comes up to the Roman rampart, besieges it unprovoked, and assails it—he whom, searching the trackless glades before, hidden and lurking, we could scarcely find." To these words there was returned a consenting shout of the soldiers: there was no fault in the soldiers, to whom no one had given the signal to sally; let him give the signal; he would learn that they were the same as before, both the Romans and the Ligurians. There were two camps of the Ligurians on this side of the mountains. From these, in the first days, all came forth together at sunrise, marshaled and in order; then they would not take up arms unless sated with food and wine; scattered, in no order, they came out, as men to whom it was almost certain that the enemy would not carry their standards beyond the rampart. Against them as they came thus disordered, with a shout raised at once by all who were in the camp—the camp-servants too and the sutlers—and all the gates flung open together, the Romans burst forth. So unforeseen was the thing to the Ligurians that they fell into a panic just as if they had been encompassed by an ambush. For a brief space there was some shape of a battle; then a headlong flight, and slaughter of the fleeing on every side. The signal being given to the horsemen to mount and to let no one escape, all were driven in a panic flight into their camp, then stripped of the camp itself. Above fifteen thousand of the Ligurians were slain that day, two thousand five hundred taken. Three days after, the whole name of the Ingaunian Ligurians, hostages given, came into subjection. The pilots and sailors who had been in the predatory ships were sought out and all cast into custody; and by Gaius Matienus the duumvir thirty-two ships of that kind were taken on the Ligurian coast. To announce these things and carry the letters to the Senate, Lucius Aurelius Cotta and Gaius Sulpicius Gallus were sent to Rome, and at the same time to ask that Lucius Aemilius, the province finished, be allowed to depart, and to lead his soldiers away with him and disband them. Both were granted by the Senate, and a supplication at all the sacred couches for three days was decreed; and the praetors were ordered—Petillius to disband the city legions, Fabius to remit the levy to the allies and the Latin name—and that the city praetor should write to the consuls that the Senate judged it fair that the emergency soldiers enrolled for the tumult be disbanded as soon as possible.

A colony was that year planted at Graviscae, in Etruscan land once taken from the Tarquinienses. Five iugera of land were given to each man; the three commissioners who planted it were Gaius Calpurnius Piso, Publius Claudius Pulcher, and Gaius Terentius Istra. The year was notable for drought and scarcity of crops; it is handed down to memory that for six months it never rained.

In the same year, in the field of Lucius Petillius the scribe, at the foot of the Janiculum, while the tillers of the field were working the ground rather deep, two stone chests were found, about eight feet long and four wide, their lids fastened with lead. Each chest was inscribed with Latin and Greek letters: the one, that there was buried Numa Pompilius, son of Pompo, king of the Romans; the other, that the books of Numa Pompilius were within. When the owner, by the advice of his friends, had opened these chests, the one which had borne the inscription of the buried king was found empty, with no trace of a human body or of anything else, all having been consumed by the decay of so many years. In the other were two bundles, wrapped in waxed cords, each holding seven books, not only whole but of the freshest appearance. Seven were Latin, on pontifical law; seven Greek, on a system of philosophy such as could have belonged to that age. Valerius Antias adds that they were Pythagorean, fitting, by a plausible falsehood, his credit to the common opinion by which Numa is believed to have been a hearer of Pythagoras. First the books were read by the friends who were present at the scene; soon, as more read them and they were becoming public, Quintus Petillius the city praetor, eager to read those books, took them from Lucius Petillius; and there was a familiar acquaintance between them, because Quintus Petillius as quaestor had enrolled him, the scribe, into his decuria. Having read the chief contents, when he had observed that most of them tended to the dissolving of religious observances, he told Lucius Petillius that he would cast those books into the fire; but before he did so, he gave him leave, if he thought he had any right or remedy to recover those books, to try it; he would do it with his good will unimpaired. The scribe approached the tribunes of the plebs; from the tribunes the matter was referred to the Senate. The praetor said he was ready to give his oath that those books ought not to be read or kept. The Senate resolved that it should be deemed enough that the praetor offered his oath; that the books should be burned in the comitium as soon as possible; that a price for the books, as much as should seem fit to Quintus Petillius the praetor and to the greater part of the tribunes of the plebs, should be paid to the owner. This the scribe did not accept. The books were burned in the comitium, a fire made by the victimarii, in the sight of the people.

A great war arose that summer in Hither Spain. The Celtiberians had gathered about thirty-five thousand men, as many as scarcely ever before. Quintus Fulvius Flaccus held that province. He, because he had heard that the Celtiberians were arming their youth, had himself too drawn together what auxiliaries he could from the allies, but by no means matched the enemy in number of soldiers. At the beginning of spring he led his army into Carpetania and pitched camp by the town of Aebura, setting a moderate garrison in the town. A few days after, the Celtiberians pitched their camp about two miles thence, at the foot of a hill. When the Roman praetor perceived they were at hand, he sent his brother Marcus Fulvius with two squadrons of allied horse to the enemy’s camp to spy, ordered to ride up as close as he could to the rampart, to see how great their forces were; he was to refrain from fighting, and to withdraw if he saw the enemy’s cavalry coming out. He did as had been ordered. For some days nothing further was done than that these two squadrons should show themselves, then be drawn off when the enemy’s cavalry charged out from the camp. At last the Celtiberians, all their forces of foot and horse at once gone out of camp, in a battle-line drawn up, took their stand about midway in the space between the two camps. The plain was all level and fit for battle. There the Spaniards stood, awaiting the enemy; the Roman kept his men within the rampart. For four days running they too held their line drawn up in the same place, and on the Roman side nothing was moved. Then the Celtiberians, since no chance of fighting was given, rested in camp; only the cavalry went out to their posts, to be ready if anything were moved by the enemy. Behind the camps both sides went to forage and gather wood, neither hindering the other. The Roman praetor, when he believed that by the rest of so many days the hope had been made for the enemy that he would not be the first to move, orders Lucius Acilius, with the left wing and six thousand provincial auxiliaries, to go round the mountain which lay at the enemy’s back; thence, when he should hear a shout, to run down to their camp. They set out by night, that they might not be seen. Flaccus at first light sends Gaius Scribonius, prefect of the allies, to the enemy’s rampart with the extraordinary cavalry of the left wing. When the Celtiberians saw them both coming nearer and more numerous than they were wont, all the cavalry pours out of the camp, and at the same time the signal for going out is given to the foot. Scribonius, as had been ordered, as soon as he heard the noise of horse, turned his horses about and made for the camp. The enemy follow the more headlong. First the cavalry, soon the line of foot too came up, with no doubtful hope of storming the camp that day. They were not more than five hundred paces from the rampart. And so Flaccus, when he judged them sufficiently drawn off from the protection of their own camp, with his army drawn up within the rampart, bursts out at three points at once, a shout raised not only to kindle ardor for the fight but also that those who were on the mountains might hear it. Nor did they delay to run down, as had been ordered, to the camp, where a garrison of not more than five thousand armed men had been left. These, when both their own fewness and the enemy’s multitude and the unforeseen event had terrified them, the camp is taken almost without a contest. The part which could best be seen by the fighters, Acilius set on fire. The hindmost of the Celtiberians, who were in the line, first caught sight of the flame; then through the whole line it was spread abroad that the camp was lost and even now blazing. Whence to them terror, thence to the Romans courage grew. Already the shout of their own men conquering reached their ears, already the burning camp of the enemy was in view. The Celtiberians for a little while wavered with uncertain minds; but afterward, since there was no retreat for the beaten and no hope anywhere save in the contest, the more stubbornly they take up the fight afresh. In the center of the line they were hard pressed by the fifth legion; against the left wing, in which they saw the Romans had drawn up provincial auxiliaries of their own kind, they advanced with greater confidence. Now it had nearly come to this, that the left wing was being driven back, had not the seventh legion come up. At the same time those who had been left on guard at the town of Aebura came up in the very heat of the battle, and Acilius was at the enemy’s back. Long were the Celtiberians cut down in the midst; those who survived take to flight on all sides everywhere. The cavalry, sent against them in two divisions, made great slaughter. About twenty-three thousand of the enemy were slain that day, four thousand seven hundred taken with more than five hundred horses, and eighty-eight military standards. The victory was great, yet not bloodless: of the Romans of the two legions a little more than two hundred, of the allies of the Latin name eight hundred and thirty, of the foreign auxiliaries about two thousand four hundred fell. The praetor led the victorious army back into camp; Acilius was ordered to remain in the camp taken by him. The next day the spoils were gathered from the enemy, and before the assembly those whose valor had been conspicuous were rewarded.

The wounded then being carried down into the town of Aebura, the legions were led through Carpetania to Contrebia. That city, besieged, having summoned aid from the Celtiberians, when they delayed—not because they themselves hesitated, but because the roads, made impassable by continual rains, and the swollen rivers held them back as they set out from home—gave up hope of its own people’s aid and came into surrender. Flaccus too, compelled by foul weather, led his whole army into the city. The Celtiberians who had set out from home, ignorant of the surrender, when at last, the rains slackening and the rivers crossed, they had come to Contrebia, after they saw no camp outside the walls, supposing either that it had been moved to the other side or that the enemy had withdrawn, in carelessness scattered, came up to the town. Against them the Romans made a sally from two gates and, falling on them disordered, routed them. The thing that hindered them from resisting and taking up the fight—that they came not in one column nor in numbers to the standards—the same was the safety of a great part for flight: for scattered they spread themselves abroad everywhere over the whole plain, and nowhere did the enemy surround them in close array. Yet about twelve thousand were slain, more than five thousand men taken, four hundred horses, sixty-two military standards. Those who, straggling from the flight, were making their way home turned aside another column of Celtiberians on the march by telling of the surrender of Contrebia and of their own disaster. At once they all slipped away into their villages and strongholds. Flaccus, setting out from Contrebia, led his legions plundering through Celtiberia, storming many strongholds, until the greatest part of the Celtiberians came into surrender. These things were done in Hither Spain that year. In the Farther the praetor Manlius fought several successful battles with the Lusitanians.

Aquileia, a Latin colony, was that same year planted in the land of the Gauls. Three thousand foot received fifty iugera each, the centurions a hundred, the horsemen a hundred and forty. The three commissioners who planted it were Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, Gaius Flaminius, and Lucius Manlius Acidinus. Two temples were that year dedicated: one of Venus Erucina at the Colline gate—Lucius Porcius Licinus, son of Lucius, duumvir, dedicated it; it had been vowed by the consul Lucius Porcius in the Ligurian war—the other, in the vegetable forum, of Piety. That temple Manius Acilius Glabrio dedicated, duumvir, and set up a gilded statue, the first gilded statue of all in Italy, of his father Glabrio. He it was who had himself vowed that temple on the day when he fought against king Antiochus at Thermopylae, and the same man had let the contract for it by decree of the Senate.

During the same days on which these temples were dedicated, Lucius Aemilius Paulus the proconsul triumphed over the Ingaunian Ligurians. He carried in procession twenty-five golden crowns, and besides nothing of gold or silver was borne in that triumph. Many captives, chiefs of the Ligurians, were led before the chariot. He distributed three hundred asses to each soldier. The fame of his triumph was increased by the envoys of the Ligurians, who begged for perpetual peace: that the Ligurian nation had so brought itself in mind never to take up arms save at the command of the Roman people. The answer was given to the Ligurians by Quintus Fabius the praetor, by order of the Senate, that this language was nothing new for the Ligurians; but that their disposition should be as new as, and answerable to, their language, it most concerned themselves: let them go to the consuls and do what should be commanded by them; the Senate would believe none but the consuls that the Ligurians were at peace in sincere good faith. There was peace among the Ligurians. In Corsica there was fighting with the Corsicans; about two thousand of them Marcus Pinarius the praetor slew in the line. Compelled by this disaster they gave hostages and a hundred thousand pounds of wax. Thence the army was led into Sardinia, and with the Ilienses, a nation not even now pacified in every part, successful battles were fought. To the Carthaginians a hundred hostages were that year restored, and the Roman people guaranteed them peace not only on its own behalf but on behalf of king Masinissa too, who with an armed garrison was holding the land that was in dispute.

The consuls had an idle province. Marcus Baebius, recalled to Rome for the elections, created as consuls Aulus Postumius Albinus Luscus and Gaius Calpurnius Piso. Praetors thereupon were made Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, Lucius Postumius Albinus, Publius Cornelius Mammula, Tiberius Minucius Molliculus, Aulus Hostilius Mancinus, and Gaius Maenius. These all entered on their magistracy on the Ides of March.

At the beginning of that year in which Aulus Postumius Albinus and Gaius Calpurnius Piso were consuls, there were introduced into the Senate by the consul Aulus Postumius those who had come from Hither Spain from Quintus Fulvius Flaccus: the legate Lucius Minucius and two tribunes of the soldiers, Titus Maenius and Lucius Terentius Massiliota. When these had announced two successful battles, the surrender of Celtiberia, and the province finished, and that there was no need either of the pay which was wont to be sent, nor of grain carried to the army for that year, they begged of the Senate, first, that for the prosperous deeds honor be paid to the immortal gods; then, that Quintus Fulvius, on departing from the province, be permitted to bring the army away thence, by whose brave service both he himself and many praetors before him had been served—which thing, besides that it ought so to be done, was even well-nigh necessary: for the soldiers were so set in mind that they seemed unable to be held any longer in the province, and would depart thence even unbidden if they were not disbanded, or, if anyone should keep them back at all costs, would blaze out into a ruinous mutiny. The Senate ordered Liguria to be the province of both consuls. The praetors then drew lots: to Aulus Hostilius fell the city, to Tiberius Minucius the foreign jurisdiction, to Publius Cornelius Sicily, to Gaius Maenius Sardinia; of the Spains, Lucius Postumius drew the Farther, Tiberius Sempronius the Hither. He, because he was to succeed Quintus Fulvius, lest the province be stripped of its veteran army, said: "I ask of you, Lucius Minucius—since you announce the province finished—whether you think the Celtiberians will remain forever in their fidelity, so that that province can be held without an army. If you can neither pledge nor affirm to us anything about the fidelity of the barbarians, and yet judge that an army must in any case be kept there, do you then advise the Senate to send a reinforcement into Spain—so that only those soldiers whose terms are served be discharged, and recruits be mingled with the veterans—or to lead the veteran legions out of the province and enroll and send new ones, when the contempt of raw recruits might rouse even the milder barbarians to rebellion? It is easier in the saying than in the doing that a province fierce by nature and rebellious has been finished. A few states, as indeed I hear, those especially which were pressed hardest by the nearness of our winter quarters, have come into our jurisdiction and sway; the more distant are in arms. Which being so, I now foretell from here, conscript fathers, that I shall administer the commonwealth with the army that now is; if Flaccus leads off his legions with him, I will choose pacified places for winter quarters and will not throw a raw soldier in the way of a most ferocious enemy."

The legate answered to what he had been asked that neither he nor anyone else could divine what the Celtiberians had in mind, or would have henceforth. And so he could not deny that it was more right that an army be sent even to pacified barbarians not yet well enough used to rule. But whether there was need of a new or of a veteran army, it was for him to say who could know with what fidelity the Celtiberians would abide in peace, and who at the same time had it ascertained that the soldiers would keep quiet if they were kept longer in the province. If it had to be guessed, from what they either said among themselves or signified by their shouts before the haranguing commander, what they felt, they had openly cried out that they would either keep the commander in the province or come with him into Italy. The dispute between the praetor and the legate was broken off by the consuls’ motion, who deemed it fair that their provinces be furnished before the matter of the praetor’s army was dealt with. An entirely new army was decreed for the consuls, two Roman legions each with its cavalry, and of the allies of the Latin name the number that was always usual, fifteen thousand foot, eight hundred horse. With this army they were charged to make war on the Apuanian Ligurians. To Publius Cornelius and Marcus Baebius the command was prorogued, and they were ordered to hold the provinces until the consuls should come; then they were bidden, the army they had being disbanded, to return to Rome. Then the matter of Tiberius Sempronius’s army was dealt with. The consuls were ordered to enroll for him a new legion of five thousand two hundred foot with four hundred horse, and besides a thousand Roman foot and fifty horse, and to require of the allies of the Latin name seven thousand foot and three hundred horse. With this army it was resolved that Tiberius Sempronius should go into Hither Spain. To Quintus Fulvius leave was given that those soldiers, citizens or allies, who had been carried over into Spain before the consuls Spurius Postumius and Quintus Marcius, and besides, with the reinforcement brought in—as many as there should be above ten thousand four hundred foot and six hundred horse in the two legions, and above twelve thousand of the allies of the Latin name and six hundred horse—those by whose brave service Quintus Fulvius had been served in the two battles against the Celtiberians, he should, if it seemed good, bring home with him. And supplications were decreed, because he had managed the commonwealth prosperously, and the rest of the praetors were sent into their provinces. To Quintus Fabius Buteo the command in Gaul was prorogued. It was resolved that there should be that year eight legions, besides the veteran army which was in Liguria in the near hope of discharge. And even that army was being filled up with difficulty, on account of the pestilence which now for the third year was ravaging the city of Rome and Italy.

The praetor Tiberius Minucius, and not long after the consul Gaius Calpurnius, dies, and many other illustrious men of every order. At last that calamity began to be reckoned in the light of a prodigy. Gaius Servilius the pontifex maximus was ordered to seek out means of expiating the wrath of the gods, the decemviri to inspect the books, the consul to vow gifts to Apollo, Aesculapius, and Salus, and to give gilded statues; which he vowed and gave. The decemviri proclaimed a supplication for two days, on account of the sickness, in the city and through all the market-towns and assembly-places; all over twelve years old, garlanded and holding laurel in their hands, made supplication. A suspicion too of human guilt had crept into men’s minds; and an inquiry into poisoning—for what had been committed in the city or within ten miles of the city—was decreed to Gaius Claudius the praetor, who had been chosen in the place of Tiberius Minucius; for beyond the tenth milestone, through the market-towns and assembly-places, to Gaius Maenius, before he should cross over to his province of Sardinia. The death of the consul was most of all suspected. He was said to have been killed by his wife Quarta Hostilia. When indeed her son Quintus Fulvius Flaccus was declared consul in his stepfather’s place, the death of Piso began to be considerably more infamous; and witnesses came forward who said that, after Albinus and Piso were declared consuls—at which elections Flaccus had suffered a repulse—he had been reproached by his mother because the consulship, now sought a third time, had been refused him, and that she had added: let him make ready to stand; within two months she would bring it about that he should be made consul. Among many other testimonies bearing on the case, this utterance too—too truly confirmed by the event—prevailed for the condemnation of Hostilia.

At the beginning of this spring, while the levy held the new consuls at Rome, and then the death of one of them and the elections for creating a consul in his place made everything slower, in the meanwhile Publius Cornelius and Marcus Baebius, who in their consulship had done nothing memorable, led their army against the Apuanian Ligurians. The Ligurians, who before the consuls came into the province had not been looking for war, surprised unawares, surrendered themselves to the number of about twelve thousand. These—the Senate first consulted by letter—Cornelius and Baebius resolved to lead down from the mountains into the level fields, far from home, that there should be no hope of return, judging that there would be no other end of the Ligurian war before this. There was public land of the Roman people in the country of the Samnites; it had been the Taurasini’s. Thither, when they wished to transfer the Apuanian Ligurians, they proclaimed that the Ligurians should come down from the Anido mountains with their children and wives and carry all their goods with them. The Ligurians, often deprecating it through envoys—that they should not be forced to leave their household gods, the seat in which they had been born, the sepulchres of their ancestors—promised their arms and hostages. When they obtained nothing, and there were no forces for war, they obeyed the proclamation. There were transported at the public charge about forty thousand free persons, with women and children. A hundred and fifty thousand pieces of silver were given them, with which to procure in their new seats what they should need. To dividing and assigning the land the same men who had transported them, Cornelius and Baebius, were set; yet at their own request five commissioners were given them by the Senate, by whose counsel they should act. The matter accomplished, when they had brought the veteran army home to Rome, a triumph was decreed them by the Senate. These were the first of all to triumph with no war waged. Only victims were led before the chariot, because there had been nothing in their triumphs that could be carried or led as captured, nor anything to be given to the soldiers.

In the same year in Spain Fulvius Flaccus the proconsul, because his successor was coming into the province rather slowly, having led his army out of winter quarters, set about laying waste the farther country of Celtiberia, whence they had not come into surrender. By this he provoked rather than terrified the spirits of the barbarians, and they, having secretly mustered forces, beset the Manlian pass, through which they well knew the Roman army would pass. To Lucius Postumius Albinus, his colleague, as he was going into Farther Spain, Gracchus had given charge to make Quintus Fulvius aware that he should bring his army to Tarraco: there he wished to discharge the veterans, distribute the reinforcements, and arrange the whole army. A day too—and a near one—was named to Flaccus on which his successor would come. This new matter being brought to him, Flaccus, having abandoned what he had set about doing, was compelled to lead his army hastily out of Celtiberia; whereupon the barbarians, ignorant of the cause, supposing that he had perceived their defection and their secretly mustered arms and had taken fright, the more fiercely beset the pass. When at first light the Roman column entered that pass, suddenly the enemy, rising up on two sides at once, fell upon the Romans. When Flaccus saw this, he calmed the first tumults in the column by bidding, through the centurions, that all stand each in his own place and make ready their arms; and, the baggage and pack-animals driven together into one place, he drew up all his forces, partly himself, partly through his legates and the tribunes of the soldiers, as time and place required, without any panic, warning them that the matter was with men who had twice surrendered; that crime and perfidy, not valor or spirit, had been added to them; that they had made for themselves a return into their fatherland ignoble, which he had made glorious and memorable; that they would carry to Rome, to a triumph, swords bloody from a fresh slaughter of the enemy and spoils dripping with blood. Time did not allow more to be said; the enemy were bearing down, and on the outermost parts the fight was already joined. Then the lines clashed. Everywhere the battle was fierce, but fortune was various. The legions fought excellently, and no less keenly the two wings; but the foreign auxiliaries, pressed by men of like armament but of a somewhat better kind of soldier, could not hold their ground. The Celtiberians, when they perceived that with their line in order and standards joined they were no match for the legions, made their charge in a wedge, by which kind of fighting they have such strength that on whatever side they have driven home their assault, the enemy cannot withstand them. Then too the legions were thrown into confusion, the line almost broken. When Flaccus saw this disorder, he rides up to the legionary horsemen, and "If there is no help in you," he said, "it will now be all over with this army." When from all sides they shouted that he should declare what he wished done—they would carry out his command without sloth—"Double the squadrons," he said, "of the horsemen of the two legions, and let your horses loose into the wedge of the enemy by which they press our men. You will do it with the greater force of horses if you send them unbridled against the foe—a thing which the Roman horsemen are recorded by tradition to have often done with great praise." They obeyed the word, and, the bridles stripped off, twice charged through and back with great slaughter of the enemy, all their spears being shattered. The wedge being broken up, in which all their hope had lain, the Celtiberians began to waver and almost, the fight given over, to look about for a place of flight. And the wing-horsemen, after they saw so memorable a deed of the Roman horsemen, themselves too, kindled by their valor, without any one’s command let loose their horses against the now disordered enemy. Then indeed all the Celtiberians pour themselves into flight, and the Roman commander, beholding the enemy turned to flight, vowed a temple to Fortuna Equestris and games to Jupiter Best and Greatest. The Celtiberians, scattered in flight, are cut down through the whole pass. Seventeen thousand of the enemy are recorded to have been slain that day, more than four thousand taken alive, with two hundred and seventy-seven military standards and nearly six hundred horses. In that camp the victorious army stayed that day. The victory was not without loss of soldiers: four hundred and seventy-two Roman soldiers, of the allies and the Latin name a thousand and nineteen, and with these three thousand of the auxiliary soldiers, perished. So the victorious army, its former glory renewed, was led to Tarraco. To Fulvius on his coming Tiberius Sempronius the praetor, who had come two days before, advanced to meet him and congratulated him on having served the commonwealth excellently. With the utmost concord they arranged which soldiers they should discharge and which retain. Then Fulvius, the discharged soldiers put aboard ship, set out for Rome; Sempronius led the legions into Celtiberia.

Both consuls led their armies into Liguria in different quarters. Postumius, with the first and third legions, beset the mountains Ballista and Suismontium, and by pressing their narrow passes with garrisons cut off their supplies and subdued them by want of everything. Fulvius, with the second and fourth legions, attacking from Pisae the Apuanian Ligurians who dwelt about the river Macra, received them into surrender, to the number of about seven thousand men, put them aboard ship, and carried them along the coast of the Etruscan sea to Naples. Thence they were transferred into Samnium, and land was given them among their countrymen. The siege-works of the mountain Ligurians Aulus Postumius cut down, and their grain he burned, until, forced by all the disasters of war, they came into surrender and handed over their arms. Then Postumius set out by ship to view the coast of the Ingaunian and Intemelian Ligurians. Before these consuls came to the army which had been mustered at Pisae, it was under the command of Aulus Postumius. Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, brother of Quintus Fulvius—he was a tribune of the soldiers of the second legion—during his months of command disbanded the legion, having bound the centurions by oath that they would deliver the money to the quaestors for the treasury. When this was announced at Placentia—for thither Aulus had by chance set out—he, following the discharged men with light horse, brought back those of them whom he could overtake, chastised, to Pisae, and informed the consul about the rest. On his report a decree of the Senate was made that Marcus Fulvius be relegated to Spain beyond New Carthage, and letters were given him by the consul to be delivered to Publius Manlius in Farther Spain; the soldiers were ordered to return to the standards. For ignominy’s sake it was decreed that there be for that legion only half-pay for that year; and whatever soldier had not returned to the army, the consul was ordered to sell him and his goods.

In the same year Lucius Duronius, who as praetor the year before had returned from Illyricum to Brundisium with ten ships, having left the ships there in port and come to Rome, in setting forth the things he had done there, threw the blame of all the maritime piracy unmistakably upon Gentius, king of the Illyrians: that all the ships which had ravaged the coast of the upper sea were from his kingdom; that he had sent envoys about these matters, and no opportunity of meeting the king had been granted. Envoys had come to Rome from Gentius, who said that, at the time when the Romans had come to meet the king, he had chanced to be sick in the farthest parts of his kingdom: Gentius begged of the Senate that they not believe the trumped-up charges against him which his enemies had brought. To these things Duronius added that wrongs had been done to many Roman citizens and allies of the Latin name in his kingdom, and that Roman citizens were said to be detained at Corcyra. It was resolved that all these be brought to Rome, that Gaius Claudius the praetor take cognizance, and that no answer be returned to king Gentius or his envoys before that.

Among many others whom the pestilence of that year carried off, some priests too died. Lucius Valerius Flaccus the pontiff died; in his place was substituted Quintus Fabius Labeo. Publius Manlius, who had lately returned from Farther Spain, died, a triumvir of the sacred banquet; in his place was co-opted as triumvir Quintus Fulvius, son of Marcus, who was then still wearing the boy’s bordered gown. Concerning the substituting of a rex sacrificulus in the place of Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella there was a contest between Gaius Servilius the pontifex maximus and Lucius Cornelius Dolabella the naval duumvir, whom the pontiff was bidding abdicate his magistracy so that he might inaugurate him; and when he refused to do this, on that account many fines were pronounced against the duumvir by the pontiff, and concerning the matter, when he had appealed, it was contested before the people. When several tribes, called in to vote, were bidding the duumvir to be obedient to the pontiff, and that the fine be remitted if he abdicated his magistracy, at the last an interposition from heaven, which disturbed the comitia, came. There was thereafter a religious scruple for the pontiffs in inaugurating Dolabella. They inaugurated Publius Cloelius Siculus, who had been named in the second place. At the end of the year Gaius Servilius Geminus the pontifex maximus too died; the same had been a decemvir for sacrifices. As pontiff in his place was co-opted by the college Quintus Fulvius Flaccus; then as pontifex maximus Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was created, though many famous men had sought it; and as decemvir for sacrifices Quintus Marcius Philippus was co-opted in his place. And the augur Spurius Postumius Albinus died; in his place the augurs co-opted Publius Scipio, son of Africanus.

To the Cumaeans, at their request that year, it was permitted to use Latin in public business, and that their auctioneers should have the right of selling in Latin. To the Pisans, who promised land into which the colony of Luna might be planted, thanks were given by the Senate; three commissioners were created for that purpose, Quintus Fabius Buteo and Marcus and Publius Popillius Laenas. From Gaius Maenius the praetor—to whom, when the province of Sardinia had fallen, it had been added that he inquire into poisonings beyond ten miles from the city—a letter was brought that he had already condemned three thousand persons, and that the inquiry was growing on him through the informations: either he must abandon the inquiry or give up the province.

Quintus Fulvius Flaccus returned from Spain to Rome with great fame for his exploits; and while he was outside the city for the sake of his triumph, he was created consul with Lucius Manlius Acidinus, and a few days later, with the soldiers whom he had brought with him, rode triumphant into the city. He carried in his triumph a hundred and twenty-four golden crowns, besides thirty-one pounds of gold, and a hundred and seventy-three thousand two hundred coined Oscan pieces. To the soldiers he gave out of the booty fifty denarii each, double to the centurions, triple to the horseman, the same to the allies of the Latin name, and double pay to all. In that year a bill was first brought by Lucius Villius, tribune of the plebs, fixing at how many years of age each man might seek and hold each magistracy. Thence a surname was given to his family, that they should be called Annales. Four praetors, after many years, were created under the Baebian law, which directed that four be created in alternate years. These were made: Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio, Gaius Valerius Laevinus, and Quintus and Publius Mucius Scaevola, sons of Quintus.

Under the consuls Quintus Fulvius and Lucius Manlius the same province as in the preceding years, with an equal number of forces of foot and horse, of citizens and of allies, was decreed. In the two Spains, to Tiberius Sempronius and Lucius Postumius the command was prorogued with the same armies they had, and for reinforcement the consuls were ordered to enroll about three thousand Roman foot, three hundred horse, five thousand of the allies of the Latin name, and four hundred horse. Publius Mucius Scaevola drew by lot the urban province, with the charge that he also inquire into poisonings in the city and within ten miles of the city; Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio the foreign jurisdiction, Quintus Mucius Scaevola Sicily, Gaius Valerius Laevinus Sardinia.

The consul Quintus Fulvius, before he transacted any public business, said he wished to free both himself and the commonwealth from religious obligation by paying his vows: that on the day on which he had last fought with the Celtiberians he had vowed games to Jupiter Best and Greatest and a temple to Fortuna Equestris; and that for that purpose money had been contributed to him by the Spaniards. The games were decreed, and that duumviri be created to let the contract for the temple. Concerning the money it was determined that no more be spent for the games than as much as had been decreed to Fulvius Nobilior when he held games after the Aetolian war, and that he should neither summon, compel, accept, nor do anything for those games against that decree of the Senate which had been made concerning games under the consuls Lucius Aemilius and Gnaeus Baebius. The Senate had so decreed on account of the lavish expenses made on the games of Tiberius Sempronius the aedile, which had been burdensome not only to Italy and the allies of the Latin name, but even to the foreign provinces.

The winter that year was savage with snow and with every kind of storm; the trees that are exposed to cold it had all scorched away; and that winter was then somewhat longer than at other times. And so a fierce and unbearable tempest, suddenly arisen on the mountain, disturbed the Latin festival, and the rites were repeated by decree of the pontiffs. The same tempest both threw down several statues on the Capitol and disfigured many places with lightning—the temple of Jupiter at Terracina, the White temple at Capua, and the Roman gate; in some places the battlements of the wall had been struck off. Amid these prodigies it was reported from Reate too that a three-footed mule had been born. On account of these things the decemviri, ordered to consult the books, declared to what gods and with how many victims sacrifice should be made, and that there should be a supplication for one day. Then the votive games of the consul Quintus Fulvius were held for ten days with great magnificence.

Then the elections of censors were held; there were created Marcus Aemilius Lepidus the pontifex maximus, and Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, who had triumphed over the Aetolians. Between these noble men there were enmities, often signalized in many fierce contests both in the Senate and before the people. The elections finished, as is the custom handed down from of old, the censors sat down in the Campus, on curule chairs, at the altar of Mars; whither suddenly the chief men of the senators came with a throng of the citizenry, among whom Quintus Caecilius Metellus spoke thus: "We have not forgotten, censors, that you have but lately been set over our morals by the whole Roman people; and that it is we who ought both to be admonished and to be ruled by you, not you by us. Yet it must be pointed out what in you offends all good men, or at least what they would rather have changed. When we regard you singly, Marcus Aemilius, Marcus Fulvius, we have no one today in the state whom, if we were recalled to the vote, we should wish preferred to you; but when we look upon you both together, we cannot but fear that you are ill-matched, and that it will profit the commonwealth less that you please all of us excellently than it will harm that each of you displeases the other. For many years you have carried on enmities grievous and bitter to your own selves, and there is danger that from this day they become more grievous to us and to the commonwealth than to you. Of the causes for which we fear this, many things occur that might be said, unless perhaps you are implacable and they have ensnared your minds. These feuds—that you end them this day, in this temple—we all together beseech you; and those whom the Roman people has joined by its votes, suffer us also to join by the reconciliation of goodwill. With one mind, one counsel, may you choose the Senate, review the knights, hold the census, close the lustrum; and that prayer which in nearly all your supplications you will pronounce in the words ’that this matter may turn out well and happily for me and for my colleague’—that you should so wish it, truly and from the heart, to turn out, and should so bring it to pass, that what you pray of the gods we men too may believe you wish. Titus Tatius and Romulus, in the mid-forum of whose city enemies had clashed in battle, there reigned in concord. Not feuds only, but wars too, are ended; from hostile enemies often come faithful allies, sometimes even fellow-citizens. The Albans, Alba destroyed, were transferred to Rome; the Latins, the Sabines, were received into the citizenship. That common saying—because it was true—has passed into a proverb: that friendships ought to be immortal, enmities mortal." A murmur arose with assent, and then the voices of all, asking the same thing, confounded into one, broke in upon his speech. Then Aemilius complained, among other things, that twice he had been thrust out of a sure consulship by Marcus Fulvius; Fulvius on the other side complained that he had ever been provoked by him, and that a wager had been laid to his reproach; yet both signified that, if the other wished it, they would be in the power of so many chief men of the state. With all present urging them, they gave their right hands and their pledge to lay aside and to end their hatred in truth. Then, with all praising them together, they were led down into the Capitol; and both the care of the chief men in such a matter and the readiness of the censors were exceedingly approved and praised by the Senate. The censors then, asking that a sum of money for use in public works be assigned them, an annual revenue was decreed.

In the same year in Spain Lucius Postumius and Tiberius Sempronius the propraetors arranged it thus between themselves: that Albinus should go against the Vaccaei through Lusitania, and thence return into Celtiberia if there were a greater war there; that Gracchus should penetrate into the farthest parts of Celtiberia. He first took the city Munda by force, attacking it by night unawares. Then, hostages received and a garrison placed, he set about storming strongholds and burning the fields, until he came to another very strong city—the Celtiberians call it Certima. When he was now bringing up his works, there come envoys from the town, whose speech was of the old simplicity, not dissembling that they would fight if they had the strength. For they asked that it be permitted them to go to the camp of the Celtiberians to summon aid: if they did not obtain it, then, apart from those, they would take counsel for themselves. Gracchus permitting it, they went, and after a few days brought back with them ten other envoys. It was the midday hour. They asked nothing of the praetor before he should order drink given them. The first cups drained, they asked for more, to the great laughter of the bystanders at minds so rude and ignorant of every manner. Then the eldest of them said: "We have been sent by our nation to inquire on what at last you relied, in bearing arms against us." To this question Gracchus answered that he had come trusting in an excellent army; and that if they themselves wished to see it, so as to carry back surer word to their people, he would give them the chance; and he orders the tribunes of the soldiers to bid all the forces of foot and horse be arrayed and to run their course under arms. From this spectacle the envoys, dismissed, deterred their people from bringing aid to the beleaguered city. The townsmen, when in vain by night they had raised fires from their towers—which had been the agreed signal—forsaken by their one hope of aid, came into surrender. Two million four hundred thousand pieces were exacted of them, and forty of their noblest horsemen—not under the name of hostages, for they were ordered to serve as soldiers, yet in very fact to be a pledge of their fidelity.

Thence he now led to the city Alce, where was the camp of the Celtiberians from whom the envoys had lately come. After he had for some days harassed them with small battles by sending light-armed troops against their outposts, day by day he sowed greater contests, in order to draw them all outside their fortifications. When he perceived that what he sought was accomplished, he orders the prefects of the auxiliaries that, the engagement joined, as though overborne by numbers, they should suddenly turn their backs and flee in disorder to the camp; he himself drew up his forces within the rampart at all the gates. Not much time passed before he saw, as arranged, the column of his own men in flight, and behind them the barbarians following in disorder. He had his line drawn up within the rampart for this very purpose. And so, having delayed only enough to let his own men flee into the camp by a free entrance, the shout raised, he burst out from all the gates at once. The enemy did not withstand the unlooked-for onset. Those who had come to storm the camp could not even defend their own: for straightway routed, put to flight, soon driven panic-stricken within their rampart, at last they are stripped of their camp. Nine thousand of the enemy were slain that day; taken alive, three hundred and twenty; horses, a hundred and twelve; military standards, thirty-seven. Of the Roman army a hundred and nine fell.

From this battle Gracchus led his legions to lay waste Celtiberia; and as he carried off and drove all things everywhere, and the peoples—some by their own will, others through fear—received the yoke, within a few days he received a hundred and three towns into surrender, and gained possession of immense booty. He then turned his column back, whence he had come, to Alce, and set about storming that city. The townsmen at first withstood the enemy’s onset; then, when they were assailed not with arms only but also with works, distrusting the defense of the city, all withdrew into the citadel; at last from there too, envoys sent ahead, they gave themselves and all their goods into the power of the Romans. A great booty was thence made. Many noble captives came into his power, among them the two sons and the daughter of Thurrus. He was the petty king of those nations, by far the most powerful of all the Spaniards. Having heard of his people’s disaster, he sent men to ask safe-conduct for his coming to Gracchus’s camp, and came. And first he asked of him whether it might be permitted him and his to live. When the praetor answered that he should live, he asked again whether it might be permitted to serve with the Romans. When Gracchus granted this too, "I will follow you," he said, "against my old allies, since they did not deign to bring me aid." From then he followed the Romans, and by brave and faithful service helped the Roman cause in many places. Ergavica thereupon, a noble and powerful state, terrified by the disasters of the surrounding peoples, opened its gates to the Romans.

That this surrender of the towns was not made in good faith, certain authorities relate: that from whatever region he had withdrawn his legions, straightway thence there was a rebellion; and that he afterward fought a great battle with the Celtiberians at Mount Chaunus, with standards joined, from first light to the sixth hour of the day, with many falling on both sides; and that the Romans did nothing else of great note—one would believe—except that the next day they challenged to battle those who remained within their rampart, and for the whole day gathered spoils; that on the third day there was fought again a greater battle, and then at last the Celtiberians were beyond doubt conquered and their camp taken and plundered. Twenty-two thousand of the enemy, they say, were slain that day, more than three hundred taken, and about an equal number of horses, and seventy-two military standards. Thereupon the war was brought to an end, and the Celtiberians made a true peace, not, as before, with shifting faith. They write that in the same summer Lucius Postumius too, in Farther Spain, twice fought excellently with the Vaccaei; that he slew about thirty-five thousand of the enemy and stormed their camp. But it is nearer the truth that he reached the province too late to have been able to do these things that summer.

The censors, in faithful concord, chose the Senate. As princeps was chosen the censor himself, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus the pontifex maximus; three were cast out of the Senate; Lepidus retained certain men passed over by his colleague. The money assigned and divided between them, they accomplished these works: Lepidus a mole at Tarracina—an unwelcome work, because he had estates there and had inserted a private expense into the public business; a theater and stage by the temple of Apollo; he let the contract for whitening the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol and the columns about it, and from these columns, which seemed inconveniently placed, he removed the statues, and took down the shields and the military standards of every kind fixed to the columns. Marcus Fulvius let contracts for more works and of greater use: a harbor and the piers of a bridge on the Tiber, on which piers, some years later, the censors Publius Scipio Africanus and Lucius Mummius let the arches to be placed; a basilica behind the new silversmiths’ shops and the fish-market, with shops set round about, which he sold into private hands; and a forum and a portico outside the Trigemina gate, and another behind the docks, and at the shrine of Hercules, and behind the temple of Hope by the Tiber, and at the temple of Apollo the Physician. They had besides money in common; from it they jointly let the contract for bringing in water and making arches. An obstacle to the work was Marcus Licinius Crassus, who would not allow it to be led through his land. Tolls too and many revenues these same men instituted. Several chapels and public places, occupied by private persons, they took care should be public and sacred and open to the people. They altered the manner of voting, district by district.

And the other of the censors, Marcus Aemilius, asked of the Senate that money for games be decreed him for the dedication of the temples of Queen Juno and of Diana, which he had vowed in the Ligurian war eight years before. They decreed twenty thousand asses. He dedicated those temples, both in the Flaminian circus, and gave scenic games for three days after the dedication of the temple of Juno, and for two days after that of Diana, and one day each in the circus. The same man dedicated the temple of the Lares Permarini in the Campus. Lucius Aemilius Regillus had vowed it eleven years before, in the naval battle against the prefects of king Antiochus. Above the doors of the temple a tablet with this inscription was fixed: "For the ending of a great war, for the subduing of kings, the crown of peace achieved—to Lucius Aemilius, son of Marcus Aemilius, going forth to battle: under his auspice, command, fortune, and leadership, between Ephesus, Samos, and Chios, in the very sight of Antiochus himself with all his army, his cavalry and elephants, the fleet of king Antiochus, before that unconquered, was scattered, shattered, and put to flight; and there, on that day, forty-two long ships with all their crews were taken. That battle fought, king Antiochus and his kingdom were subdued. For this cause he vowed this temple to the Lares Permarini." After the same pattern a tablet was fixed above the doors in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol.

Two days after the censors chose the Senate, the consul Quintus Fulvius, having set out into Liguria, crossed with his army through trackless mountains and valleys and glades, fought with the enemy with standards joined, and not only conquered in the field but took their camp too the same day. Three thousand two hundred of the enemy, and all that region of the Ligurians, came into surrender. The consul led the surrendered down into the level fields and placed garrisons on the mountains. Speedily a letter too came from the province to Rome. Supplications for those exploits were decreed for three days; the praetors sacrificed with forty full-grown victims during the supplications. By the other consul, Lucius Manlius, nothing worthy of memory was done in Liguria. The Transalpine Gauls, three thousand men, having crossed into Italy, provoking no one to war, sought land of the consuls and the Senate, that, pacified, they might be under the rule of the Roman people. The Senate ordered them to depart from Italy, and the consul Quintus Fulvius to seek out and punish those who had been the chiefs and instigators of crossing the Alps.

In the same year Philip, king of the Macedonians, consumed by age and by grief after his son’s death, died. He was wintering at Demetrias, anxious with longing for his son and with repentance for his cruelty. His mind was goaded also by his other son, beyond doubt king in his own and in others’ opinion, and by all men’s eyes turned upon him, and by his own forsaken old age, with some awaiting his death and others not even awaiting it. By this the more was he tormented, and with him Antigonus, son of Echecrates, who bore the name of his uncle Antigonus, who had been Philip’s guardian—a man of royal majesty, famous too for a notable battle against Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian. The Greeks called him "the Guardian," to distinguish him by a surname from the other kings. His brother’s son, this Antigonus, had remained the one uncorrupted man among Philip’s honored friends, and by that fidelity had made Perseus, by no means his friend, his bitterest enemy. He, foreseeing in his mind with how great peril to himself the inheritance of the kingdom would come to Perseus, as soon as he perceived the king’s mind to waver and at times to groan with longing for his son, now by lending his ears, now even by stirring the matter, was at his side, himself complaining as the king often complained of a deed rashly done; and, since the truth, as is its wont, offered many traces of itself, he aided with all his might that everything might the sooner come to light. The men most suspected as ministers of the crime were Apelles and Philocles, who had been envoys to Rome and had brought the deadly letters in the name of Flamininus against Demetrius. That they were forged and tampered with by a scribe, and the seal counterfeit, was the common murmur in the palace. But while the matter was suspected rather than manifest, it chanced that Xychus met Antigonus, and, seized by him, was brought into the palace. Leaving him with the guards, Antigonus went on to Philip. "By many conversations," he said, "I seem to have understood that you would value it greatly, could you know all the truth about your sons—which of them was sought by which by fraud and treachery. The one man of all who can untie the knot of this error is in your power, Xychus. He has by chance been met and brought into the palace: order him called." Brought in, at first he denied so inconstantly that it appeared, with but little fear applied, he was ready to inform. He could not bear the sight of the torturer and the lashes, and laid bare the whole order of the crime, of the envoys and of his own part. Men were sent at once to seize the envoys. Philocles, who was at hand, they overpowered; Apelles, who had been sent to pursue a certain Chaereas, on hearing of Xychus’s information crossed over into Italy. About Philocles nothing certain was reported: some say that, at first boldly denying, after Xychus was brought into his sight he held out no longer; others affirm that even under torture he endured, still denying. To Philip grief was renewed and doubled, and he judged his misfortune in his children the heavier in that one survived than in that one had perished.

Perseus, informed that all had been detected, was indeed too powerful to think flight necessary; he only took care to be far off, meanwhile, as it were from the blaze of flaming wrath, while Philip lived, intending to defend himself. Philip, the hope of getting hold of his body for punishment now lost, strove for what was left—that Perseus should not enjoy, over and above impunity, even the reward of his crime. He therefore calls upon Antigonus, to whom he was indebted both for the open revealing of the parricide, and whom he judged would be to the Macedonians a king neither shameful nor to be repented of, on account of the recent glory of his uncle Antigonus. "Since I have come into such a fortune, Antigonus," he said, "that the bereavement which other parents abhor must needs be desirable to me, it is in my mind to hand on to you the kingdom which I received from your uncle, guarded by his brave—not faithful only—tutelage, and even increased. You are the one man whom I judge worthy of the kingdom; if I had no one, I should prefer that it perish and be extinguished rather than be a reward to Perseus for his wicked fraud. I shall believe Demetrius raised from the dead and restored to me, if I leave you—you who alone wept for the death of the innocent, for my unhappy error—substituted in his place." From this conversation he did not cease to advance him with every kind of honor. While Perseus was away in Thrace, he went round the cities of Macedonia and commended Antigonus to the chief men; and, had a longer life been granted him, there was no doubt that he would have left him in possession of the kingdom. Setting out from Demetrias, he had tarried a very long time at Thessalonica. Thence, when he had come to Amphipolis, he was seized by a grave illness. But it is agreed that he was sick in mind rather than in body, and that, with cares and sleeplessness—since again and again the apparitions and shades of his innocent slain son haunted him—he was extinguished with the dire curses of the other. Antigonus might however have been warned, had he either been present or had the king’s death been straightway made public. The physician Calligenes, who was in charge of the treatment, not awaiting the king’s death, from the first signs of despair sent messengers by relays, as had been agreed, to Perseus, and concealed the king’s death, until his coming, from all who were outside the palace. So Perseus overwhelmed all unawares and unsuspecting, and seized the kingdom gotten by crime.

The death of Philip was very opportune for delay and for gathering strength for the war. For a few days after, the nation of the Bastarnae, long solicited, crossed the Hister from their seats with a great force of foot and horse. Then, going ahead to announce it to the king, were Antigonus and Cotto; Cotto was a noble Bastarna, and Antigonus had already before been sent as envoy, with Cotto himself, to stir up the Bastarnae. Not far from Amphipolis, rumor, and then sure messengers, met them that the king was dead; which thing threw the whole order of their plan into confusion. Now it had been so arranged that Philip should guarantee the Bastarnae a safe passage through Thrace and provisions. That he might be able to do this, he had cultivated with gifts the chiefs of those regions, his own faith being pledged that the Bastarnae would pass through with a peaceable column. The purpose had been to destroy the nation of the Dardanians and to settle the Bastarnae in their land. A twofold advantage would thence ensue, if both the Dardanians—a nation ever most hostile to Macedonia and hanging over her kings in adverse times—were removed, and the Bastarnae, their wives and children left behind in Dardania, could be sent to lay waste Italy: for the way to the Adriatic Sea and to Italy lay through the Scordisci, and by no other route could an army be led across. The Scordisci would readily grant the Bastarnae a passage—for they differed neither in language nor in manners—and would even join them, when they saw them going to the plunder of a most opulent nation. Thereupon his counsels were fitted to every outcome: whether the Bastarnae were cut down by the Romans, the Dardanians nevertheless removed, and the booty from the remnants of the Bastarnae and the free possession of Dardania would be a consolation; or, if they had managed the affair prosperously, the Romans being turned aside to the Bastarnian war, he would recover in Greece what he had lost. These had been Philip’s designs.

They entered with a peaceable column; but afterward, on the departure of Cotto and Antigonus, and not long after, at the rumor of Philip’s death, neither were the Thracians easy in dealing, nor could the Bastarnae be content with what they bought, nor be kept in column so as not to stray from the road. Thence wrongs began to be done on both sides, and by their daily increase the war blazed up. At last the Thracians, when they could not sustain the force and multitude of the enemy, leaving their plain villages, withdrew to a mountain of huge height—they call it Donuca. When the Bastarnae wished to climb it, such a tempest as is said to have destroyed the Gauls who plundered Delphi then overwhelmed the Bastarnae as they vainly drew near the mountain ridges. For not only were they buried by a downpour of rain, and then by thickest hail, with a vast crashing of the sky and with thunder and with lightnings dazzling the keenness of their eyes, but the bolts even flashed so on every side that bodies seemed to be the mark, and not soldiers only but chiefs too fell stricken. And so, when in headlong flight over very high crags they unwarily fell and tumbled, the Thracians indeed pressed upon the stricken, but the men themselves said that the gods were the authors of their flight and that the sky was falling upon them. Scattered by the storm, when most of them, half-armed, had returned, as from a shipwreck, into the camp whence they had set out, they began to deliberate what to do. Thence arose a dissension, some thinking they must turn back, others that they must press on into Dardania. About thirty thousand men reached Dardania, whither, under the leadership of Clondicus, they had set out; the rest of the multitude made back, by the way it had come, for Apollonia and the inland region. Perseus, having gained the kingdom, ordered Antigonus to be killed; and, while he established his affairs, sent envoys to Rome to renew his father’s friendship and to ask that he be styled king by the Senate. These things were done that year in Macedonia.

The other of the consuls, Quintus Fulvius, triumphed over the Ligurians—a triumph which it was agreed was granted more to favor than to the magnitude of his deeds. He carried in procession a great quantity of the enemy’s arms, but hardly any money. Yet he distributed to each soldier three hundred asses, double to the centurions, triple to the horseman. Nothing in that triumph was more notable than that it chanced to fall out that he triumphed on the same day on which, the year before, he had triumphed from his praetorship. After the triumph he proclaimed the elections, at which were created consuls Marcus Junius Brutus and Aulus Manlius Vulso. Three of the praetors being then created, a storm broke off the elections. The next day the remaining three were made, on the fourth day before the Ides of March: Marcus Titinius Curvus, Tiberius Claudius Nero, and Titus Fonteius Capito. The Roman Games were repeated by the curule aediles Gnaeus Servilius Caepio and Appius Claudius Cento, on account of the prodigies that had occurred. The earth quaked; in the public shrines, where there was a lectisternium, the heads of the gods who were on the couches turned themselves away, and the dish with its coverings which had been set before Jupiter fell from the table. That mice had nibbled the olives beforehand was also turned into a prodigy. For the expiating of these things nothing more was done than that the games be repeated.