42.
At almost the end of this year the consul Marcus Valerius came from the Ligurians to Rome to hold the elections of magistrates, having done nothing in the province so worthy of note that it could be a plausible reason for delay, to cause him to arrive later
[2??]
than usual for the elections. The election of consuls took place on the twelfth day before the Kalends of March;
[3]
the successful candidates were Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Gaius Flaminius.
[4]
The next day the praetors were chosen, Appius Claudius Pulcher, Servius Sulpicius Galba, Quintus Terentius Culleo, Lucius Terentius Massiliota, Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, Marcus Furius Crassipes.
[5]
Having finished the elections, the consul referred to the senate the question as to which provinces they desired to assign to the praetors. They decreed that two should be stationed in Rome to [p. 145]administer justice, two outside Italy, in Sicily and1 Sardinia, and two in Italy, at Tarentum and in Gaul;2 and they were ordered to cast lots at once, before they were inaugurated.
[6]
Servius Sulpicius received the civil jurisdiction, Quintus Terentius that between citizens and aliens, Lucius Terentius Sicily, Quintus Fulvius Sardinia, Appius Claudius Tarentum, Marcus Furius Gaul.
[7]
In that year Lucius Minucius Myrtilus and Lucius Manlius, because they were said to have beaten Carthaginian ambassadors, by order of Marcus Claudius, the city praetor, were delivered by the fetials to ambassadors and taken to Carthage.3
There was the rumour of a great war, growing more4 dangerous every day, among the Ligurians.
[8]
So, on the day when the new consuls laid before the senate the question of the provinces and the general policy, the senate decreed to both consuls the Ligurians as their province.
[9]
To this decree of the senate the consul Lepidus objected, declaring that it was improper that both the consuls should be shut up in the valleys of the Ligurians while Marcus Fulvius and Gnaeus Manlius for two years now, the one in Europe, the other in Asia, were lording it as if they were the successors to Philip and Antiochus.
[10]
If it were the senate's pleasure that there should be armies in those lands, consuls rather than private citizens5 should command them. These men were wandering about, carrying the threat of war to nations upon whom no war had been declared, selling peace for a [p. 147]price.6 If it was necessary, he continued, to hold7 these provinces with troops, just as the consul Lucius Scipio had succeeded Manius Acilius and had in turn been superseded by the consuls Marcus Fulvius and Gnaeus Manlius, so Fulvius and Manlius should have been replaced by the consuls Gaius Livius and
[12]
Marcus Valerius. Now, at any rate, when the Aetolian war was finished, when Asia was rescued from Antiochus, when the Gauls were conquered, either consuls should be sent to command consular armies or the legions should be recalled from there and at length restored to
[13]
the state. After hearing this the senate persisted in its decision that both consuls should have the Ligurians as their province; it was voted that Manlius and Fulvius should retire from their provinces and withdraw their armies from them and return to Rome.
1 B.C. 188
2 The whole procedure is irregular, probably because the elections were held less than a month before the inauguration.
3 Claudius probably acted under instructions from the senate. Valerius Maximus (VI. vi. 3), who cites this incident as an example of publica fides, dates it a year later.
4 B.C. 187
5 Lepidus raises an important constitutional question, not to be easily answered, whether a magistrate could hold his imperium indefinitely, i.e. until he was relieved. The imperium of Fulvius and Manlius had been prorogued for one year (xxxv. 3 above), and this period was now at an end. Another question which he raises is whether a proconsul was technically a privatus in the sense that Scipio, for example, was privatus cum imperio in Spain. Unfortunately, Lepidus is too much influenced by his feud with Fulvius to be a good witness on either point.
6 Manlius, rather than Fulvius, was guilty of this conduct, and the narrative of the Galatian campaign (xii [11] —xxvii above; see also the notes, passim) gives altogether too much support to these charges. They were elaborated by Furius and Aemilius Paulus in chaps. xlv —xlvi below.
7 B.C. 187
Livy. Books XXXVIII-XXXIX with an English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1936: published without copyright notice.
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