47.
The year having now run its course, new1 tribunes of the plebs came in, but owing to a flaw in their election they were themselves supplanted by others, five days later.
[2]
The lustrum2 was closed that year by the censors Publius Cornelius Arvina and Gaius Marcius Rutulus; there were enrolled two hundred and sixty —two thousand three hundred and twenty —one. The censors were the twenty —sixth pair from the first censors; the lustrum was the
[3]
nineteenth. this year for the first time those who had been presented with crowns because of gallant behaviour in the war wore them at the Roman games, and palms were then for the first time conferred upon the victors, in accordance with a custom borrowed from the
[4]
Greeks. The same year the curule aediles who gave those games procured the conviction of a number of graziers,3 and with their fines paved the road from the temple of Mars as far as
[5]
Bovillae.4
The consular comitia were held by Lucius Papirius, who declared the election of Quintus Fabius Gurges, the son of Maximus, and Decimus
[6]
Junius Brutus Scaeva. Papirius himself was chosen praetor.
The year had been one of many blessings, which yet were hardly a consolation for one misfortune —a pestilence which ravaged both city and countryside. its devastation was now grown portentous, and the Books were consulted to discover what end [p. 543]or what remedy the gods proposed
[7]
for this misfortune.5 it was discovered in the Books that Aesculapius must be summoned to Rome from Epidaurus; but nothing could be done about it that year, because the consuls were occupied with the war, except that for one day a supplication to that god was held.6 [p. 545]
1 B.C. 292
2 This was a sacrifice of purification performed as the final ceremony of the census —taking. “to close the lustrum” is therefore to complete the census.
3 The men were probably fined for appropriating more than the legal maximum of public land. compare chap. xxiii. § 13.
4 This refers to the Via Appia itself (which had apparently not been fully paved —perstrata —before) rather than to the footway referred to at chap. xxiii. § 12.
5 B.C. 292
6 It was two or three years later and the pestilence was still raging when a deputation under Q. Ogulnius was dispatched to Epidaurus and brought away a serpent to Rome which passed for the god himself. a temple of Aesculapius was then erected on the island in the Tiber. see summary of Book XI.
Livy. Books VIII-X With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1926: no copyright notice.
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