6.
At about the same time letters from the two consuls arrived at Rome, one from Lucius Cornelius reporting the battle with the Boii near Mutina, the other from Quintus Minucius from Pisa:
[2]
the latter said that it had fallen to his lot to preside at the consular elections,1 but so unsettled were conditions generally among the Ligures that he could not leave there without loss to the allies and danger to the state.
[3]
If it pleased the Fathers, they should write to his colleague, who had finished his campaign, to return to Rome for the elections;
[4]
if he protested against doing this, because the task had not fallen to him by lot, he would himself do the senate's bidding; only let the senate consider again [p. 17]and again whether an interregnum2 would not be3 more advantageous to the state than his absence from his province at such a time.
[5]
The senate entrusted to Gaius Scribonius the task of sending two commissioners from the senatorial order to Lucius Cornelius the consul, to deliver to him the letter forwarded by his colleague to the senate, and to inform him that if he did not
[6??]
come to Rome to elect the magistrates the senate, rather than take Quintus Minucius away from an unfinished war, would suffer an interregnum to begin. The commissioners who were sent brought back the reply that Lucius Cornelius would come to Rome to choose the magistrates.
[7]
Regarding the despatches of Lucius Cornelius, which he had written after he had fought the battle with the Boii, a controversy broke out in
[8??]
the senate because his lieutenant, Marcus Claudius,4 had written privately to many senators that gratitude was due to the good fortune of the Roman people and the valour of the soldiers because the issue had been successful;
[9]
but that by the action of the consul, both heavy losses of men had occurred and the army of the enemy had escaped, though there had been the opportunity to destroy it; the loss of men had been heavier since troops to replace the exhausted had come up too slowly from the reserve;
[10]
the enemy had slipped from their hands both because the legionary cavalry had received their orders too ate and because they had not been permitted to pursue the fleeing enemy. [p. 19]
1 If both consuls were ordered away from Rome, it was necessary for them to decide by lot which should return to preside at the elections.
2 This device had rarely been resorted to in recent years. Members of the senate were chosen in order to serve for five days each, and the interrex (the name survived from the period of the monarchy) either held the election or nominated another interrex. Minucius' proposal probably had some political motive, but the facts are unknown.
3 B.C. 193
4 The M. Marcellus of v. 1 above. Marcellus as consul had fought the Gauls with indifferent success, although he had been granted a triumph over the Insubres and Comenses (XXXIII. xxxvii. 10). We have no means of verifying either the account which Livy gives of the battle (which is on the whole sympathetic towards Cornelius) or Marcellus' less favourable interpretation, which may have been inspired partly by jealousy, partly by political rivalry. This, however, did not prevent Cornelius from leaving him in command, although there was a hostile explanation of this action: cf. viii. 1-5 and the note below.
Livy. Books XXXV-XXXVII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1935: published without copyright notice.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.