28.
At about the end of the year there was a day of thanksgiving on account of the successes in Spain under the leadership and auspices of Appius Claudius the proconsul, and twenty full-grown victims were sacrificed.
[2]
There was also a second day of prayer at the temples of Ceres, Liber and Libera, because from Sabine territory there came the news of a severe earthquake causing many buildings to [p. 283]collapse. When Appius Claudius had returned from1 Spain to Rome, the senate decreed that he should enter the city in ovation.
[3]
The consular election was now at hand; when this was held with great contention because of the large number of candidates, Lucius Postumius Albinus and Marcus Popilius Laenas were chosen.
[4]
Next the praetors were elected, Numerius Fabius Buteo, Gaius Matienus, Gaius Cicereius, Marcus Furius Crassipes, Aulus Atilius Serranus, Gaius Cluvius Saxula (the last three each
[5??]
for the second time).2 When the elections were over and Appius Claudius Cento entered the City in ovation over the Celtiberians, he deposited in the treasury ten thousand pounds of silver and five thousand of gold. Gnaeus Cornelius was inaugurated as flamen Dialis.
[6]
In the same year a tablet was set up in the temple of Mater Matuta with this inscription: “Under the command and auspices of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus the legion and army of the Roman people conquered Sardinia.
[7]
In this province more than eighty thousand of the enemy were slain or captured.3
[8]
The state having been most successfully administered and the allies set free, the revenues restored, he brought back home the army safe and secure and enriched with booty; for the second time he entered the city of Rome in triumph. In commemoration of this event he set up this tablet to Jupiter.” It had the form of the island of Sardinia, and on it representations of battles were painted.
[9]
Many gladiatorial games were given that year, some of them unimportant; one was noteworthy [p. 285]beyond the rest, that of Titus Flamininus, which4 he gave to commemorate the death of his father,5 lasted four days, and was accompanied by a public distribution of meats, a banquet and scenic performances.
[10]
The climax of a show which was big for that time was that in three days seventy-four gladiators
[11]
fought.6
1 B.C. 174
2 Furius was praetor in 187 B.C. (XXXVIII. xlii. 4), Atilius in 192 B.C. (XXXV. x. 11), Cluvius perhaps in 175 B.C., his election having been reported in the lost section of chap. xviii above: at least there is no vacancy in earlier years. In that case the normal interval between terms of the same office was not observed (VII. xlii. 7).
3 Slaves were the only booty, according to Festus (p. 322), and they became proverbial for their cheapness.
4 B.C. 174
5 Nothing is known of the career of the liberator of Greece after his embassy to Prusias in 183 B.C. (XXXIX. li. 1 ff.), and his death may have occurred at this time.
6 While the number of gladiators was large for the time, it was so small in comparison with later games as to deserve mention.
There is no trace of loss at the end of Book XL, and the account of the Voconian law, mentioned in the Periocha, may have been found in some lost section; but the Periocha is probably in error since the law quite certainly belongs to 169 B.C. (cf. Broughton, Magistrates I. 427).
Livy. Books XL-XLII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1938: 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.