Summary of Book XXXIX
The consul Marcus Aemilius, having subdued the
Ligurians, built a road from Placentia to Ariminum to
connect with the Via Flaminia. The beginnings of
luxurious living are said to have been introduced into the
City by the army from Asia. All the Ligurians on this
side of the Apennines were subdued. The Bacchanalia,
a Greek rite celebrated by night, the breeding-ground of
all crimes, since it had developed into a conspiracy of
large numbers, were investigated and suppressed by the
punishment of many. The censors Lucius Valerius
Flaccus and Marcus Porcius Cato (the latter the greatest
of men in the arts of both war and peace) expelled from
the senate Lucius Quinctius Flamininus, the brother
of Titus, on the ground that while he was holding
the province of Gaul as consul, at the request of a
Carthaginian, Philippus, a notorious degenerate whom
he loved, he had, at a banquet, killed with his own hand
a certain Gaul, or, as some say, that he had beheaded a
man under sentence of death at the request of a courtesan
of Placentia with whom he was desperately in love. The
speech of Marcus Cato against him is extant. Scipio died
at Liternum and, as if fortune were bringing them together,
two deaths occurred about the same time of very great
men—Hannibal, who committed suicide by poison when
Prusias, king of Bithynia, with whom he had taken refuge
after the defeat of Antiochus, was about to surrender
him to the Romans who had sent Titus Quinctius Flamininus to demand him, and also Philopoemen, chieftain
of the Achaeans and a very great man, who was poisoned
[p. 403]
by the Messenians after they had captured him in war.
The colonies of Potentia and Pisaurum and Mutina and
Parma were founded. In addition the book contains the
victories over the Celtiberians and the beginnings and
causes of the Macedonian war. The origin of this was
found in Philip's anger that his kingdom was diminished
by the Romans and that he was compelled to withdraw
his garrisons from Thrace and elsewhere.
[p. 405]
