7.
Then two triumphs over Spain were celebrated in succession.
[2]
The first was that of Sempronius Gracchus, who triumphed over the Celtiberians and their allies, and the next day Lucius Postumius triumphed over the Lusitanians and other Spaniards in the same district.1 Gracchus carried in procession forty thousand pounds of silver, [p. 205]Albinus twenty thousand.
[3]
Both distributed as2 donatives twenty-five denarii each to the infantry, twice that sum to centurions, and thrice to the cavalry; the allies shared on the same terms with the Romans.3
[4]
About this time it chanced that the consul Marcus Junius came from Histria to Rome in order to hold the elections.
[5]
When the tribunes of the people, Papirius and Licinius, had worn him out in the senate with questions as to what had happened in Histria, they finally haled him before an assembly.
[6]
When the consul said in reply that he had spent not more than eleven days in that province, and that what had happened in his absence he, like the tribunes, knew only from report, they continued to pursue the matter, inquiring why in the world Aulus Manlius rather than himself had
[7??]
not come to Rome, in order to render an account to the Roman people of the reason why he had gone from the province of Gaul, which he had obtained from the lot, over into Histria? When, they asked, had the senate decreed that war?
[8]
When had the Roman people ordered that war? But, by Hercules, he will say that although the war was undertaken on his own initiative, it was conducted wisely and courageously.4 On the contrary, they said, it was impossible to say whether it was undertaken more improperly or prosecuted more imprudently. Two outposts were surprised by the Histrians, a Roman camp captured, and all the infantry and cavalry in the camp slaughtered, the rest, unarmed and routed, the consul himself leading the way, had fled to the sea and the
[10]
ships! As a private citizen Manlius would give account of his actions, since he had refused to do this as a consul. [p. 207]
1 For the campaigns of Gracchus and Albinus, cf. XL. xlvii ff. There was, according to the Periocha, a further account in the lost portion of this Book.
2 B.C. 178
3 Cf. XL. xliii. 7 and the note.
4 The criticism of Manlius is similar to that directed against his brother after the Galatian campaign of 189 B.C. (especially XXXVIII, xlv. [9] —xlvi).
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.