13.
Prodigies were reported that year: in the territory of Crustumerium they say that a bird, called sanqualis1 cut a sacred stone2 with
[2??]
its beak, that in Campania a cow spoke, that at Syracuse a brazen heifer was approached and mounted by a wild bull which had strayed from its herd.
[3]
In the territory of Crustumerium a day of prayer was held on the actual spot,3 and in Campania the cow was consigned to maintenance at the expense of the state.
[4]
Atonement was made for the prodigy at [p. 225]Syracuse, the gods to whom supplication should be4 made having been announced by the haruspices.
That year occurred the death of the pontiff Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who had been consul and censor.5 In his place was substituted in the priesthood his son Marcus Marcellus. Also in that year a colony of two thousand Roman citizens was established at Luna.
[5]
The board of three which established it consisted of Publius Aelius, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Gnaeus Sicinius; the allotment to each colonist was fifty-one and one half iugera. The land had been taken from the Ligurians; it had belonged to the Etruscans before the Ligurians.
[6]
Gaius Claudius the consul came to the City: when he had given an account in the senate of his successful operations in Histria and among the Ligurians, on his request a triumph was decreed.
[7]
He triumphed during his term of office over two peoples at once. He carried in procession in his triumph three hundred and seven thousand denarii, eighty-five thousand seven hundred and two victoriati.6 Each of the infantry received fifteen denarii, the centurions twice, the cavalry each thrice that sum. To the allies7 a half less was given than to the citizens.
[8]
And so they followed the car in silence, so that you could perceive that they were angry.
1 Festus (p. 317) says that the bird in commentariis auguralibus ossifraga ('bonebreaker') appellatur. Pliny (N.H. X. vii. 20) was uncertain as to the meaning of the word sanqualis, which may have been related to the name of the god Sangus (XXXII. i. 10); cf. Festus 371; quia in Sangi dei tutela est.
2 Perhaps a boundary or sepulchral stone or a dedication.
3 I.e., at the spot where the portent occurred, not in Rome.
4 B.C. 177
5 He was consul in 196 B.C. (XXXIII, xxiv. 1) and censor in 189 B.C. (XXXVII. lviii. 2).
6 An Illyrian coin originally, worth three-fourths of a denarius; cf. Pliny N.H. XXX. iii. 46.
7 The custom, at least in recent years, had been to give the Latin allies the same donatives as the Romans (vii. 3 above and the note). The treatment in this case may be part of the general discrimination against them (cf. ix. 9-12 above).
Livy. Books XL-XLII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1938: published without copyright notice.
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