46.
In the beginning of this year Publius Licinius Crassus, the pontifex maximus, died, and in his stead Marcus Sempronius Tuditanus was co-opted as pontiff;1 Gaius Servilius Geminus was elected2 pontifex maximus.
[2]
On the occasion of the funeral of Publius Licinius a public distribution of meats took place, and one hundred and twenty gladiators fought and funeral games were given for three days, and after the games a banquet.
[3]
During this, when the banqueting tables had been arranged through the whole Forum, a storm coming up with great gusts of wind drove most people to set up [p. 367]tents in the Forum: these, a little later, when it3 had cleared up all around, were taken down;
[4]
and the general talk was that the omen had been fulfilled, because the soothsayers had declared that it was among the decrees of the fates that it was destined that tents should be set up in the Forum.4
[5]
When they were freed from this fear another came upon them, because for two days it had rained blood in the precinct of Vulcan;5 and a period of prayer was proclaimed by the decemvirs as expiation for this prodigy.
[6]
Before the consuls6 set out for their provinces, they introduced the embassies from across the seas to the senate. Never before had there been so many people from this region in Rome.
[7]
For from the time that the news spread among the tribes that live near Macedonia that charges and complaints against Philip were listened to not inattentively by the Romans, and that many had found it profitable to make complaints, each city and tribe for itself and many individuals privately —for
[8]
everyone found him a neighbour hard to get along with —came to Rome either in the hope of redressing their wrongs or for the consolation of lamenting them.
[9]
From King Eumenes also came an embassy, including his brother Athenaeus, to complain both because the garrisons were not withdrawn from the cities in Thrace and because aid had been sent to Prusias in Bithynia, who was waging war against Eumenes.
1 Here the regular method is employed, in contrast with that recorded in the preceding sentence.
2 One of the pontiffs was elected pontifex maximus in the usual way, by the college of pontiffs, and while Livy may at times confuse cooptare and creare he discriminates between them here.
3 B.C. 183
4 Pessimists would naturally expect that the tents of the prophecy would be those of the enemy who was master of the City, but the omen has now been harmlessly fulfilled.
5 It was near the temple of Concord (lvi. 6; XL. xix. 1 below).
6 These events should then belong to the winter of 184-183 B.C. or the early spring of the latter year. Polybius (XXIV. i. ff.) puts them after the departure of the consuls, and so some months later in 183 B.C.
Livy. Books XXXVIII-XXXIX with an English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1936: published without copyright notice.
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