7.
Two triumphs for conquests in Spain were then successively celebrated.
[2]
First, Sempronius Gracchus triumphed over the Celtiberians and their allies; next day, Lucius Postumius triumphed over the Lusitanians, and the other Spaniards in that quarter. Tiberius Gracchus carried in the procession forty [p. 1927]thousand pounds' weight of silver, Albinus twenty thousand.
[3]
They distributed to each of their soldiers twenty-five denariuses,1 double that sum to a centurion, triple it to a horseman; the same sums to the allied troops as to the Roman.
[4]
The consul, Marcus Junius, happened to arrive at Rome at this time from Istria, in order to hold the elections.
[5]
The plebeian tribunes, Papirius and Licinius, after harassing him in the senate, with questions relative to what had passed in Istria, brought him into the assembly of the people.
[6]
To which inquiries the consul answered, that “he had been not more than eleven days in that province; and that as to what had happened when he was not present, he, like themselves, gained his information from report.”
[7]
But they still proceeded to ask, “why, then, did not Manlius rather come to Rome, that he might account to the Roman people for his having quitted Gaul, the province allotted to him, and gone into Istria? When had the senate decreed a war with that nation? When had the people ordered it?
[8]
But he will say, 'Though the war was indeed undertaken by private authority, yet it was conducted with prudence and courage.' On the contrary, it is impossible to say, whether it was undertaken with greater injustice than the rashness with which it was conducted.
[9]
Two advanced guards were surprised by the Istrians; a Roman camp was taken, with whatever infantry and cavalry were in it; the rest in disorder, without arms, and among the foremost the consul himself, fled to the shore and the ships.
[10]
But he should answer for all these matters when he became a private citizen, since he had been unwilling to do so while consul.”
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