47.
Not very long afterwards, since the time for the consular election was at hand, Gaius Laelius the consul returned from Gaul to Rome.
[2]
He not only enrolled, in accordance with the decree of the senate passed in his absence, colonists as reinforcements for Cremona and Placentia, but he also moved that two new colonies should be established in the country which had belonged to the Boii, and on his proposal the Fathers so voted.
At the same time a despatch from Lucius Aemilius the praetor arrived, announcing the naval battle fought off Myonnesus and the fact that Lucius [p. 431]Scipio the consul had transferred his army to Asia.1
[3]
By reason of the naval victory a period of prayer for one day was proclaimed and a second day was added because a Roman army had then for the first time encamped in Asia, in order that this event might turn out prosperously and successfully. The consul was directed to sacrifice twenty full-grown victims on each day of the period of supplication.
Then the consular elections were held with active rivalry.
[4]
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was a candidate amid universal disapproval because he had left his province of Sicily to conduct his campaign without a vote of the senate authorizing him to do so. The candidates with him were Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, Gnaeus Manlius Volso, and Marcus Valerius Messalla. Fulvius was the only consul elected, since the others did not win the necessary number of
[5]
centuries,2 and
[8??]
he on the following day announced the choice of Gnaeus Manlius as his colleague, Lepidus being defeated —for Messalla had no chance3 Then the praetors were chosen; two named Quintus Fabius, Labeo and Pictor —Pictor had been installed as priest of Quirinus that year, Marcus Sempronius Tuditanus, Spurius Postumius Albinus, Lucius Plautius Hypsaeus, Lucius Baebius Dives. [p. 433]
1 B.C. 190
2 An election required the votes of a majority of the centuries for each candidate, and Fulvius alone had a majority, the other votes being split in such a way that no one else had a sufficient number.
[6] Livy's account of the subsequent procedure is badly confused, and evidence with which to revise it is lacking. The first question is the date of the election of Fulvius. He could have presided at the election of his colleague only if he had himself been chosen on the last day of the preceding official year. The colloquialisms deiecto and iacuit and the technical [7??] phrase collegam dixit indicate that a second election was held and that Fulvius did not co-opt his colleague, and the last indicates that Fulvius presided at that election. On the other hand, the consuls and praetors were apparently inaugurated together as usual, and in that case Fulvius could not have been elected on the last day of one year and Manlius on the first day of the next. Livy has probably erroneously reconstructed the event from contradictory and ambiguous sources.3 Livy's use of iacuit is an echo of the political slang of his own day.
Livy. Books XXXV-XXXVII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1935: 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.