58.
The fine proposed was one hundred [p. 473]thousand asses; the case was twice argued1 ; the third2 time, since the defendant had ceased to be a candidate and the people was unwilling to cast a ballot regarding the fine, the tribunes too dropped the case.
[2]
Titus Quinctius Flamininus and Marcus Claudius Marcellus were chosen censors.
[3]
About this time Lucius Aemilius Regillus, who with his fleet had conquered the prefect of King Antiochus, having been granted an audience by the senate in the temple of Apollo outside the City, when they had heard his achievements, with how great fleets of the enemy he had fought and how many of their ships he had sunk or captured, with the complete approval of the Fathers was granted a naval triumph.
[4]
He triumphed on the Kalends of February. In that triumph forty-nine golden crowns were displayed, money in no wise comparable to the magnificence of the triumph, to wit, thirty-four thousand two hundred Attic four-drachma pieces and one hundred thirty-two thousand three hundred cistophori.
[5]
Then there were supplications decreed by the senate because Lucius Aemilius had administered affairs successfully in Spain.
Not long thereafter Lucius Scipio came to the City;
[6]
and, that he might not be inferior to his brother in the matter of names, he requested that he be saluted as Asiaticus. Both in the senate and before the assembly3 he made speeches about his accomplishments.
[7]
There were some who tried to make out that that war had been magnified by rumour beyond its actual difficulty: that it had been brought to a conclusion by a single noteworthy battle, and [p. 475]that the glory of that victory had been robbed4 of distinction beforehand at Thermopylae.
[8]
But to one who judges aright the battle at Thermopylae was with the Aetolians rather than the king; for with what part of his own forces had the king fought there?5 In Asia the strength of all Asia from the farthest parts of the east and of all nations stood as his assembled army.
1 Roman procedure required three separate sessions of the court, at the third of which the verdict was rendered. If one party failed to appear at this session, the case was automatically forfeited to the other side and no verdict was, as a rule, given.
2 B.C. 189
3 These speeches seem to be the customary arguments in favour of the grant of a triumph. Since a general with the imperium could not cross the pomerium, it is uncertain what assembly Livy means.
4 B.C. 189
5 It is difficult to form an intelligent opinion from Livy as to this question. From Livy's narrative it seems as if the Aetolians had done little in this battle and too little in the war to warrant a triumph over them. On the other hand, it is true that the king had only a small fraction of his forces there. But this-discredits Thermopylae rather than lagnesia as a decisive engagement.
Livy. Books XXXV-XXXVII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1935: published without copyright notice.
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