23.
then an election for the praetorships was held. Publius Manlius Volso and Lucius Manlius Acidinus and Gaius Laetorius and Lucius Cincius Alimentus1 were elected.
[2]
it was after the election, as it happened, that news came of the death in Sicily of Titus Otacilius, whom the people in his absence would, it seemed, have given as a colleague to Titus Manlius, if the course of the election had not been interrupted.
[3]
the festival of Apollo had been observed in the previous year, and in order that it might be observed in this year also, the senate, on motion of Calpurnius, the praetor, decreed that it be vowed as a permanency.
[4]
in the same year a number of prodigies were seen and reported. at the Temple of Concord2 a Victory which stood on the pediment was struck by lightning, and being dislodged, it caught upon the Victories which were among the antefixes and did not fall farther.
[5]
and at Anagnia and at Fregellae the wall and gates were reported to have been struck by lightning; and that at Forum Subertanum there had been streams of blood for a whole day; and that at Eretum there was a shower of stones; and that at Reate a mule had foaled.
[6]
these prodigies were [p. 91]atoned for with full —grown victims, and a single day3 of prayer was proclaimed to the people and nine days of ceremonies.4
[7]
a number of public priests died that year, and new priests were appointed; in place of Manius Aemilius Numida, a decemvir in charge of rites, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was appointed, in place of Marcus Pomponius Matho, a pontifex, Gaius Livius, in place of Spurius Carvilius Maximus, an augur, Marcus Servilius.
[8]
since Titus Otacilius Crassus, a pontifex, had died at the end of the year, no one was named to take his place. Gaius Claudius, flamen of Jupiter, abdicated his office because of an error in his placing the entrails.
1 The annalist; XXI. xxxviii. 3.
2 At the upper end of the Forum, built after 367 B.C. another temple in the citadel had been dedicated in 216 B.C.; XXIII. xxi. 7.
3 B.C. 211
4 The regular method of expiation when a shower of stones had been reported; XXI. lxii. 6; XXIII. xxxi. 15; XXV. vii. 9; XXVII. xxxvii. 4.
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