1a.* The arrival of Aeneas in Italy and his activities. The reign of Ascanius at Alba and the reigns of the Silvii in turn. Mars’ sexual intercourse with Numitor’s daughter; the birth of Romulus and Remus. The slaughtering of Amullius. The founding of the city by Romulus. The selection of the Senate. War with the Sabines. Presentation of the spolia opima* to Jupiter Feretrius. The division of the people into tribes. Defeat of the Fidenates and the Veientes. Apotheosis of Romulus.
Numa Pompilius instituted sacred rites. The closing of the door of the temple of Janus.
Tullus Hostilius plundered the Albans. The battle of the triplets. The punishment of Mettius Fufetius. Tullus killed by lightning.
Ancus Marcius subdued the Latins, founded Ostia.
Tarquinius Priscus defeated the Latins, constructed the Circus, subdued neighbouring peoples, constructed walls and drains.
Servius Tullius’ head gave off flames. Servius Tullius subdued the Veientes and divided the people into classes; he dedicated a temple to Diana.
Tarquinius Superbus usurped the monarchy by killing Tullius. The crime of Tullia against her father. The killing of Turnus Herdonius by Tarquinius. War with the Volsci. The looting of Gabii through the deception of Sextus Tarquinius. The beginning of the Capitol. The altars of Termo and Juventas could not be moved. Lucretia killed herself. The expulsion of Superbus. The monarchy lasted 255 years.
1b. Ancus Marcius* allotted the Aventine Mount to the defeated Latins, extended the borders, and established the colony of Ostia. He revived ceremonies that Numa had instituted.
It is said that, for the sake of testing the expertise of the augur Attus Navius, Ancus consulted him as to whether what Ancus was thinking could be made to happen; when Attus said that it could, Ancus ordered him to split a whetstone with a razor, and this was immediately done by Attus.
He ruled for twenty-four years. During his reign, Lucumo, son of Demaratus of Corinth, came to Rome from the Etruscan city of Tarquinii, and Ancus counted him as a friend; Lucumo began to use Tarquinius Priscus as his name; after Ancus’ death Tarquinius took over the monarchy. He elevated one hundred men to join the fathers, he subjugated the Latins, he put on games in the Circus, he increased the centuries of the equites, he encircled the city with a wall, and he constructed drains. He was killed by the sons of Ancus when he had ruled for thirty-eight years.
Servius Tullius succeeded him. He was the child of a high-born slave-woman from Corniculum, and it has been said that when he was still a baby in his cradle his head gave off flames. He conducted the first census and ritually closed the lustrum; in it 80,000 are said to have been registered. He extended the pomerium, he added the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline Hills to the city, and together with the Latins he built a temple to Diana on the Aventine. He was killed by Lucius Tarquinius, the son of Priscus, at the instigation of Tullius’ own daughter, Tullia; he had ruled for forty-four years.
After him, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus usurped the monarchy, without a directive from either the fathers or the people. He kept armed men around him for his own protection. He waged war against the Volsci, and from the spoils he erected a temple to Jupiter on the Capitol. By a trick he brought Gabii under his control. His sons went to Delphi, and when they asked which of them would be the ruler of Rome, the response was that he who first kissed his mother would be the ruler. While the sons interpreted this answer otherwise, Junius Brutus, who had come with them, pretended that he slipped, and he kissed the earth. The outcome vindicated this action of his. For when Tarquinius Superbus had incurred the hatred of all against him by his domineering conduct, finally his son Sextus forcibly overcame Lucretia’s chastity at night, and she summoned her father Tricipitinus and her husband Collatinus to her, called upon them to witness that her death should not be unavenged, and stabbed herself to death. Tarquinius was driven out, mostly by the efforts of Brutus, after twenty-five years of ruling. Then the first consuls were created: Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus.
Brutus bound the Roman people by oath to allow no one to rule as a king at Rome in the future. He forced his colleague Tarquinius Collatinus, who was under suspicion because of his familial relationship to the Tarquinii, to abdicate his consulship and leave the city. Brutus ordered the royal property to be seized as plunder, and he dedicated the land to Mars; this was called the Campus Martius. Well-born young men, including Brutus’ own sons and those of his brother, had conspired to restore the kings, and so Brutus had them beheaded. Brutus conferred freedom on the slave informant, whose name was Vindicius; the vindicta* was named after him. When Brutus had marched out the army against the royal family, which had invaded with troops drawn from the Veientes and Tarquinienses, he fought with Arruns, the son of Superbus, and they both died. The married women mourned him for a year.
The consul Publius Valerius brought before the people a law about the right to appeal. The Capitol was dedicated. Although Porsenna, king of Clusium, reached the Janiculum during a campaign he had undertaken for the Tarquinii, he was prevented from crossing the Tiber by the courage of Horatius Cocles. This man, while others were chopping down the Sublician bridge, held off the Etruscans on his own, and when the bridge had been broken apart, he plunged into the river in full armour and swam across to his own men. Another example of courage was added in the person of Mucius. When he had penetrated the enemy’s camp to kill Porsenna, he murdered Porsenna’s secretary, whom he had thought to be the king. Mucius was apprehended, and he placed his hand on the altar where there had been a sacrifice and let it burn, saying that there were 300 men just like him. Compelled by admiration for these men, Porsenna sought peace-terms and abandoned the war once he had received hostages. One of them, a young woman named Cloelia, tricked her guards and swam across the Tiber to her own people. When Cloelia was restored to Porsenna, she was respectfully sent back by him and rewarded with an equestrian statue.
The dictator Aulus Postumius fought successfully against Tarquinius Superbus when he mounted an offensive with an army of Latins.
Appius Claudius deserted to Rome from the Sabines. For this reason, the Claudian tribe was added, and the number of tribes increased so that there were twenty-one. When the plebeians seceded to the Sacred Mount for the sake of men who had been enslaved for debt, they were recalled from their rebellion by the counsel of Menenius Agrippa. When this same Agrippa died, he was buried at public expense because of his poverty. Five tribunes of the plebs were created. Corioli, a city of the Volsci, was captured by the courage and efforts of Gnaeus Marcius, who was called Coriolanus for this reason. When Titus Latinius, a man of the plebeians, was warned by a supernatural manifestation that he should make a report to the Senate about certain religious matters and he failed to do so, his son died, and his feet became paralysed. After he had been brought to the Senate in a litter and had revealed those same matters, he recovered the use of his feet, and he returned home. When Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus, who had been driven into exile, had become a leader of the Volsci and had brought an enemy army against the city, first ambassadors and then priests were sent to him and beseeched him, in vain, not to make war on his fatherland; his mother Veturia and his wife Volumnia successfully requested him to retreat.
An agrarian law was proposed for the first time. Spurius Cassius, a former consul, was prosecuted and executed for the crime of aiming at monarchy. The Vestal Opillia was buried alive for sexual impurity. When the neighbouring Veientes were not so much threatening as troublesome, the Fabian family demanded responsibility to conduct the war and dispatched 306 armed men for this purpose; all but one were killed at the Cremera by the enemy. When a battle against the Volsci went badly because of the troops’ defiant attitude, the consul Appius Claudius had one out of every ten soldiers beaten to death. The book also contains fighting against the Volsci and the Hernici and the Veientes as well as internal conflicts between the fathers and the plebs.
There were uprisings over agrarian legislation. The Capitol was occupied by exiles and slaves; they were killed, and it was taken back. The census was conducted twice. In the earlier five-year period the citizens totalled 108,714, excluding orphans and widows; in the subsequent one, they totalled 117,219.
When a battle against the Aequi went badly, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was made dictator and summoned to conduct the war although he was immersed in agricultural work in the country. He sent his defeated foes beneath the yoke.
The number of tribunes of the plebs was increased, such that there were ten in the thirty-sixth year after the first tribunes of the plebs. In the three hundred and second year after Rome was founded,* Athenian laws were sought out by envoys and brought back, and ten men were appointed instead of consuls, without any other magistrates, to organize and enact these, and just as power was transferred from the kings to the consuls, so it was passed from the consuls to the decemvirate. Ten tables of laws were published, and the men had conducted themselves with restraint in their office; for this reason it had been agreed that the same magistracy should exist again for a second year. After they had added two tables to the ten, when they had committed many lawless deeds, they refused to resign the magistracy and held on to it for a third year, until Appius Claudius’ lust brought an end to their despised power. He had fallen in love with the virgin Virginia. He sent a man to claim her as his slave and left her father Virginius with no recourse. Virginius snatched a knife from a nearby shop and killed his daughter since there was no other way to prevent her from coming under the control of a man who would force sex upon her. The plebeians were roused by this instance of such enormous injustice. They occupied the Aventine Mount and forced the decemvirate to abdicate the magistracy. Of the ten, Appius Claudius especially had earned punishment and was thrown into jail; the rest were driven into exile.
The book contains also successful campaigning against the Sabines and the Volsci and a dishonourable ruling rendered by the Roman people. When they were chosen to adjudicate between the Ardeates and the Aricini about territory that was under dispute, they assigned it to themselves.
The law concerning intermarriage between patricians and plebeians was carried by the tribunes after fierce argument with the patricians, who opposed it. The tribunes <…> of the plebs.
For some years the affairs of the Roman people were administered at home and abroad by this type of magistrate.* Also then for the first time censors were created. The land that had been taken away from the Ardeates by the ruling of the people was restored to them after colonists had been sent there.
When the Roman people were struggling with famine, the Roman equestrian Spurius Maelius liberally bestowed grain on the people at his own expense, and because of this action the plebeians were won over to him. When he sought monarchic power, he was killed by Gaius Servilius Ahala, the master of the horse, under an order from the dictator Quintus Cincinnatus;* the man who denounced him, Lucius Minucius, was rewarded with a gilded cow. Roman ambassadors were killed by the Fidenates; because they had died for the Republic, statues of them were erected on the Rostra.
Cossus Cornelius, a military tribune, killed Tolumnius, the king of the Veientes, and brought back the second set of spolia opima. The dictator Mamercus Aemilius limited the office of censor, which previously lasted five years, to the period of a year and six months. For this reason he was blacklisted by the censors. Fidenae was brought under control, and colonists were sent there. When the Fidenates killed them and revolted, they were defeated by the dictator Mamercus Aemilius, and Fidenae was captured.
A conspiracy of slaves was suppressed. The military tribune Postumius was killed by the army because of his cruelty. The soldiers were paid from the treasury for the first time. The book contains also campaigns against the Volsci and the Fidenates and the Falisci.
During the siege of Veii quarters were built for the soldiers. Since this was an innovation, it roused the indignation of the tribunes of the plebs, who complained that the plebeians were being given no respite from military service, not even in winter. Then for the first time the equites began to serve with their own horses. When the Alban Lake flooded, a seer was captured from the enemy to interpret the event. The dictator Furius Camillus took Veii after it had been under siege for ten years; he transferred the statue of Juno to Rome; and he sent a tenth of the spoils to Delphi for Apollo. As military tribune, the same man besieged the Falisci, and when the children of the enemy were handed over to him, he returned them to their parents. The Falisci immediately surrendered, and Camillus achieved victory over them through justice.
When Gaius Julius, one of the censors, died, Marcus Cornelius was installed in his place. But this was never done again since Rome was captured by the Gauls in that lustrum.
Furius Camillus went into exile when a trial date was set for him by the tribune of the plebs Lucius Apuleius. When the Gallic Senones besieged Clusium and envoys were sent by the Senate to arrange a peace between them and the Clusini, the envoys fought against the Senones, standing in the Clusini’s battle column. This action antagonized the Senones, and they set out for the city with a hostile force. After putting the Romans to flight at the Allia, the Gauls captured the city, except for the Capitol, where the Roman youth had betaken themselves; the older men seated themselves in the entry-ways of their homes, each with the insignia of the highest office he had held, and were killed.
At the moment when the Gauls had climbed to the top along the back side of the Capitol, they were betrayed by the honking of geese, and they were forced back down, especially through the efforts of Marcus Manlius. Subsequently, when the Romans were forced by near-starvation to come down from there to give 1,000 pounds of gold and with this sum to purchase an end to the siege, Furius Camillus, who had been created dictator in his absence, arrived with an army at the very moment of the parley about the peace-terms. He drove the Gauls out of the city after six months and slaughtered them. When there was talk that the Romans should move to Veii because Rome had been burned and ruined, Camillus was responsible for the rejection of the plan. The omen of a remark heard from a centurion also influenced the people; after he had entered the Forum, he had said to his troops: ‘Halt, soldiers; this is the best place for us to stay.’
The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was built because, before the city was taken, an utterance that the Gauls were coming had been heard.
The book contains successful campaigns against the Volsci and the Aequi and the Praenestini. Four tribes were added: the Stellatina, the Tromentina, the Sabatina, the Arniensis. When Marcus Manlius, who had defended the Capitol from the Gauls, freed men bound by debt and released men in debt-bondage, he was condemned on the charge of seeking monarchic power and thrown from the Rock.* To mark his disgrace, the Senate passed a decree that the name ‘Marcus’ should not be given to anyone in the Manlian family.
Gaius Licinius and Lucius Sextius, tribunes of the plebs, promulgated a law allowing consuls, who were created from amongst the fathers, to come from the plebeians. Although the fathers opposed this law with fierce argument, after the same tribunes of the plebs had been the only magistrates for five years, they got it passed; and Lucius Sextius was made the first consul from the plebs. Another law was passed too, preventing anyone from possessing more than 500 iugera of land.
Two new magistracies were added: the praetorship and the curule aedileship. The city laboured under a plague, and the death of Furius Camillus gave it a special significance. When a cure and an end were sought through new religious rituals, drama was introduced then for the first time.
When Marcus Pomponius, the tribune of the plebs, had set a trial date for Lucius Manlius because he had conducted the draft harshly and because his son Titus Manlius had been exiled to the country without any charge, the same young man, the one whose rural exile was grounds for accusing his father, entered the bedroom of the tribune, drew a sword, and forced the tribune to swear at the young man’s dictation that he would not pursue the charge. Then all valuables were dropped into a very deep chasm in the city of Rome. Curtius, armed and astride his horse, hurled himself into it, and it filled up. Titus Manlius, the young man who had saved his father from tribunician persecution, entered into single combat against a Gaul who was challenging anyone from the ranks of Roman soldiers. Titus killed the Gaul and stripped a golden torque from him. From then on he wore it, and thus he was called Torquatus. Two tribes were added: the Pomptina and the Publilia. Because he possessed more than 500 iugera of land, Licinius Stolo was condemned under the law he had had passed. A military tribune, Marcus Valerius, killed a Gaul who had challenged him, while a crow perched on his helmet and tormented his opponent with its claws and beak. From this episode Marcus Valerius took the name of Corvus,* and the following year, when he was twenty-three, he was made consul for his courage. A friendship was formed with the Carthaginians. When the Campanians were hard-pressed in a war with the Samnites, they asked the Senate for help against them. When the Campanians did not obtain it, they gave their city and land to the Roman people. For this reason it was agreed to defend these, which had become the property of the Roman people, against the Samnites. When the army had been led by the consul Aulus Cornelius into grave danger in an unfavourable location, it was saved by the efforts of a military tribune, Publius Decius Mus. He occupied a hill above the ridge where the Samnites had encamped and gave the consul the opportunity to move to more favourable ground; when Decius himself was surrounded by the enemy, he broke through their ranks. When Roman soldiers who had been left in a garrison in Capua had conspired to occupy the city and their plan had been uncovered, they had defected from the Roman people out of fear of punishment. They were brought back to the fatherland by the dictator Marcus Valerius Corvus, who had recalled them from their madness with his counsel. The book contains also successful campaigns against the Hernici and the Gauls and the Tiburtes and the Privernates and the Tarquinienses and the Samnites and the Volsci.
When the Latins defected with the Campanians and sent ambassadors to the Senate, they set as their condition that if the Romans wished to have peace, they should choose one of the two consuls from the Latins. When this message had been delivered, their praetor Annius fell from the Capitol in such a way that he died. Then the consul Titus Manlius, because his son fought the Latins against his orders, had him beheaded, even though his son had fought successfully. While the Romans were struggling in a battle, Publius Decius, at the time consul with Manlius, devoted himself* on behalf of the army; he spurred his horse and rode right into the thick of the enemy. He was killed, and with his death saved victory for the Romans. The Latins surrendered. When Titus Manlius returned to the city, none of the young men came out to greet him. The Vestal Minucia was condemned for sexual impurity. After the defeat of the Ausones and the capture of their city, the colony of Cales and also the colony of Fregellae were founded.
A large number of married women were caught using poison; most of them immediately drank their own potions and died. A law against poisoning was then passed for the first time. Citizenship was conferred on the Privernates after a war was fought against them and they were defeated. The people of Naples were defeated by war and a siege, and they surrendered. Quintus Publilius, who had conducted the siege, was the first both to have his imperium extended and to be voted a triumph as a proconsul.
The plebeians were liberated from debt because of the lust of their creditor Lucius Papirius, who had wished to rape Gaius Publilius, his own debtor.
When the dictator Lucius Papirius Cursor returned to the city from the army to take the auspices anew, his master of horse Quintus Fabius was tempted by a favourable opportunity for an attack and fought successfully against the Samnites, in contravention of Papirius’ instructions. For this reason, when the dictator seemed about to exact punishment from the master of horse, Fabius fled to Rome and, when his case was meeting with little success, he was rescued by appeals from the people. The book also contains successful campaigning against the Samnites.
The consuls Titus Veturius and Spurius Postumius led the army into a narrow space at the Caudine Forks. Since there was no hope of escape, they made a treaty with the Samnites and gave 600 Roman equites as hostages and led the army out on the condition that they were all sent beneath the yoke. At the urging of the consul, Spurius Postumius, who pushed in the Senate the view that the communal promise would be kept by the surrender of the individuals who were responsible for striking so shameful a treaty, these same men, together with the two tribunes of the plebs and all who had acted as surety for the treaty, were handed over. When these men were handed over to the Samnites, the Samnites refused them. Shortly afterwards, the Samnites were routed by Papirius Cursor and sent beneath the yoke, the 600 Roman equites who had been hostages were recovered, and the disgrace of the earlier dishonour was erased.
Two tribes were added: the Oufentina and the Falerna. Colonies were established at Suessa and Pontia. The censor Appius Claudius constructed an aqueduct, paved the road that was named the Appian Way, and selected the sons of freedmen for the Senate. Accordingly, since that order seemed debased by unworthy men, the following year the consuls oversaw the selection of the Senate in the way it had been done before the most recent censors.
The book contains also successful campaigning against the Apuli and the Etruscans and the Umbrians and the Marsi and the Paeligni and the Aequi, and the Samnites, with whom the treaty was renewed. The clerk Gnaeus Flavius, the son of a freedman, was made curule aedile through the agency of the Forum claque.* When this group upset the elections and the Campus Martius and dominated them because of its extensive resources, the censor Quintus Fabius redistributed the claque into four tribes, which he designated ‘urban’. This act gave him the name Fabius Maximus.
In this book the author mentions Alexander, who lived at that time, estimates the strength of the Roman people at the time, and deduces that if Alexander had crossed to Italy, he would not have achieved a victory over the Roman people as he did over those people in the East whom he had subjugated.
Colonies were established at Sora and Alba and Carseoli. The Marsi’s surrender was accepted. The college of augurs was expanded so that there were nine where previously there had been four. For the third time a law about the right of appeal was brought before the people by the consul Murena. Two tribes were added: the Aniensis and the Terentina. War was declared on the Samnites, and the fighting against them was frequently successful. When there was a battle against the Etruscans, the Umbrians, the Samnites, and the Gauls under the leadership of Publius Decius and Quintus Fabius, and the Roman army was in grave danger, Publius Decius followed the example of his father and dedicated himself on behalf of the army; by his death he gave the victory in the battle to the Roman people. Papirius Cursor routed an army of Samnites who had gone into battle bound by an oath to fight with more constancy and valour. The census was conducted; the lustrum was ritually closed. The number of citizens totalled 272,320.
When the consul Fabius Gurges had fought unsuccessfully against the Samnites and the Senate was deliberating about removing him from the army, his father Fabius Maximus pleaded that this disgrace should not be inflicted on his son; and he swayed the Senate particularly because he promised that he himself would go as a lieutenant to his son, and he carried through on his promise. Aided by his advice and efforts, his son the consul defeated the Samnites and celebrated a triumph; Fabius led the Samnites’ commander Gaius Pontius in the triumphal procession and then had him beheaded.
When the city was beset by a plague, envoys were sent to bring the cult statue of Aesculapius from Epidaurus to Rome; they transported a snake, which had boarded their ship and which was generally agreed to contain the god’s spirit. Thus when it disembarked at the island in the Tiber, a temple to Aesculapius was established in that very location.
The former consul Lucius Postumius was convicted because he had employed the services of soldiers on his own land when he commanded the army. When the Samnites sought peace, the treaty was renewed for the fourth time. The consul Curius Dentatus slaughtered the Samnites, overcame the Sabines, who had revolted, received their submission, and triumphed twice in the same magistracy. The colonies of Castrum, Sena, and Hadria were founded. Triumviri capitales* were elected then for the first time. The census was conducted, and the lustrum was ritually closed. The number of citizens totalled 272,000. Because of debt, after prolonged and severe civil unrest the plebeians finally seceded to the Janiculum; the dictator Quintus Hortensius brought them back from there; he died while holding that office. The book contains also campaigns against the Vulsinienses as well as against the Lucani, as it had been agreed to bring help to the people of Thurii against them.
When envoys from the Romans were killed by the Gallic Senones, war was declared on the Gauls for this reason; the praetor Lucius Caecilius together with his legions was slaughtered by them. When the Roman fleet was seized by the Tarentini and one of the duumviri who was commanding the fleet was killed, ambassadors were sent by the Senate to the Tarentini to complain to them about these wrongs; the ambassadors were maltreated. War was declared on the Tarentini for this reason. The Samnites defected. There was successful fighting against them and the Lucani and the Bruttii and the Etruscans in several battles by a number of leaders. Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, came to Italy to aid the Tarentini. When a Campanian legion was sent to the defence of the Rhegini with Decius Vibullius as their commander, it killed the Rhegini and took control of Rhegium.
The consul Valerius Laevinus fought Pyrrhus with little success: the soldiers were particularly terrified by the unfamiliar spectacle of elephants. After this battle, when Pyrrhus was inspecting the corpses of the Romans who had fallen in the fray, he found them all facing the enemy. Ravaging the land, he advanced on Rome. Gaius Fabricius was sent by the Senate to him to discuss ransoming the captives; the king tried, in vain, to influence him to desert his fatherland. The captives were sent back without ransom money. Cineas was sent by Pyrrhus as an envoy to the Senate and asked that the king be admitted to the city for the sake of arranging a peace treaty. When it had been agreed to discuss this matter at a well-attended session of the Senate, Appius Claudius, who had kept himself out of public deliberations for a long time on account of an eye disease, went to the Curia and prevailed in his opinion that Pyrrhus should be denied this request.
The first plebeian censor, Gnaeus Domitius, ritually closed the lustrum. The number of citizens totalled 287,222. There was another battle against Pyrrhus, with no definitive outcome. The treaty with the Carthaginians was renewed for the fourth time. When a man who had deserted from Pyrrhus to Gaius Fabricius promised to administer poison to the king, he was sent back to the king with information about what he had done. The book contains also successful campaigns against the Lucani and the Bruttii, the Samnites and the Etruscans.
Pyrrhus crossed to Sicily. When, amongst other prodigies, the statue of Jupiter on the Capitol was knocked down by lightning, the head was located by the haruspices. When the consul Curius Dentatus held the draft, he was the first to auction off the property of a man who had been summonsed and had not responded. He defeated Pyrrhus for the second time when the latter returned to Italy from Sicily, and he drove Pyrrhus from Italy. As censor, Fabricius removed the former consul Publius Cornelius Rufinus from the Senate because he had ten pounds of worked silver. The lustrum was ritually closed by the censors, and the number of citizens totalled 271,224. An alliance was formed with Ptolemy, king of Egypt. The Vestal Sextilia was convicted of sexual impurity and buried alive. The colonies of Posidonia and Cosa were founded. The Carthaginian fleet came to the aid of the Tarentini; by this act the Carthaginians violated the treaty. The book contains also successful campaigns against the Lucani, the Bruttii, and the Samnites, as well as the death of King Pyrrhus.
The Tarentini were defeated, and a peace treaty and freedom were conferred on them. The Campanian legion that had occupied Rhegium was besieged; it surrendered and was beheaded. When the envoys from Apollonia who had been sent to the Senate were beaten up by certain youths, the young men were handed over to the people of Apollonia. The Picentes were defeated, and peace was conferred on them. Colonies were established: Ariminum in Picenum and Beneventum in Samnium. Then for the first time the Roman people began to use silver money. The Umbrians and the Sallentines were defeated, and their surrender accepted. The number of quaestors was increased so that there were eight of them.
The origins of the Carthaginians and the foundation of their city are recorded. The Senate decided that help should be given to the Mamertines against the Carthaginians and Hiero, king of Syracuse, although there had been a dispute about this matter between those arguing for it and those arguing against. Then for the first time Roman troops crossed the sea, and they fought several times against Hiero with success. Peace was made with him when he asked for it. The lustrum was ritually closed by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 382,234. Decimus Junius Brutus was the first to put on a gladiatorial contest, in honour of his deceased father. The colony of Aesernia was founded. The book contains also successful campaigns against the Carthaginians and the Vulsinii.
The consul Gnaeus Cornelius was surrounded by the Carthaginian fleet and, lured out as if for a parley, was captured by deception. The consul Gaius Duillius fought successfully against the Carthaginian fleet, and he was the first of all Roman generals to celebrate a triumph for a naval victory. For this reason he held also a lifetime honour: when he returned from dining out, he was preceded by a pipe-player and a torch-bearer. The consul Lucius Cornelius fought with good fortune in Sardinia and Corsica against the Sardinians, the Corsicans, and Hanno, the Carthaginian general. When the consul Atilius Calatinus had rashly led his army into a place surrounded by Carthaginians, he escaped because of the bravery and efforts of the military tribune Marcus Calpurnius, who made an assault with 300 soldiers and diverted the enemy in his direction. When the fleet the Carthaginian general Hannibal was commanding was defeated, he was crucified by his own soldiers. The consul Atilius Regulus defeated the Carthaginians in a naval battle and crossed to Africa.
In Africa, Atilius Regulus killed an unnaturally enormous serpent with significant losses to his forces, and since he had waged several battles successfully against the Carthaginians, a successor for him was not sent by the Senate while he was conducting the war well. Through a letter written to the Senate, he complained about this very thing; in it, amongst his reasons for seeking a successor was the fact that his little plot of land was abandoned by the men hired to work it. Then, since Fortune sought to make Regulus a powerful example of both good and bad fortune, the Carthaginians called on Xanthippus, the Lacedaemonian general, and Regulus was defeated in battle and captured. Thereupon disasters to the fleet spoiled the campaigns, which had been going well, of all the Roman generals both on land and at sea. Tiberius Coruncanius was the first plebeian to be made pontifex maximus. When the censors Manius Valerius Maximus and Publius Sempronius Sophus reviewed the Senate, they removed sixteen men from it. They ritually closed the lustrum; during it the number of citizens totalled 297,797. Regulus was sent by the Carthaginians to the Senate to deliberate about a peace treaty and, if he could not achieve one, about an exchange of prisoners; and he was constrained by an oath that he would return to Carthage if there were no agreement about the exchange of prisoners. And he advised the Senate to refuse both demands, and he returned with his integrity intact and died from the punishment exacted by the Carthaginians.
Caecilius Metellus celebrated a brilliant triumph for his successful achievements against the Carthaginians, with thirteen enemy generals and 120 elephants in the parade. The consul Claudius Pulcher set out against the auspices—he ordered the sacred chickens to be drowned since they refused to eat—and fought a luckless naval battle against the Carthaginians, and he was recalled by the Senate and ordered to name a dictator; he named Claudius Glicia, a man of the lowest rank, who was forced to resign his magistracy and then watched the games in his toga praetexta.* Aulus Atilius Calatinus was the first dictator to lead an army outside Italy. An exchange of prisoners was effected with the Carthaginians. The colonies of Fregenae and Brundisium, in Sallentine territory, were founded. The lustrum was ritually closed by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 241,212. When Claudia, the sister of Publius Claudius, the one who had fought unsuccessfully after disregarding the auspices, was returning from the games and was being crushed by the crowd, she said, ‘Would that my brother were alive; would that he were leading the fleet again.’ For this reason, a fine was imposed on her. Two praetors were created then for the first time. When the consul Aulus Postumius wished to set out to wage war, Caecilius Metellus, the pontifex maximus, kept him in the city and did not allow him to abandon the sacred rites since Postumius was also the priest of Mars. Although campaigns were successfully conducted against the Carthaginians by many leaders, the consul Gaius Lutatius won the crowning victory by defeating the Carthaginian fleet at the Aegetes Islands. The Carthaginians sought and received peace. When the temple of Vesta burned, the pontifex maximus Caecilius Metellus snatched the sacred objects from the flames. Two tribes were added: the Velina and the Quirina.
When the Falisci revolted they were subdued in five days and surrendered. The colony of Spoletium was founded. An army was deployed against the Ligures then for the first time. When the Sardinians and the Corsicans revolted, they were subdued. The Vestal Tuccia was convicted of sexual impurity. War was declared on the Illyrians because one of the ambassadors who had been sent to them was killed; and they were subdued and surrendered. The number of praetors was increased so that there were four. The Transalpine Gauls, who had invaded Italy, were defeated. The author says that in the war the Roman people had 80,000 troops of their own and the Latin and Italian allies. Roman armies were led then for the first time across the Po, and the Gallic Insubres were routed in several battles and surrendered. The consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus killed Vertomarus, the leader of the Gallic Insubres, and brought back the spolia opima. The Istrians were subdued. When the Illyrians rebelled for a second time, they were reduced to subservience and surrendered. The lustrum was ritually closed three times by the censors. On the first occasion the number of citizens totalled 270,212. Although previously the freedmen had been spread amongst all of the tribes, they were distributed into four of them: the Esquilina, the Palatina, the Suburana, and the Collina. The censor Gaius Flaminius built the Flaminian Way and constructed the Circus Flaminius. The colonies of Placentia and Cremona were founded in the land taken from the Gauls.
The book describes the beginning of the Second Punic War and the crossing of the Ebro river, in contravention of the treaty, by the Carthaginian general Hannibal. Saguntum, a city of allies of the Roman people, was besieged by him and taken in the eighth month. Ambassadors were sent to the Carthaginians to protest these wrongs. When the Carthaginians refused to make amends, war was declared on them. Hannibal traversed a pass in the Pyrenees, routed the Volcae, who had tried to obstruct him, proceeded through the middle of the Gauls to the Alps, and crossed them with a great deal of effort; and after he had also repulsed in several battles the mountain-dwelling Gauls in his way, he descended into Italy, and routed the Romans in a cavalry battle at the Ticinus river. In this battle, Publius Cornelius Scipio was wounded, and he was rescued by his son, the one who subsequently received the name ‘Africanus’. The Roman army was routed a second time at the River Trebia, and Hannibal crossed the Apennines also, at much cost to his soldiers because of the severity of the weather. In Spain, Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio fought successfully against the Carthaginians, and Mago, the enemy’s general, was captured.
With all-night marches through swamplands Hannibal reached Etruria, though he became blind in one eye; he travelled for four days and three nights through these swamps without any rest. The consul Gaius Flaminius, who was a reckless man, set out against the auspices: the military standards that could not be lifted were dug out, and he was thrown over the head of the horse he had mounted. Encircled by Hannibal’s ambush, he was slaughtered with his army at Lake Trasimene. The 6,000 men who had broken through were treacherously put in chains by Hannibal, although Adherbal had guaranteed their safety. Amidst the mourning in Rome at the announcement of the defeat, two mothers died from unexpected joy when their sons returned. Because of the disaster, a sacred spring* was vowed in accordance with the Sibylline books.
Then, when the dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus was sent out against Hannibal and refused to engage him—for fear that he would be entrusting his troops to fight losing battles against an enemy who was fierce from so many victories—and when he was impeding Hannibal’s efforts just by setting himself up as an obstacle, the master of the horse, Marcus Minucius, a fierce and reckless man, accused the dictator of being lazy and fearful and brought it about that, by order of the people, his military authority was made equal to that of the dictator. The army was divided between them, and when Minucius had fought in an unfavourable location and his legions were in grave danger, Fabius Maximus intervened with his army and rescued Minucius from danger. Won over by this generous deed, Minucius joined his camp with that of Fabius and hailed him as ‘father’, and he ordered his troops to do the same.
After laying waste to Campania, Hannibal was surrounded by Fabius between the town of Casilinum and Mount Callicula. He tied brushwood to the horns of cattle and set it on fire, and put to flight the Roman garrison that was occupying Callicula, and thus he crossed the pass. In addition, Hannibal spared the lands of the dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus when he burned the surrounding area, in order to cast suspicion on Fabius as a traitor.
Then, when Aemilius Paullus and Terentius Varro were consuls and generals, there was a battle at Cannae against Hannibal with a disastrous outcome: 45,000 Romans, including the consul Paullus and ninety senators and thirty former consuls, praetors, and aediles were killed in the battle. Afterwards, when out of despair young nobles were planning to abandon Italy, Publius Cornelius Scipio, the military tribune who was subsequently called Africanus, with his sword drawn and over their heads as they deliberated, swore that he would consider a public enemy anyone who did not repeat his oath after him, and he brought it about that all of them were bound by oath that they would not leave Italy.
Because of the insufficiency of troops, 8,000 slaves were armed. Although there was an opportunity to ransom the prisoners of war, they were not ransomed.
The book contains also the trepidation in the city and the mourning and the campaigning in Spain, which had a more favourable outcome. Opimia and Florentia, Vestals, were convicted of sexual impurity. Varro was met along his way, and thanks were given because he had not despaired of the Republic.
The Campanians defected to Hannibal. Mago, the messenger sent to Carthage about the victory at Cannae, spread out in the entry hall of their curia the golden rings stripped from the bodies of the dead; it is said that together the rings exceeded a quarter of a bushel. After this messenger, Hanno, a man from the Punic nobility, urged the senate of the Carthaginians to seek peace with the Roman people, but as the Barca faction put up vigorous resistance, he did not prevail.
The praetor Claudius Marcellus fought successfully at Nola, in a sally made against Hannibal from the town. Casilinum was besieged by the Carthaginians, and was so worn down by hunger that those inside ate leather straps and animal skins torn from shields, and mice. The people survived on nuts floated down the Volturnus river by the Romans.
The Senate was brought up to full size with 197 men from the equestrian order. The praetor Lucius Postumius was killed, together with his army, by the Gauls. In Spain, Gnaeus and Publius Scipio overcame Hasdrubal and took control of Spain. The remnants of the army from Cannae were banished to Sicily, which they were not to leave until the war ended. The consul Sempronius Gracchus defeated the Campanians. Claudius Marcellus the praetor put to flight and overcame Hannibal’s army in a battle at Nola, and he was the first to give the Romans, who were worn out by so many calamitous defeats, greater hope for the war.
An alliance was formed between Philip, king of Macedonia, and Hannibal. The book contains in addition the successful campaigning in Spain by Publius and <…> Titus Manlius the praetor against the Carthaginians. The general Hasdrubal and Mago and Hanno were taken prisoner by them. Hannibal’s army so indulged itself in its winter quarters that it weakened its physical and mental strength.
Hieronymus, king of Syracuse, whose father Hiero had been a friend of the Roman people, defected to the Carthaginians, and because of his savagery and arrogance he was killed by his own people. The proconsul Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus fought successfully against the Carthaginians and their general Hanno at Beneventum, especially through the effort of the slaves, whom he directed to be freed. In Sicily, almost all of which had defected to the Carthaginians, the consul Claudius Marcellus besieged Syracuse. War was declared on Philip, king of the Macedonians, who was overwhelmed at Apollonia in a night-time attack and was frightened off and fled to Macedonia with his army almost weaponless. Marcus Valerius the praetor was dispatched to conduct this war.
The book contains also the campaigns in Spain by Publius and Gnaeus Scipio against the Carthaginians. Syphax, king of Numidia, was drawn into friendship with the Scipios. He was defeated by Masinissa, the king of the Massylians, who was fighting for the Carthaginians, and Syphax crossed over to Scipio in Spain with a large troop opposite Gades, where Africa and Spain are separated by a narrow strait. The Celtiberi too were taken into friendship. With the acquisition of these auxiliaries, then for the first time the Roman army had mercenaries as soldiers.
Publius Cornelius Scipio, subsequently Africanus, became aedile before the requisite age. Through the help of Tarentine youths who pretended that they were going hunting at night, Hannibal seized Tarentum, except for the citadel, where the Roman garrison had fled. In accordance with the Marcian verses,* in which the defeat at Cannae had been predicted, the Apollinine Games were instituted. The consuls Quintus Fulvius and Appius Claudius fought successfully against Hanno, the general of the Carthaginians. The proconsul Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was led by his Lucanian guest-friend into an ambush and killed by Mago. Centenius Paenula, who had served as a centurion, had asked the Senate that an army be given to him, and he promised to defeat Hannibal if he were given one; once given 8,000 troops and put in charge of them, he engaged Hannibal in battle and was slaughtered together with the army.
Capua was besieged by the consuls Quintus Fulvius and Appius Claudius. Gnaeus Fulvius the praetor suffered a reverse against Hannibal. In this battle 20,000 men were killed; Fulvius himself fled with 200 cavalry. Claudius Marcellus captured Syracuse in the third year and acted the part of a great man. In the confusion of the conquered city, Archimedes,* who was intent on the diagrams that he had scratched in the dirt, was killed.
In Spain, Publius and Gnaeus Scipio met a sad end to their numerous successes; they were killed together with practically their entire armies in the eighth year after they had entered Spain. Control of this province would have been lost had not Lucius Marcius, a Roman of equestrian rank, gathered up the remnants of the armies with courage and determination, and had not two enemy camps been captured because of an exhortation by this same man. Around 27,000 were killed, 1,800 <…>, and enormous booty was seized. Marcius was given the title of general.
Hannibal pitched camp at the third milestone from Rome overlooking the Anio. He personally, along with 2,000 cavalry, rode right up to the Capena Gate itself so that he could investigate the layout of the city. And although for three days in a row the entire army on both sides descended in battle order, bad weather postponed combat; for once Hannibal had returned to camp, the weather instantly turned fair.
Capua was taken by the consuls Quintus Fulvius and Appius Claudius. The leading citizens of Campania committed suicide by taking poison. When the members of the Campania senate were bound at the stake to be beheaded, the consul Quintus Fulvius placed in the fold of his toga a letter sent by the Senate, in which he was directed to exercise mercy, and ordered the law to be carried out, and he exacted the punishment before he read the letter.
When at the elections there was a question before the people over whom to entrust the command in Spain to, as no one was willing to undertake it, Publius Scipio, son of the Publius who had fallen in Spain, said that he would go, and he was sent by the vote of the people and with universal agreement. He captured New Carthage when he was twenty-four years old and seemed of divine origin, both because every day since he had donned the toga he was in the Capitoline temple and because a snake was frequently seen in his mother’s bedroom.
The book contains also campaigning in Sicily and the treaty formed with the Aetolians and the war conducted against the Acarnanians and Philip, king of Macedonia.
Gnaeus Fulvius the proconsul, together with his army, was slaughtered by Hannibal at Herdonea. The consul Claudius Marcellus fought against Hannibal with greater success at Numistro. Hannibal retreated from there by night. Marcellus pursued him and constantly harassed Hannibal as he was retreating, until he joined battle. In the first battle Hannibal was victorious, but in the second Marcellus was. Fabius Maximus the father as consul recovered Tarentum through betrayal.
The consuls Claudius Marcellus and Titus Quinctius Crispinus left their camp to reconnoitre and were encircled in an ambush by Hannibal. Marcellus was killed; Crispinus escaped. The lustrum was ritually closed by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 137,108; from this figure it was apparent how many men the Roman people had lost through adverse fortune in so many battles.
In Spain, Scipio fought with Hasdrubal and Hamilcar at Baecula and defeated them. Amidst the rest of the booty was captured a royal youth of great beauty whom Scipio sent back to Masinissa, his uncle, along with gifts. When Hasdrubal had crossed the Alps with a new army in order to join up with Hannibal, he was slaughtered, along with 56,000 men, and 5,400 men were captured. The consul Marcus Livius was in charge, but the contribution of the consul Claudius Nero was no smaller since he, when he was arrayed against Hannibal, had left his camp in such a way as to deceive his enemy, set out with a handpicked group, and had surrounded Hasdrubal.
The book contains also the successful deeds of Publius Scipio in Spain and of Publius Sulpicius the praetor against Philip and the Achaeans.
Recorded here are the successful actions in Spain of Silanus, Scipio’s lieutenant, and Lucius Scipio, his brother, against the Carthaginians, and of Publius Sulpicius the proconsul, together with an ally, Attalus, king of Asia, against Philip, king of Macedonia, on behalf of the Aetolians.
When a triumph was voted to the consuls Marcus Livius and Claudius Nero, Livius, who had been campaigning in his own area of command, rode in a chariot while Nero, who had come to his colleague’s area of command to aid his victory, followed on horseback, and in this style he had all the more glory and respect; for he had also done more than his colleague in the war.
Through the carelessness of a Vestal, the flame in the temple of Vesta, which she had not protected, was extinguished; she was flogged.
In Spain, Publius Scipio and the Carthaginians fought to the finish in the fourteenth year of the war—the fifth since he had gone there—and, once the enemy had been completely driven from possession of the province, Scipio recovered the Spanish territories. And, having crossed from Tarraco to Africa, to Syphax, king of the Massylians, he made a treaty with him. Hasdrubal son of Gisgo dined there with Scipio on the very same couch. Scipio put on a gladiatorial show in honour of his father and his uncle at New Carthage, using not gladiators but those who entered the competition in honour of the general or because of a challenge. In the show, brother princes fought with swords for their kingdom. When the city of Gisia was besieged, the inhabitants built up a funeral pyre, killed their children and wives over it, and hurled themselves on it. While Scipio himself was suffering from a grave illness, mutiny arose in part of the army; when he had regained his strength, he broke up the mutiny, and he forced the Spanish peoples who were rebelling to surrender. Also a friendship was formed with Masinissa, the king of the Numidians, who promised Scipio assistance if he were to cross to Africa; a friendship was formed with the people of Gades also after Mago’s departure from there. (He had orders from Carthage to cross to Italy.) Scipio returned to Rome and was made consul. When he sought Africa as his area of command and Quintus Fabius Maximus spoke against him, he was given Sicily, with permission to cross to Africa if he judged this to be in the best interests of the Republic. Mago, Hamilcar’s son, crossed to Italy from the smaller of the Balearic Islands, where he had spent the winter.
Gaius Laelius was dispatched from Sicily to Africa by Scipio. He brought back vast plunder and reported to Scipio on Masinissa’s instructions that the king was complaining because Scipio had not yet brought his army across to Africa. The war in Spain that Indibilis had provoked had ended with the Roman victorious; Indibilis himself was slain in battle; Mandonius was handed over by his own men when the Romans demanded it. To Mago, who was at Albingaunum in Liguria, a sizeable band of troops was sent from Africa, as well as cash, with which he was to hire auxiliaries, and he was instructed to join forces with Hannibal. Scipio crossed from Syracuse to Bruttium and took control of Locri after the Carthaginian garrison had been driven out and Hannibal had been put to flight. Peace was made with Philip.
The Idaean Mother was transported to Rome from Pessinus, a town in Phrygia, in accordance with a verse discovered in the Sibylline oracles that a foreign enemy could be driven from Italy if the Idaean Mother were transported to Rome. And indeed she was handed over to the Romans through the agency of Attalus, king of Asia. The Idaean Mother was a black stone that the locals called the mother of the gods. Publius Scipio Nasica, son of the Gnaeus who had died in Spain, received the stone; he was the man judged the best by the Senate, although he was a youth who had not yet held the quaestorship; this satisfied the response that the divinity should be received and dedicated by the best man.
The Locri sent representatives to Rome to protest the lawless behaviour of the lieutenant Pleminius, who had stolen the treasury of Proserpina and had raped their children and wives. He was brought to Rome in chains and died in prison. When a false story about the proconsul Publius Scipio, who was in Sicily, was spread in Rome, specifically that he was living a life of luxury, representatives in this matter were sent by the Senate to find out whether or not these things were true. Scipio was cleared of the disgrace and crossed to Africa with the permission of the Senate.
Syphax had married the daughter of Hasdrubal son of Gisgo and renounced the friendship that he had made with Scipio. While Masinissa, the king of the Massylians, was fighting for the Carthaginians in Spain, his father Gala had died, and Masinissa had lost the kingdom. He had often tried to take it back by war from Syphax, the king of the Numidians; he was defeated and deprived of the kingdom altogether. As an exile he joined Scipio with 200 cavalry and straight off, in the first battle with him, he killed Hanno, the son of Hamilcar, together with a sizeable band. At the approach of Hasdrubal and Syphax, who had come with nearly 100,000 armed men, Scipio was driven back from the siege of Utica and fortified a winter encampment.
The consul Sempronius fought successfully against Hannibal in the territory of Croton. There was a notorious quarrel between the censors Marcus Livius and Claudius Nero. On the one hand, Claudius stripped his colleague of his horse because Livius had been convicted by the people and driven into exile; on the other hand, Livius stripped Claudius of his horse, because he had borne false witness against Livius and because he had not reconciled with Livius in good faith. Further, Livius made all the tribes save one into aerarii, because they had convicted him when he was innocent and then subsequently made him consul and censor. The lustrum was ritually closed by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 214,000.
In Africa, Scipio defeated the Carthaginians and this same Syphax, king of Numidia, and Hasdrubal in several battles, with the assistance of Masinissa; he captured two enemy camps, in which 40,000 men were killed by sword and fire. He took Syphax prisoner through the agency of Gaius Laelius and Masinissa. Masinissa instantly fell in love with the captive Sophonisba, the wife of Syphax and the daughter of Hasdrubal, and he held a wedding and made her his wife; taken to task by Scipio, he sent her poison. She drank it and died. By Scipio’s many victories it came about that the Carthaginians were driven to despair and summoned Hannibal to come to the aid of the public safety. So he, leaving Italy in the sixteenth year, crossed to Africa, and attempted through peace negotiations to come to terms with Scipio, and when there was no agreement about the terms of the peace, Hannibal was defeated in battle. Peace was granted to the Carthaginians when they sought it. Hannibal dragged Gisgo away with his own hands when the latter argued against peace; then, once he had apologized for his rashness, Hannibal himself spoke in favour of peace. Masinissa’s kingdom was restored to him. Scipio returned to Rome and celebrated the most elaborate and glorious triumph, in which the senator Quintus Terentius Culleo followed him wearing the cap of freedom. It is uncertain whether Scipio Africanus was so named first through the army’s goodwill or through popular favour. Certainly this general was the first to be made famous by the name of the people he had defeated. Mago was wounded in a conflict which he fought with the Romans in the territory of the Insubres; after envoys were sent to recall him, as he was returning to Africa, he died from the wound.
The following reasons are reported for renewing the war against Philip, king of Macedonia, which had been broken off. At the time of the initiation rites,* two Acarnanian youths, who had not been initiated, came to Athens and entered the sanctuary of Ceres with others of their people. For this reason, on the grounds that they had committed a sin of the gravest sort, they were put to death by the Athenians. The Acarnanians were roused by the deaths of their fellow citizens and sought reinforcements from Philip to avenge them, and they attacked Athens. The Athenians sought help from the Romans a few months after peace had been conferred on the Carthaginians. Representatives from the Athenians, who were being besieged by Philip, sought help from the Senate, and the Senate voted that it should be given, but the people disagreed because the unremitting hardship of so many wars weighed heavily; but the moral authority of the fathers prevailed, and the people, too, ordered help to be brought to the allied city. This war was entrusted to the consul Publius Sulpicius, who led his army into Macedonia and fought successfully against Philip in cavalry battles. When the people of Abydus were besieged by Philip, they killed their families and themselves after the example of the Saguntines.
The praetor Lucius Furius defeated in battle the Gallic Insubres, who were rebelling, and the Carthaginian Hamilcar, who was fomenting war in that part of Italy. Hamilcar was killed in the war along with 35,000 men.
The book contains also the military operations of King Philip and the consul Sulpicius, and accounts of how both of them took cities by storm. The consul Sulpicius campaigned with the help of King Attalus and the Rhodians. Lucius Furius celebrated a triumph over the Gauls.
Several prodigies announced from different areas are reported, including the sprouting of a laurel tree on the deck of a warship. Titus Quinctius Flamininus fought successfully against Philip in the passes of Epirus, and when Philip had been put to flight, Flamininus forced him to retreat into his own kingdom. Flamininus himself harried Thessaly, which borders Macedonia, with the Aetolians and the Athamanes as allies. In naval action, the consul’s brother Lucius Quinctius Flamininus harried Euboea and the seacoast with the assistance of King Attalus and the Rhodians. A friendship was undertaken with the Achaeans. The number of praetors to be elected was increased to six. A conspiracy formed by slaves to release the Carthaginian hostages was suppressed; 2,500 men were killed. The consul Cornelius Cethegus routed the Gallic Insubres in a battle. A friendship was formed with the Lacedaemonians and their tyrant Nabis. Assaults on cities in Macedonia are also reported.
Titus Quinctius Flamininus as proconsul conquered and defeated Philip in a decisive battle at Cynoscephalae in Thessaly. Lucius Quinctius Flamininus, the brother of the proconsul, captured the city of Leucas, which is the capital of Acarnania, and accepted the surrender of the Acarnanians. Once Greece had been liberated, peace was granted to Philip when he sought it. Because of a sudden illness, Attalus was transferred from Thebes to Pergamum; he died. The praetor Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus along with his army was slaughtered by the Celtiberi. The consuls Lucius Furius Purpurio and Claudius Marcellus subdued the Boii and the Gallic Insubres. Marcellus held a triumph. In Africa, Hannibal made a vain attempt to foment war, and for this reason he was betrayed to the Romans in a letter from the leaders of the opposing faction. The reason was fear of the Romans, who had sent envoys to the Carthaginian Senate about Hannibal. He fled to Antiochus, king of Syria, who was preparing war against the Romans.
The lex Oppia, which Gaius Oppius, a tribune of the plebs, had proposed during the Punic war to curb the expenditures of married women, was repealed after fierce argument, since Porcius Cato had argued that the law should not be abolished. He set out for the war in Spain, which he began at Emporiae, and he established peace in Nearer Spain. Titus Quinctius Flamininus successfully conducted and finished off the war against the Lacedaemonians and their tyrant, Nabis; and having imposed on them a peace of his own design, he liberated Argos, which had been under the dominion of the tyrant. Successful campaigning in Spain and against the Boii and the Gallic Insubres is reported also.
Then for the first time the Senate watched theatrical shows in a section separated from the people. The censors Sextus Aelius Paetus and Gaius Cornelius Cethegus intervened, to the indignation of the people, to make this possible. Several colonies were founded. Marcus Porcius Cato celebrated a triumph for Spain. Titus Quinctius Flamininus, who had defeated Philip, king of the Macedonians, and Nabis, tyrant of the Lacedaemonians, and had liberated all of Greece, as a consequence celebrated a triumph lasting three days. Representatives of the Carthaginians announced that Hannibal, who had fled to Antiochus, was preparing with him to wage war. Hannibal, moreover, had sent Aristo of Tyre (with nothing in writing) to Carthage to stir up the Carthaginians to fight.
Publius Scipio Africanus was sent as an ambassador to Antiochus at Ephesus and talked with Hannibal, who had joined Antiochus, to lay to rest, if it were possible, the fear that Hannibal had conceived of the Roman people. Among other matters, when Scipio asked which general Hannibal considered to have been the greatest, Hannibal answered Alexander, king of the Macedonians, because he had routed numberless armies with a small band and because he had traversed the farthest shores, which it was beyond human expectation to see. When Scipio then asked whom Hannibal would rank second, Hannibal said that Pyrrhus had first shown how a camp should be laid out, and further that no one had taken up positions or stationed garrisons more skilfully. When Scipio pursued the matter, asking who was third, Hannibal named himself. Scipio laughed and said, ‘What, pray tell, would you say if you had defeated me?’ Hannibal replied, ‘In that case I then would have put myself before Alexander and before Pyrrhus and before all the rest.’*
Among other prodigies, of which there are reported to have been very many, a cow of the consul Gnaeus Domitius is reported to have said: ‘Rome, take care for yourself.’ Nabis, the tyrant of the Lacedaemonians, was roused to action by the Aetolians, who were inciting both Philip and Antiochus to make war on the Roman people, and he defected from the Roman people, but in the conflict waged against Philopoemen, the praetor of the Achaeans,* he was killed by the Aetolians. The Aetolians also defected from their friendship with the Roman people. When the Aetolians formed an alliance with King Antiochus of Syria, he invaded Greece and occupied many cities, including Chalcis and all of Euboea. The book contains also campaigning against the Ligures and Antiochus’ preparation for war.
With the assistance of King Philip, the consul Acilius Glabrio defeated Antiochus at Thermopylae and drove him out of Greece, and he also subdued the Aetolians. The consul Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica dedicated the temple for the Mother of the Gods,* whom he had brought to the Palatine when he had been adjudged by the Senate to be the best man. The same man defeated the Gallic Boii, accepted their surrender, and celebrated a triumph over them. Also reported are successful naval battles against King Antiochus’ commanders.
The consul Lucius Cornelius Scipio, with his brother Scipio Africanus as his lieutenant (who had said that he would be his brother’s lieutenant if Greece were designated Lucius’ area of responsibility, when it seemed that this province was being given to Gaius Laelius, who had much influence in the Senate), set out to conduct the war against King Antiochus; he was the first of all Roman generals to cross into Asia. At Myonnesus, with the assistance of the Rhodians, Regillus fought successfully against the royal fleet of Antiochus. Africanus’ son was captured by King Antiochus and sent back to his father. Then Antiochus was defeated by Lucius Cornelius Scipio, with the assistance of Eumenes, king of Pergamum and son of Attalus. The peace was granted on the condition that Antiochus cede all the territories on the near side of the Taurus Mountains. Since he had ended the war against Antiochus, Lucius Cornelius Scipio matched his brother in his own cognomen and was called Asiaticus.
The colony of Bononia was founded. The kingdom of Eumenes, with whose assistance Antiochus had been defeated, was expanded. Certain cities were handed over to the Rhodians, too, since they also had helped. Aemilius Regillus, who had trounced Antiochus’ generals in a naval battle, conducted a naval triumph. Manius Acilius Glabrio triumphed over Antiochus, whom he had driven out of Greece, and over the Aetolians.
The consul Marcus Fulvius besieged the Ambracians in Epirus and accepted their surrender; he subdued Cephallania; he subdued the Aetolians and granted them peace. His colleague, the consul Gnaeus Manlius, conquered the Galatians (the Tolostobogii and the Tectosagi and the Trocmi), who had crossed into Asia with their leader Brennus, as they were the only ones within the Taurus Mountains not to be submissive. The origin of these people is also included, along with the way that they came to occupy those lands which they hold. An example of courage and sense of shame in a woman is reported also. When this woman, who had been the wife of the king of the Galatians, was captured, she killed the centurion who forced himself on her.
The lustrum was ritually closed by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 258,310. A friendship was formed with Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia. Although the ten commissioners in accordance with whose advice Gnaeus Manlius had drawn up the treaty with Antiochus spoke against him, Manlius argued his own case in the Senate, and he celebrated a triumph over the Galatians.
A trial date was set for Scipio Africanus, by the tribune of the plebs Quintus Petillius according to some, and by Naevius according to others, on the charge of having defrauded the public treasury of the booty taken from Antiochus. Once the day arrived, he was summoned to the Rostra; he said, ‘Roman citizens, it was on this day that I defeated the Carthaginians,’ and he ascended the Capitol with the people escorting him. Thereupon, to avoid further harassment from the injustices of tribunes, he went into voluntary exile at Liternum. It is uncertain whether he died there or at Rome, for there was a monument to him in both places. Lucius Scipio Asiaticus, the brother of Africanus, was accused and convicted on the same charge of embezzlement. As he was being led in chains to jail, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, tribune of the plebs, who had previously been an enemy of the Scipios, intervened; and because of this act of goodness, he married Africanus’ daughter. When the quaestors were sent to take official possession of Asiaticus’ property, not only did not a single trace of the king’s wealth turn up, but not even so much as the amount that he had been fined was realized. He refused to accept the countless funds collected by his relatives and friends; the items that were necessary for his survival were bought back.
The consul Marcus Aemilius subdued the Ligures and built a road from Placentia to Ariminum and linked it to the Flaminian Way. The beginnings of luxurious living, imported to Rome by the army from Asia, are recorded. Those of the Ligures who lived within the Apennines were subdued. When the Bacchanalia, nocturnal Greek rites, the breeding-ground of all forms of wickedness, had reached the point of a conspiracy involving a huge mass of people, there was an investigation, and the rites were eradicated by the punishing of many people.
The censors Lucius Valerius Flaccus and Marcus Porcius Cato (a man who excelled in the arts of both peace and war) removed from the Senate Lucius Quinctius Flamininus, the brother of Titus. The reason was that when Lucius was consul and was holding Gaul as his area of command, at a dinner party, upon a request from the notorious Carthaginian gigolo Philip whom Lucius was in love with, he killed a Gaul with his own hand; alternatively, as some have passed down the story, when asked by a prostitute from Placentia, for whom he was dying of love, he had a condemned man beheaded. The speech of Marcus Cato against him survives.
Scipio died at Liternum and, just as if fortune were linking two funerals of great men to the same time, Hannibal committed suicide by taking poison when he was about to be handed over to the Romans. They had sent Titus Quinctius Flamininus to demand Hannibal from Prusias, king of Bithynia, with whom Hannibal had taken refuge when Antiochus was defeated. Philopoemen too, the leader of the Achaeans, a great man, was poisoned by the Messenians when he was captured by them in war.
The colonies of Potentia and Pisaurum and Mutina and Parma were founded. The book contains also successful campaigns against the Celtiberi and the beginnings and causes of the Macedonian war. Its origin stemmed from the fact that Philip resented the diminution of his kingdom by the Romans and the fact that he was forced to remove his garrisons from Thrace and other places.
When Philip had commanded the sons of those upper-class men whom he had in custody to be hunted down for slaughter, Theoxena feared the king’s lust on behalf of her own children, who were still boys. Holding before them swords and a cup in which there was poison, she persuaded them that they should escape imminent degradation by death, and when she had so persuaded them she committed suicide herself.
The quarrels between Perseus and Demetrius, the sons of Philip, king of Macedonia, are recorded; and how, through the deceit of his brother, Demetrius was first indicted on trumped-up charges, including an accusation of parricide and of seeking the monarchy, and finally, since he was a friend of the Roman people, he was poisoned and, upon the death of Philip, the kingdom of Macedonia passed to Perseus.
In addition, the book contains campaigns conducted with good fortune against the Ligures and in Spain against the Celtiberi by several leaders. The colony of Aquileia was founded. The books of Numa Pompilius* were discovered by farmers on the property of Lucius Petillius, a clerk, beneath the Janiculum; these books, both Greek and Latin, were enclosed in a stone coffer. When the praetor, to whom they had been handed over, had read in them many things that subverted religion, he swore to the Senate that it was against the interests of the Republic for them to be read and preserved. By a decree of the Senate they were burned in the Comitium.
Mental anguish consumed Philip because he had been driven by false denunciations of his son Demetrius by Perseus, his other son, and he had permitted Demetrius to be poisoned, and he deliberated about punishment for Perseus and desired to leave his friend Antigonus as successor to the kingdom instead, but he died while thus deliberating. Perseus inherited the kingdom.
The fire in the temple of Vesta went out. The proconsul Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus defeated the Celtiberi and accepted their surrender, and he established Gracchuris, a town in Spain, as a monument to his accomplishments. And the Vaccaei and the Lusitani were subdued by the proconsul Postumius Albinus. Both men held triumphs. Antiochus, son of Antiochus, given as a hostage to the Romans by his father, was sent from Rome back to the kingdom of Syria upon the death of his brother Seleucus, who had succeeded their deceased father. Apart from his religion, as a result of which Antiochus built many magnificent temples for many allies—the temple of Olympian Jupiter at Athens and of Capitoline Jupiter at Antioch—Antiochus conducted himself as the most ignoble of kings.
The lustrum was ritually closed by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 258,294. The tribune of the plebs Quintus Voconius Saxa proposed a law preventing anyone from instituting a woman as an heir. Marcus Cato spoke in favour of the law. His speech survives. The book contains also campaigns successfully conducted by several generals against the Ligures and the Istrians and the Sardinians and the Celtiberi as well as the beginnings of the Macedonian war that Perseus, son of Philip, was preparing. He had sent a delegation to the Carthaginians, and they received it at night. But he also solicited other Greek cities.
The censor Quintus Fulvius Flaccus stripped the temple of Juno Lacinia of its marble roof-tiles in order to cover the temple that he was dedicating. By order of the Senate, the roof-tiles were returned. Eumenes, king of Asia, lodged a complaint in the Senate against Perseus, king of Macedonia, whose injustices against the Roman people are recorded. Because of these, war was declared on him. The consul Publius Licinius Crassus, to whom it had been entrusted, crossed into Macedonia and fought Perseus in lightarmed operations and cavalry battles in Thessaly, with <…> result. There was a dispute between Masinissa and the Carthaginians over territory. The Senate set a date for them for arbitration. Envoys were sent to allied cities and kings to ask them to remain loyal, but the Rhodians were wavering.
The lustrum was ritually closed by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 267,231. The book contains also successful campaigning against the Corsicans and the Ligures.
Some praetors were condemned because they had administered their areas of responsibility avariciously and savagely. The proconsul Publius Licinius Crassus sacked many cities in Greece and pillaged them savagely. For this reason the prisoners who had been sold into slavery by him were restored to freedom by a decree of the Senate. Similarly, many misdeeds were lawlessly committed against allies by commanders of Roman fleets. The book contains also Perseus’ successful campaigns in Thrace and his defeat of the Dardani and of Illyricum, of which Gentius was the king. The uprising that had been started by Olonicus in Spain subsided when he was killed. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was chosen as leader of the Senate by the censors.
Quintus Marcius Philippus entered Macedonia through pathless mountainous terrain and occupied several cities. The Rhodians sent envoys to Rome threatening to help Perseus unless the Romans joined with him in a peace treaty and friendship. This was received with indignation. When the war was entrusted to Lucius Aemilius Paullus, consul (for the second time) the following year, in a public meeting Paullus prayed that any horror looming over the Roman people be directed against his household instead,* and he went to Macedonia and defeated Perseus and brought all of Macedonia back under control. Before he fought, Paullus announced to the army not to marvel when the moon was eclipsed on the following night. When Gentius too, king of Illyricum, had rebelled, he was defeated by the praetor Lucius Anicius and surrendered, and he was sent to Rome with his wife and children and relatives.
Alexandrian envoys from Queen Cleopatra and King Ptolemy came to lodge a protest against Antiochus, king of Syria, because he was waging war on them. Although Perseus had solicited help from Eumenes, king of Pergamum, and Gentius, king of Illyricum, because he did not deliver the money that he had promised, he was deserted by them.
Perseus was taken captive by Aemilius Paullus on Samothrace. When Antiochus, king of Syria, was besieging Ptolemy and Cleopatra, the rulers of Egypt, and ambassadors were sent to him by the Senate to order him to withdraw from the territory of the king, the orders were delivered, and Antiochus said that he would consider what he should do. One of the ambassadors, Popillius, drew a circle around the king with a staff and ordered him to give an answer before he stepped out of the circle. With this harshness Popillius brought it about that Antiochus abandoned the war.
Delegations from peoples and kings offering congratulations were admitted to the Senate; the delegation of the Rhodians, who had sided against the Romans in the war, was excluded. On the following day, when the question was raised whether war should be declared on the Rhodians, their representatives urged the case of their fatherland in the Senate; they were sent away neither as allies nor as enemies. Once Macedonia had been reorganized into a province, Aemilius Paullus, though obstructed by his own soldiers because of insufficient booty, and opposed by Servius Sulpicius Galba, held a triumph and led Perseus with his three children before the chariot. It was not his lot to have a triumph of complete joy as it was marked by the funerals of his two sons: the death of one of them preceded the father’s triumph; that of the second followed it.
The lustrum was ritually closed by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 312,805. Prusias, king of Bithynia, came to Rome to offer thanks to the Senate for the victory acquired in Macedonia, and he entrusted his son Nicomedes to the Senate. The king, bursting with flattery, called himself the freedman of the Roman people.
King Eumenes came to Rome; he had been neutral in the Macedonian war. In order to prevent his appearing to have been adjudged an enemy, if he were barred from the city, or excused of wrongdoing, if he were allowed in, a general law was passed excluding any king from entering Rome. The consul Claudius Marcellus subdued the Alpine Gauls while the consul Gaius Sulpicius Galus subdued the Ligures.
Envoys from King Prusias lodged a protest against Eumenes because he was plundering their territory, and they said that he had conspired with Antiochus against the Roman people. The Rhodians begged for an alliance, and it was formed.
The lustrum was ritually closed by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 337,022. The leader of the Senate was Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Ptolemy, king of Egypt, was driven out of his kingdom by his younger brother; he was reinstated by Roman envoys dispatched to the brother.
Upon the death of Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, his son Ariarathes inherited the throne and renewed the friendship with the Roman people through ambassadors. The book contains also campaigns with various results against the Ligures and the Corsicans and the Lusitani, as well as the unrest in Syria when Antiochus died, leaving behind his son Antiochus, who was just a boy. This boy Antiochus and his guardian Lysias were killed by Demetrius, the son of Seleucus, who <escaped> secretly from Rome because he was not set free, and Demetrius himself was installed in the monarchy.
Lucius Aemilius Paullus, who had conquered Perseus, died. His self-restraint was such that although he had transported immense wealth back from Spain and from Macedonia, scarcely enough was realized from the auction of his estate to repay the dowry of his wife. The Pomptine marshes were drained by the consul Cornelius Cethegus, to whom this area of responsibility had been assigned, and they were transformed into farmland.
The praetor Gnaeus Tremellius was fined because he had wrongfully argued with the pontifex maximus, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and because the rights of religion were more powerful than those of magistrates. A law about bribery was passed. The lustrum was ritually closed by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 328,316. Aemilius Lepidus was selected as leader of the Senate. A treaty was struck between the brothers Ptolemy, who were at odds, providing that one would rule Egypt, and the other Cyrene. Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, was driven from his kingdom through the plan and resources of Demetrius, king of Syria, but he was reinstated by the Senate. Men were sent by the Senate to adjudicate between Masinissa and the Carthaginians over land. The consul Gaius Marcius fought against the Dalmatae, first with little success, and then with good fortune. The reason for engaging in war with them was that they had plundered the Illyrians, who were allies of the Roman people. And the consul Cornelius Nasica subdued the Dalmatae. The consul Quintus Opimius subdued the Transalpine Ligures, who were plundering Antipolis and Nicaea, towns of the Massilians. The book contains also campaigns conducted in Spain by several generals with little success. In the five hundred and ninety-eighth year from the founding of the city* the consuls began entering their magistracy on the first of January. The reason for moving the elections was that the Spanish were rebelling. The commissioners sent to judge between the Carthaginians and Masinissa announced that they had discovered in Carthage a large supply of wood for building ships. Some praetors were accused by provinces on the charge of rapacity and were convicted.
The lustrum was ritually closed by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 324,000. The seeds of the Third Punic War are recorded. When a vast army of Numidians under the leadership of Arcobarzanes, the grandson of Syphax, was said to be within Carthaginian borders, Marcus Porcius Cato urged that war be declared on the Carthaginians, who had summoned an army and were keeping it within their borders, allegedly for use against Masinissa, in reality for use against the Romans. Publius Cornelius Nasica spoke on the other side, and it was agreed that representatives should be sent to Carthage to observe what was going on. When the Carthaginian senate had been censured, since in contravention of the treaty it had both an army and wood for building ships, the representatives wished to make peace between the Carthaginians and Masinissa, since Masinissa was ceding the land over which the dispute arose. But Gisgo, Hamilcar’s son and a rabble-rouser, who was in the magistracy at the time when the senate had said to the Roman representatives that it would submit itself to their judgement, so stirred up the people by urging war against the Romans that the representatives took flight to escape being attacked. When they announced this, they made the Senate, already hostile to the Carthaginians, even more so.
Marcus Porcius Cato spent as little money as possible (for he was very poor) on the funeral for his son who died during his praetorship. Andriscus, who asserted falsely with enormous insistence that he was the son of Perseus, the former king of Macedonia, was sent to Rome. Before Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who at the time had been selected leader of the Senate by six pairs of censors, died, he instructed his sons from his deathbed that they should have him carried out on a bier spread with plain linens without purple, and that they should not spend more than one million asses on the rest of his funeral: that the funerals of great men were generally ennobled not by lavish cost but by the appearance of the funeral masks.* There was an investigation into poisoning. When Publilia and Licinia, highborn women, were accused of having murdered their husbands, former consuls, and the case was tried, the women gave money as surety to the praetor, and they were put to death by the formal decision of their relatives.
Gulussa, Masinissa’s son, announced that conscription was going on at Carthage, that a fleet was being constructed, and that without doubt war was being prepared. When Cato urged that war be declared, Publius Cornelius Nasica spoke against doing anything rash, and it was agreed to send a commission of ten men to investigate. When the consuls Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Aulus Postumius Albinus conducted the draft strictly and did not excuse anyone out of favouritism, they were thrown in jail by the tribunes of the plebs, who had not been able to obtain an exemption for their friends.
When the Spanish war had proceeded with little success for some time and so confounded the Roman state that men could not be found who would even accept military tribunates or be willing to go as lieutenants, Publius Cornelius Aemilianus stepped forward and said that he would undertake whatever type of military activity he was directed to. By this example he roused everyone with a passion for military service. The consul Lucullus, when his predecessor Claudius Marcellus had apparently pacified all the peoples of Celtiberia, subdued the Vaccaei and the Cantabri and other peoples in Spain not previously known. In that land, Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, son of Lucius Paullus, grandson of Africanus, though by adoption, as a military tribune killed a barbarian challenger; and in the capture of the city of Intercatia he entered into still greater danger. For he was the first to cross the wall. Servius Sulpicius Galba fought unsuccessfully against the Lusitani. When the commissioners had returned from Africa with ambassadors from the Carthaginians and with Gulussa, the son of Masinissa, and said that they had discovered both an army and a fleet at Carthage, it was agreed to ask the senators individually for their opinions. With Cato and other leading senators urging that an army should immediately be transported to Africa, since Cornelius Nasica continued to say that there did not yet seem to him to be just cause for war, it was agreed to hold off from war if the Carthaginians burned their fleet and disbanded their army; otherwise the next consuls would formally open discussion of a war against Carthage.
When the theatre put out to bid by the censors was built, it was destroyed by a decree of the Senate on the proposal of Publius Cornelius Nasica on the grounds that it was useless and harmful to public morals; and for some time the people watched entertainments standing. When the Carthaginians attacked Masinissa in contravention of the treaty, they were defeated by him (he was then ninety-two years old and accustomed to chew and taste bread dry and without flavouring) and they earned in addition war from the Romans. The unrest in Syria and the wars conducted among the kings also are recorded. During this commotion Demetrius, king of Syria, was killed.
The beginning of the Third Punic War, in the six hundred and second year from the founding of the city,* which ended within five years from when it had begun. There was a dispute, with competing opinions from Marcus Porcius Cato and Scipio Nasica, of whom the first was considered the shrewdest man in the city, and the second had actually been judged the best by the Senate;* Cato argued for war and that Carthage be razed and destroyed; Nasica argued against this. It was nevertheless agreed, since the Carthaginians had ships in contravention of the treaty, since they had led their army beyond their borders, since they had taken up arms against Masinissa, ally and friend of the Roman people, and since they had not received in their city his son Gulussa, who was with the Roman representatives, that war should be declared on them.
Before any troops were loaded onto ships, representatives from Utica came to Rome surrendering themselves and all their property. This delegation, like an omen, was pleasing to the fathers, but bitter for the Carthaginians. Following an indication from the books,* games for Father Dis were held at the Tarentum,* which had been performed one hundred years earlier, during the First Punic War, in the five hundred and second year from the founding of the city.* Thirty representatives came to Rome, through whom the Carthaginians surrendered themselves. Cato’s opinion prevailed, to stand by the declaration of war and for the consuls to set off for it as soon as possible.
When they crossed to Africa, they received the 300 hostages they had demanded and whatever weapons and machinery for war happened to be in Carthage. When, on the authority of the fathers, the Romans demanded that the Carthaginians build their city in a different location, at least ten miles from the sea, they forced the Carthaginians, by the sheer indignity of the matter, to go to war. The siege and assault of Carthage were begun by the consuls Lucius Marcius and Manius Manilius. During the assault, when the city walls were left unguarded in one place, two tribunes rashly smashed their way in with their cohorts and were suffering heavy casualties from the townspeople when they were extricated by Scipio. Also through his agency, a Roman fort, which the Carthaginians were in the process of capturing by night, was liberated with the help of a few of the cavalry. Further, the same man bore off particular glory for liberating the Roman camp, when the Carthaginians sallied forth from their city with all their troops in concert and assaulted it. Moreover, when one consul (the other had gone to Rome for the elections) led the army from an ineffectual siege of Carthage against Hasdrubal, who had occupied an unfavourable pass with a sizeable troop, at first Scipio urged the consul not to fight in such an unfavourable location. Then, after Scipio had been defeated by the opinions of many men, who resented both his wisdom and his courage, he too entered the pass. When, as he had predicted, the Roman army was routed and forced to flee and two cohorts were surrounded by the enemy, Scipio returned to the pass with a few squadrons of cavalry and freed the two cohorts and led them back in safety. Even Cato, a man more inclined to use his tongue for vituperation, so lavishly described Scipio’s courage in the Senate that he said that the rest of those fighting in Africa flitted about like ghosts, while Scipio was actually alive; and the Roman people embraced him with such favour that at the elections the majority of tribes chose him for consul even though this was not permissible because of his age.
When the tribune of the plebs Lucius Scribonius had promulgated a motion that the Lusitani, who had entrusted themselves to the good faith of the Roman people but had been sold as slaves in Gaul by Servius Galba, should be freed, Marcus Cato urged this position most vigorously. The speech survives included in his Annales. Quintus Fulvius Nobilior, who had often been attacked by Cato in the Senate, responded to him by supporting Galba: Galba too, when he saw that he was being convicted, put his arms around his two sons, who were wearing the toga praetexta, and the son of Sulpicius Galus, whose guardian he was, and spoke so pitiably on his own behalf that the motion was defeated. Three of Galba’s speeches survive: two delivered against the tribune of the plebs Libo and his motion about the Lusitani; one against Lucius Cornelius Cethegus, in which Galba confesses that the Lusitani encamped near him were killed because he determined that, following their custom, they had sacrificed a man and a horse and under the pretext of peace had intended to attack his own army.
There was a certain Andriscus, a man of the lowest rank, who represented himself as the son of King Perseus, and who, having changed his name, was called Philip. When he had secretly escaped from the city of Rome, where Demetrius, king of Syria, had sent him because of this falsehood, many men flocked to his false story as if it were true, and he gathered an army and occupied all of Macedonia, either through the cooperation of the inhabitants or by force. He had fashioned his story along these lines: born of a concubine and King Perseus, he had been sent to a certain Cretan to be raised, so some seed, as it were, of the royal family would survive the hazards of the war that Perseus was waging against the Romans. Andriscus, so he claimed, had been raised at Hydramitis until his twelfth year, believing his father to be the man by whom he was being raised, and ignorant of his own family. Then that man fell ill, and when he was almost at the end of his life he finally revealed Andriscus’ origin to him and gave his false mother a document sealed with the sign of King Perseus, which she was to give to Andriscus when he reached puberty, and the strongest oaths had been added to keep the matter secret until that time. Upon his reaching adolescence, Andriscus continued, the document was given to him; in it, two hoards of treasure from his father were said to be left to him. Next, when he knew that he had been substituted but was still ignorant of his true ancestry, he said that she had disclosed the identity of Andriscus’ family to him and implored him to leave that area before the matter was leaked to King Eumenes, Perseus’ rival, in order to avoid being murdered. Andriscus said he had been terrified at this, but at the same time expecting some help from Demetrius in Syria he betook himself there, and that was when he had first dared to reveal openly who he was.
When the pseudo-Philip wished to invade and occupy Thessaly, it was defended by Roman lieutenants with Achaean auxiliaries. Prusias, king of Bithynia, and a man with all and the lowest kind of vices, was killed by his son Nicomedes, with the assistance of Attalus, king of Pergamum. Prusias had a second son, who is said to have grown a single continuous piece of bone instead of the upper row of teeth. When three commissioners were sent by the Romans to make peace between Nicomedes and Prusias, since of the three one had a head stitched together with many scars, the second had gout, and the third was considered dimwitted, Marcus Porcius Cato said of this delegation that there was neither a head nor feet nor a brain. At the time Syria had a king equal to the king of the Macedonians in his family line and similar to Prusias in his sloth and sluggishness, and while he lay about in eateries and brothels, Hammonius was ruling there; through his agency all the king’s friends and Queen Laodice and Antigonus, Demetrius’ son, were killed.
Masinissa, king of Numidia, died at more than ninety years of age, a remarkable man. Amongst his other youthful activities that he carried on till the end, he was even of such vigorous virility that he fathered a son after he turned eighty-six. Masinissa had left his kingdom in common to three of his sons (the oldest was Micipsa, then Gulussa, then Mastanabal, who had been educated in Greek literature also) and ordered them to divide it according to the decision of Publius Scipio Aemilianus; so Scipio divided up the parts for governing. He also persuaded Phameas Hamilco, the commander of the Carthaginian cavalry, a brave man, and one whose particular talents the Carthaginians were drawing on, to defect to the Romans with his band of cavalry. Of the three representatives who had been sent to Masinissa, Marcus Claudius Marcellus was drowned at sea when a storm came up. The Carthaginians killed Hasdrubal, Masinissa’s grandson, who was their praetor, and a man suspected of treachery, in their curia; this suspicion began to spread because he was a relative of Gulussa who was helping the Roman auxiliaries.
When Publius Scipio Aemilianus was a candidate for an aedileship, he was elected consul by the people. Since it was not permitted for him to be consul on account of his age, there was a fierce argument between the plebs voting for him and the fathers rejecting him for some time, until he was made exempt from the laws and created consul.
Manius Manilius encircled some cities around Carthage and took them. The false Philip in Macedonia killed the praetor Publius Juventius along with his army, but he was defeated and captured by Quintus Caecilius, and Macedonia was conquered again.
Carthage, which has a circumference of twenty-three miles, was blockaded with great difficulty and taken in stages, first by the junior officer Mancinus, then by the consul Scipio, who had been given Africa as his province without the lot. The Carthaginians made a new harbour, since the old one had been blockaded by Scipio, and with a large fleet that was secretly assembled on short notice, fought an unsuccessful naval battle. Also, their general Hasdrubal’s camp, which had been set up in a location difficult of access near the town of Nepheris, was destroyed along with its troops by Scipio, who finally captured Carthage in the seven hundredth year after it had been founded. The majority of the spoils were returned to the Sicilians, from whom they had been taken. When in the final destruction of the city Hasdrubal had surrendered himself to Scipio, his wife, who had not succeeded in the previous few days in convincing her husband that they should desert to the victor, hurled herself with her two children from the citadel into the middle of the flames of the burning city. Following the example of his father, Aemilius Paullus, who had conquered Macedonia, Scipio held games and consigned to the beasts deserters and fugitive slaves.
The following causes of the Achaean war are reported: the Roman envoys were maltreated at Corinth by the Achaeans; they had been sent to detach from the Achaean League those cities that had been under Philip’s control.
Quintus Caecilius Metellus engaged the Achaeans in battle at Thermopylae; they had help from the Boeotians and the Chalcidians. After their defeat, the Achaeans’ general, Critolaus, committed suicide by taking poison. Diaeus, the chief instigator of the Achaean uprising, was made general in his place by the Achaeans, and he was defeated at the Isthmus by the consul Lucius Mummius. Once he had accepted the surrender of all of Achaea, Mummius razed Corinth by the decree of the Senate, since the abuse of the Roman envoys had occurred there. Thebes and Chalcis were destroyed too since they had been allies. Lucius Mummius conducted himself with the greatest restraint, nor did anything from the works of art and ornaments that exceptionally wealthy Corinth possessed make its way into his home. Quintus Caecilius Metellus celebrated a triumph over Andriscus, and Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus over Carthage and Hasdrubal.
In Spain, Viriathus, first a shepherd turned hunter, then a hunter turned brigand, soon the general of a proper army too, occupied all of Lusitania, routed the army of the praetor Marcus Vetilius and took him captive, and after him the praetor Gaius Plautius campaigned with no greater success; this particular enemy roused so much fear that it was necessary to pursue him with a consular general and army.
In addition, unrest in Syria and wars conducted amongst the kings are recorded. When King Demetrius was killed, as was said before, Alexander, an obscure man of uncertain family, began ruling in Syria. Demetrius, the son of Demetrius, who had previously been sent to Cnidus by his father because of warfare’s unpredictable fortunes, scorned Alexander’s sluggishness and sloth; with the help of Ptolemy, king of Egypt, whose daughter Cleopatra he had married, Demetrius killed Alexander in combat. Ptolemy suffered a serious head wound, and during his treatment, when the doctors were trying to trepan his skull, he died. His younger brother Ptolemy, who was ruling Cyprus, succeeded to his position. Because of the cruelty and torture to which Demetrius subjected his own people, he was defeated in battle by a certain Diodotus, one of his subjects who was claiming the kingdom for the son of Alexander, who was only two years old. Demetrius fled to Seleucia.
Lucius Mummius celebrated a triumph over the Achaeans; he carried in the triumph bronze and marble statues and paintings.
The consul Appius Claudius conquered the Salassi, an Alpine people. In Macedonia, a second false Philip, as well as his army, were slaughtered by the quaestor Lucius Tremellius. The proconsul Quintus Caecilius Metellus slaughtered the Celtiberi, and after several cities were captured, the majority of Lusitania was recovered by the proconsul Quintus Fabius. The senator Acilius wrote Roman history in Greek.
In Spain, the consul Quintus Pompeius subdued the Termestini. He made a peace treaty with them and with the Numantines that was rejected by the Roman people. The lustrum was ritually closed by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 328,442.
When representatives of the Macedonians had come to lodge a protest about the praetor Decimus Junius Silanus, on the charge that he had taken bribes and pillaged the province, and the Senate wished to hold an inquiry into their complaints, Titus Manlius Torquatus, the father of Silanus, requested and was allowed to have the investigation entrusted to him; and the trial was held at home, and he convicted and disowned his son. And he did not even attend his son’s funeral, when Silanus had committed suicide by hanging himself, but sitting at home Manlius made himself available to those who came for advice, as was his established practice.
In Spain, the proconsul Quintus Fabius ended his successful accomplishments in disgrace when he concluded a peace with Viriathus on equal terms. Through the scheming of Servilius Caepio, Viriathus was killed by traitors; and he was greatly mourned by his own army and buried with dignity, a great man and general, who fought against the Romans for fourteen years, more often than not with success.
When the consuls Publius Cornelius Nasica, to whom the tribune of the plebs Curiatius mockingly affixed the cognomen Serapio,* and Decimus Junius Brutus were conducting the draft, something happened in full sight of the recruits which turned out to be a most beneficial precedent. For Gaius Matienius was charged before the tribunes of the plebs on the grounds that he had deserted from the army in Spain, and he was convicted, placed under a furca,* and flogged for a long time with switches, and he was sold for one sestertius. Since the tribunes of the plebs failed to obtain permission to acquire exemptions for the ten soldiers apiece they each wanted, they ordered the consuls to be thrown into jail.
In Spain the consul Junius Brutus gave lands and a town to those who had fought under Viriathus; it was called Valentia. Marcus Popillius, along with his army, was routed and forced to flee by the Numantines, with whom he had made a treaty that the Senate had decided not to ratify. When the consul Gaius Hostilius Mancinus was sacrificing, the sacred chickens escaped from their coop; then as he was boarding ship in order to go to Spain, a voice said: ‘Mancinus, stop.’ The outcome showed that these omens foretold disaster. For he was defeated by the Numantines and deprived of his camp; since there was no hope of saving his army, he made an ignominious peace agreement with the Numantines, which the Senate refused to ratify. Forty thousand Romans were defeated by 4,000 Numantines.
Decimus Junius subdued Lusitania by capturing cities all the way to the ocean, and when his soldiers refused to cross the Oblivion river, he snatched the standard from the standard-bearer, carried it across himself, and thus persuaded them that they should cross.
The son of Alexander, king of Syria, only ten years old, was killed by his guardian Diodotus, who was known as Tryphon, through a deception—by doctors who had been bribed and who lied to the people that he was succumbing to the pain of a kidney stone; they killed him when they were cutting it out.
In Farther Spain, Decimus Junius Brutus fought successfully against the Gallaeci. The proconsul Marcus Aemilius Lepidus met with a different result campaigning against the Vaccaei and suffered a defeat similar to the Numantine one. Mancinus, in order to extricate the Romans from the religious bond of his treaty with the Numantines, given that he was responsible for the matter, surrendered himself to them; he was rejected. The lustrum was ritually closed by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 317,933. In Illyricum, the consul Fulvius Flaccus subdued the Vardaei. In Thrace, the praetor Marcus Cosconius fought successfully against the Scordisci. When the Numantine war dragged on, through the fault of the generals and to the public discredit, the consulship was spontaneously entrusted to Scipio Africanus by the Senate and Roman people. Although he was not permitted to accept it because of the law that prohibited anyone from being consul for a second time, he was exempted from the law, just as in his previous consulship.
When the rebellion of slaves that arose in Sicily could not be put down by praetors, it was entrusted to the consul Gaius Fulvius. Eunus, a slave and a Syrian in nationality, was the source of this war; he assembled a band of agricultural slaves, released work crews, and reached the complement of a full army. Another slave too, Cleon, assembled about 70,000 slaves, and they joined forces and waged war repeatedly against a Roman army.
Scipio Africanus occupied Numantia and restored the army, corrupted by excessive freedom and luxury, to the strictest military discipline. He pruned all accoutrements of pleasure, he expelled 2,000 prostitutes from the camp, he had the troops at work every day, and he compelled them to tote seven stakes with grain for thirty days. He said to a man proceeding laboriously because of his load: ‘You can stop carrying a fortification once you have learned to fortify yourself with your sword.’ To another who carried his shield with insufficient skill, Scipio said that he was carrying a larger shield than was proper, but that he did not blame him since he used his shield more effectively than his sword. Any soldier Scipio apprehended out of line, he had beaten, with vines if he were a Roman, with switches if he were a foreigner. Scipio sold all the mules so that they would not do the army’s carrying for it. He often fought with success against the enemy’s raids. The Vaccaei were besieged; they butchered their children and wives and killed themselves. Although it was customary among other generals to conceal gifts from kings, Scipio said in front of the tribunal that he would accept the extremely lavish gifts sent to him by Antiochus, king of Syria, and he ordered the quaestor to register all these in the public accounts: Scipio said that he would use them to give rewards to courageous men. Once he had blockaded Numantia with a siege on all sides and he saw that the besieged men were worn down by hunger, he forbade the killing of men who came out to forage since he said that if there were more of them, they would consume what grain they had all the more quickly.
When the tribune of the plebs Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus proposed agrarian legislation against the will of the Senate and the equestrian class - that no one was to have more than 1,000 iugera of public land—he burst into such a rage that, when his colleague Marcus Octavius defended the cause of the opposing party, Tiberius proposed a law and repudiated Octavius’ authority, and he made himself and his brother Gaius Gracchus and his father-in-law Appius Claudius a commission of three to mete out the land. Tiberius promulgated another agrarian law too, to expand the land available to him, so that the same commission of three could judge what was private land and what was public. Then, when there was less land than could be meted out without offending the plebs also (since he had roused in them the desire to hope for an ample amount), Tiberius revealed that he intended to promulgate a law that the money that had belonged to King Attalus be divided among those who ought to receive land under the Sempronian law. (Attalus, king of Pergamum, son of Eumenes, had left the Roman people as his heir.) The Senate was deeply disturbed by so many outrageous acts, and Titus Annius, the former consul, above all. When he had concluded his harangue against Gracchus in the Senate, Annius was dragged out by Gracchus to the people and accused before the plebs, and Annius repeated his speech as a public address against Gracchus from the Rostra. When Gracchus wished to be elected tribune of the plebs for a second time, he was killed by the authority of Publius Cornelius Nasica on the Capitol by the optimates,* after first being beaten with pieces from broken benches and, amongst the others who had been killed in this riot, he was thrown unburied into the river. The book contains in addition campaigning against the slaves in Sicily with varying results.
The Numantines were driven by hunger into butchering themselves, stabbing one another in turn. Scipio Africanus captured the city and razed it, and he celebrated a triumph over it in the fourteenth year after the razing of Carthage.
In Sicily, the consul Publius Rupilius ended the war against the slaves. Aristonicus, the son of King Eumenes, took over Asia although, since it had been left to the Roman people in King Attalus’ will, it ought to have been free. The consul Publius Licinius Crassus, who was also pontifex maximus—something that had never happened before—set out from Italy against Aristonicus. Crassus was defeated in battle and killed. The consul Marcus Perperna defeated Aristonicus and accepted his surrender.
Quintus Pompeius and Quintus Metellus, at that time the first censors both elected from the plebs, ritually closed the lustrum. The number of citizens totalled 318,823, excluding male and female orphans, and widows. The censor Quintus Metellus rendered the opinion that everyone should be required to take wives for the sake of producing children. His speech survives; when Augustus Caesar was discussing marriage among the orders,* he read the speech in the Senate just as if it were written for the present time. The tribune of the plebs Gaius Atinius Labeo ordered the censor Quintus Metellus, who had passed him over when selecting the Senate, to be thrown from the Rock; the rest of the tribunes of the plebs came to Metellus’ aid to prevent this from happening.
When the tribune of the plebs Carbo had brought a motion that the same man be permitted to be elected tribune as many times as he wanted, Publius Africanus spoke against the motion in the most earnest of speeches, in which he said that, in his opinion, Tiberius Gracchus had been killed justifiably. Gaius Gracchus, on the other hand, spoke in favour of the motion, but Scipio prevailed.
The wars conducted between Antiochus, king of Syria, and Phraates, king of the Parthians, as well as the equally turbulent affairs of Egypt are reported. The Ptolemy with the cognomen Euergetes, detested among his own people for his excessive cruelty, secretly escaped to Cyprus when his palace was set on fire by the people; and when the kingdom was given by the people to his sister Cleopatra, whom he had divorced after raping and then marrying her virgin daughter, the enraged Ptolemy killed on Cyprus the son he had had by Cleopatra and sent the head and hands and feet to the boy’s mother.
Internal uprisings were aroused by the commission of three men—Fulvius Flaccus and Gaius Gracchus and Gaius Papirius Carbo—elected to mete out land. When Publius Scipio Africanus opposed them, he went home a hale and hearty man, and he was found dead in his bedroom the next day. His wife Sempronia was under suspicion of having given him poison particularly since she was the sister of the Gracchi, with whom Africanus had been at odds. No investigation into his death, however, was held. After he died the unrest from the three-man commission flared higher.
At first, the consul Gaius Sempronius suffered a reverse against the Iapydae; soon, through the bravery of the Decimus Junius Brutus who had subdued Lusitania, a victory compensated for the defeat Sempronius had suffered.
The consul Lucius Aurelius subdued the warring Sardinians. Marcus Fulvius Flaccus was the first to reduce to subservience the Transalpine Ligures by combat when he was sent to the relief of the Massilians against the Gallic Salluvii, who were raiding the Massilians’ borders. The praetor Lucius Opimius accepted the surrender of the Fregellani, who had defected, and destroyed Fregellae. In Africa, a plague is said to have arisen from a huge number of locusts and subsequently from the piles of those that had been killed. A lustrum was performed by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 394,736.
The tribune of the plebs Gaius Gracchus, the brother of Tiberius Gracchus, was more eloquent than his brother; he proposed several dangerous laws, including a grain law such that grain be given to the plebs at a price of six and a third asses; second, an agrarian law that his brother also had proposed; third, a law by which he could seduce the equestrian order, at that time similar in outlook to the Senate, such that 600 of the equestrians would be enrolled in the Curia and, since in those days there were only 300 senators, the 600 equestrians would be combined with the 300 senators; that is to say that the equestrian order would have twice as much power in the Senate. And when his tribunate was extended for a second year and his agrarian laws were passed, he saw to it that multiple colonies were founded in Italy and one on the site of the ashes of Carthage, where he himself, named one of three commissioners, founded the colony.
The book contains in addition the campaigns of the consul Quintus Metellus against the Baleares, whom the Greeks call the Gymnesians* since they do not wear clothing in the summer. They are called the Baleares from the trajectory of a missile* or from Balius, Hercules’ companion who was left there when Hercules sailed to Geryon. The unrest in Syria also is recorded; during it Cleopatra killed her husband Demetrius and her son Seleucus because she was enraged that Seleucus assumed the crown without her permission after she had killed his father.
After the proconsul Gaius Sextius defeated the Salluvii people, he founded the colony of Aquae Sextiae,* so called after the abundance of water in the cold and hot springs and after his own name. The proconsul Gnaeus Domitius fought successfully against the Allobroges at the town of Vindalium. The reason for making war on them was that they had taken in the fugitive Toutomotulus, the king of the Salluvii, and rendered him every assistance, and that they had devastated the territory of the Aedui, allies of the Roman people.
After being a rabble-rousing tribune, Gaius Gracchus also occupied the Aventine together with an armed gang; the consul Lucius Opimius, in accordance with a decree from the Senate, summoned the people to arms, and drove him out; and Gracchus was killed, and along with him the former consul Fulvius Flaccus, his partner in the same madness.
The consul Quintus Fabius Maximus, grandson of Paullus, fought successfully against the Allobroges and Bituitus, king of the Arverni. One hundred and twenty thousand men from Bituitus’ army were killed; when he himself went to Rome to make amends with the Senate, he was given over for safekeeping at Alba since it seemed contrary to the peace for him to be sent back to Gaul. There was a decree too that his son Congonnetiacus should be apprehended and sent to Rome. The surrender of the Allobroges was accepted. Lucius Opimius was brought to trial before the people by the tribune of the plebs Quintus Decius because he had thrown Roman citizens into jail without a trial; he was acquitted.
The consul Quintus Marcius defeated in battle the Styni, an Alpine people. Micipsa, king of Numidia, died and left his kingdom to his three sons: Adherbal, Hiempsal, and Jugurtha, his brother’s son whom he had adopted. Lucius Caecilius Metellus subdued the Dalmatae. Jugurtha made war on his brother Hiempsal. The latter was defeated and killed; Jugurtha drove Adherbal from the kingdom; he was reinstated by the Senate. The censors Lucius Caecilius Metellus and Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus removed thirty-two men from the Senate. The book contains in addition the unrest in Syria and among the kings.
In Thrace, the consul Gaius Porcius fought unsuccessfully against the Scordisci. A lustrum of the city was conducted by the censors. The number of citizens totalled 394,336. The Vestals Aemilia, Licinia, and Marcia were convicted of sexual impurity, and it is recorded how the sexual impurity occurred and was detected and punished. The Cimbri, a nomadic people, entered Illyricum on a plundering expedition. The consul Papirius Cursor and his army were routed by them. In Thrace, the consul Livius Drusus fought successfully against the Scordisci, a people of Gallic origin.
Adherbal was attacked by Jugurtha, besieged in the town of Cirta, and killed by him, contrary to the Senate’s ultimatum, and for this reason war was declared on Jugurtha, and when the consul Calpurnius Bestia was ordered to conduct it, he made a peace treaty with Jugurtha without orders from the people and the Senate. Jugurtha was summoned, with a public guarantee of safe conduct, in order to name the sponsors of his plans because it was said that many in the Senate had been bribed. Jugurtha came to Rome, and when he was in danger of being indicted on a capital charge because he permitted the murder of a certain chieftain, Massiva by name, who was trying to take over Jugurtha’s kingdom while Jugurtha was out of favour with the Roman people, Jugurtha fled in secret, and upon leaving the city he is reported to have said, ‘Rome, a city that is for sale and soon to perish, if it finds a purchaser.’ The lieutenant Aulus Postumius fought unsuccessfully against Jugurtha and after the battle added an ignominious peace treaty, which the Senate decided should not be upheld.
The consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus routed Jugurtha in two battles and laid waste to all of Numidia. The consul Marcus Junius Silanus fought without success against the Cimbri. The Senate turned down the representatives of the Cimbri who demanded a home and lands where they could settle. The proconsul Marcus Minucius fought successfully against the Thracians. The consul Lucius Cassius was killed with his army on the borders of the Nitiobroges by the Gallic Tigurini, from a district of the Helvetii, who had defected from their state. The soldiers who had survived the slaughter made an agreement with the enemy to give hostages and half of everything and go away in safety.
Jugurtha was defeated by Gaius Marius in Numidia. When Jugurtha received help from Bocchus, king of the Moors, Bocchus’ forces too were killed in the battle, and as Bocchus was reluctant to continue any longer an inauspiciously undertaken war, Jugurtha was put in chains by Bocchus and handed over to Marius; the contribution of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the quaestor of Gaius Marius, was noteworthy in this affair.
Marcus Aurelius Scaurus, a lieutenant to the consul, was captured by the Cimbri after his army was routed, and when he was summoned by them to their council, he warned them not to cross the Alps and make for Italy because, as he said, the Romans could not be defeated; at that he was killed by Boiorix, a hot-tempered young man. At Arausio, the consul Gnaeus Manlius and the proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio were defeated in battle by these same enemies, and their two camps also were lost. According to Valerius Antias, 80,000 soldiers were killed, as well as 40,000 servants and camp-followers. Caepio was convicted, since the defeat had been suffered because of his rashness, and he was the first since King Tarquinius to have his property confiscated, and his imperium was terminated.
Jugurtha and his two sons were led before the chariot of Gaius Marius when the latter triumphed over him; and Jugurtha was killed in jail. Marius entered the Senate in his triumphal regalia, something that no one had done before, and his consulship was extended for several years on account of fear of the Cimbrian war. The second and third times he was made consul in his absence; he obtained the fourth consulship by pretending that he was not seeking it. Gnaeus Domitius was made pontifex maximus by a vote of the people. The Cimbri, after ravaging everything that lay between the Rhône and the Pyrenees, crossed into Spain by a pass and there, after raiding many places, they were put to flight by the Celtiberi, and they returned to Gaul and joined forces with the Teutoni among the Veliocasses.
The praetor Marcus Antonius pursued pirates into Cilicia. The consul Gaius Marius defended his camp, which was besieged with massive force by the Teutoni and the Ambrones. Then he wiped out these same enemies in two battles around Aquae Sextiae; in these battles 200,000 enemies are said to have been killed and 90,000 captured. In his absence, Marius was made consul for the fifth time. He postponed the triumph conferred on him until he had also defeated the Cimbri. The Cimbri drove from the Alps the proconsul Quintus Catulus, who had been blockading the Alpine passes, and put him to flight (he had left a cohort at the River Atesis, which had constructed a fort high up, and it nonetheless extricated itself by its own courage and followed the fleeing proconsul and his army); then the Cimbri crossed into Italy and were defeated in battle by the combined forces of this same Catulus and Gaius Marius. In this battle 140,000 enemy casualties and 60,000 captives are reported. Marius was welcomed by the consensus of the entire city and was content with one triumph instead of the two he had been offered. The leading men of the city, who had scorned him for some time for being a new man* who had been raised to such honours, admitted that the Republic had been saved by him.
When Publicius Malleolus killed his mother, he was the first to be sewn up in a sack and thrown into the sea. It is reported that the shields* rattled and moved before the Cimbrian war was finished. The book contains also wars conducted amongst the kings of Syria.
With the assistance of Gaius Marius and by having his rival Aulus Nunnius killed by soldiers, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus became tribune of the plebs through force. He conducted the tribunate no less violently than he had pursued it, and when he had passed an agrarian law with force, he put Metellus Numidicus on trial because he had not taken the oath for it. When the latter was defended by the good citizens, he went into voluntary exile at Rhodes in order not to be the source of political strife, and there he occupied himself happily in listening to and reading great men. Thereupon Gaius Marius, who was responsible for the discord and who had bought his sixth consulship by distributing cash amongst the tribes, forbade him water and fire.* The same Appuleius Saturninus, the tribune of the plebs, killed Gaius Memmius, a candidate for the consulship, since he feared him as an opponent of his actions. When the Senate was disturbed by these doings, Gaius Marius, a man whose character and thinking always shifted and changed according to circumstance, switched to the senatorial side. Saturninus was overcome by force of arms and was killed in something like a war with the praetor Glaucia and other partners in the same madness. Quintus Caecilius Metellus was brought back from his exile with great approbation from the entire city. In Sicily, the proconsul Manius Aquillius ended the slave war that had arisen.
When Manius Aquillius was on trial for extortion, he was unwilling to appeal to the judges himself; Marcus Antonius, who gave the peroration on his behalf, ripped Aquillius’ tunic from his chest in order to reveal his scars of honour. He was acquitted beyond all doubt. Cicero is the only source for this matter. The proconsul Titus Didius fought successfully against the Celtiberi. Ptolemy, king of Egypt, who had the cognomen Apion, died and left the Roman people as his heir, and the Senate ordered the cities of his kingdom to be free. Ariobarzanes was reinstated in the kingdom of Cappadocia by Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Parthian envoys sent by King Arsaces came to Sulla to seek friendship with the Roman people. Since Publius Rutilius, a man of the purest innocence, had, as the lieutenant of the proconsul Gaius Mucius, protected Asia from the injustices of the tax-collectors, he was hated by the equestrian order, who controlled the courts. Condemned for extortion, he was sent into exile. The praetor Gaius Sentius fought unsuccessfully against the Thracians. The Senate, refusing to tolerate the abuse of power by the equestrian order, began to struggle with all its might to have the courts transferred to it. Marcus Livius Drusus supported the Senate’s cause; he was a tribune of the plebs who roused the plebs with pernicious hopes of handouts in order to acquire power for himself. The book contains also the unrest in Syria and among the kings.
The tribune of the plebs Marcus Livius Drusus had taken up the Senate’s cause and, in order to defend it with greater resources, roused the allies and the Italian peoples with the expectation of Roman citizenship. With their assistance he forced the passage of agrarian and grain laws, and he also put through a judicial law so that control of the courts would be shared equally by the senatorial and the equestrian orders. Then, when the citizenship promised to the allies could not be granted, the enraged Italian peoples began to stir up revolt. Their gatherings and plotting and the speeches of their leaders in their councils are recorded. Livius Drusus became odious even to the Senate on account of these developments, as if he were the author of the Social War* and he was killed at home by some unknown person.
The Italian peoples revolted: the Picentes, the Vestini, the Marsi, the Paeligni, the Marrucini, the Samnites, the Lucani. The beginning of the war was triggered by the Picentes when the proconsul Quintus Servilius was killed in the town of Asculum together with all the Roman citizens who were in that town. The Roman people adopted military garb. Servius Galba, who was apprehended by the Lucani, was rescued from captivity through the efforts of an individual woman at whose house he was staying. The colonies of Aesernia and Alba were besieged by the Italians. Then auxiliaries from the Latins and foreign peoples were sent, and military operations and the successful storming of cities on both sides are reported.
The consul Lucius Julius Caesar suffered a reverse against the Samnites. The colony of Nola came under the Samnites’ control, along with the praetor Lucius Postumius, who was killed by them. Several peoples defected to the enemy. When the consul Publius Rutilius had fought with little success against the Marsi and had fallen in the battle, Gaius Marius, his lieutenant, fought a pitched battle against the enemy with a more favourable result. Servius Sulpicius routed the Paeligni in battle. When Quintus Caepio, a lieutenant of Rutilus, was surrounded and had succeeded in breaking through the enemy, and for this success his military authority was made equal to that of Gaius Marius, he became rash, he was surrounded by an ambush, his army was routed, and he was killed. The consul Lucius Julius Caesar fought successfully against the Samnites. Because of this victory military garb stopped being worn at Rome. And, since the fortunes of war waver, the colony of Aesernia with Marcus Marcellus came under the Samnites’ control, but also Gaius Marius routed the Marsi in a battle in which the praetor of the Marrucini, Hierius Asinius, was killed. In Transalpine Gaul, Gaius Caelius defeated the Salluvii, who were in revolt.
Gnaeus Pompeius routed the Picentes in battle <…> he besieged. On account of this victory, at Rome wearing of the toga praetexta and other insignia of magistracies was resumed. Gaius Marius fought the Marsi with no decisive result. Then for the first time freedmen began to do military service. The lieutenant Aulus Plotius defeated the Umbrians in battle while the praetor Lucius Porcius did the same to the Etruscans, when the two peoples had defected. Nicomedes was reinstated in the kingdom of Bithynia while Ariobarzanes was reinstated in that of Cappadocia. The consul Gnaeus Pompeius defeated the Marsi in a pitched battle. When the citizenry was afflicted with debt, the praetor Aulus Sempronius Asellio, because he was administering the law to the debtors’ advantage, was assassinated in the Forum by money-lenders. The book contains also the incursions of the Thracians into Macedonia and their plundering expeditions.
When the lieutenant Aulus Postumius Albinus was commanding the fleet, he incurred disgrace because of an accusation of treason and was killed by his own army. The lieutenant Lucius Cornelius Sulla defeated the Samnites in battle and captured two of their camps. Gnaeus Pompeius accepted the surrender of the Vestini. Although the consul Lucius Porcius campaigned successfully and routed the Marsi several times, he was killed while he was storming their camp. This event gave the victory in this battle to the enemy. Cosconius and Lucanus defeated the Samnites in a pitched battle; they killed Marius Egnatius, the enemies’ leader who had the highest standing; and they received the surrender of several towns. Lucius Sulla reduced the Hirpini to subservience, routed the Samnites in many battles, and recovered some peoples; and, with a record of achievement almost unparalleled by anyone previously who had not yet held a consulship, he set out for Rome to seek the consulship.
The lieutenant Aulus Gabinius campaigned successfully against the Lucani, captured many towns, and then died while besieging the enemy’s camp. The lieutenant Sulpicius slaughtered the Marrucini and recovered the entire region. The proconsul Gnaeus Pompeius accepted the surrender of the Vestini and the Paeligni. The Marsi too, broken by the lieutenants Lucius Cinna and Caecilius Pius in several battles, began to seek peace. Asculum was taken by Gnaeus Pompeius. And after the Italians too had been slaughtered by the lieutenant Mamercus Aemilius, Silo Poppaedius, the leader of the Marsi and the instigator of this business, fell in battle.
Mithridates, king of Pontus, drove Ariobarzanes from his kingdom of Cappadocia and Nicomedes from his kingdom of Bithynia. The book contains also the incursions of the Thracians into Macedonia and their plundering expeditions.
The tribune of the plebs Publius Sulpicius, at the instigation of Gaius Marius, promulgated pernicious laws: that exiles be recalled and the new citizens and freedmen be assigned among the tribes, and that Gaius Marius be made the commander against King Mithridates of Pontus; and when the consuls Quintus Pompeius and Lucius Sulla opposed him, Sulpicius used force on them. Then Quintus Pompeius, the son of Quintus Pompeius the consul and the son-in-law of Sulla, was killed, and the consul Lucius Sulla entered Rome with an army and battled the party of Sulpicius and Marius in the city itself and drove that party out. Twelve men from it were judged by the Senate to be enemies of the state, including Gaius Marius, father and son. When Publius Sulpicius was hiding in a certain villa, he was dragged forth on the information of his slave and killed. In order for the slave to have the reward promised to the informer, he was manumitted and, for the crime of betraying his master, he was thrown from the Rock. Gaius Marius the son crossed to Africa. When Gaius Marius the father was hiding in the swamps of Minturnae, he was dragged forth by the townspeople, and when the slave sent to kill him, a native Gaul, was so terrified by the greatness of the man that he went away, Marius was put on a boat at public expense and transported to Africa.
Lucius Sulla imposed order on the affairs of the Republic, and then founded colonies. The consul Quintus Pompeius set out to take over the army from the proconsul Gnaeus Pompeius and was killed through the latter’s design. Mithridates, king of Pontus, took over Bithynia and Cappadocia, defeated the lieutenant Aquillius, and entered Phrygia, a province of the Roman people, with a vast army.
Mithridates occupied Asia, and he threw the proconsul Quintus Oppius in chains and similarly his lieutenant Aquillius, and, at Mithridates’ command, everyone in Asia with Roman citizenship was butchered in a single day. He attacked the city of Rhodes, which alone had remained loyal to the Roman people, and, after he was defeated in multiple naval battles, he retreated. Archelaus, the king’s commander, entered Greece with an army and occupied Athens. The book contains in addition the terror of the cities and islands, with some of them drawing their communities towards Mithridates and others towards the Roman people.
When Lucius Cornelius Cinna was promulgating pernicious laws by force of arms, together with six tribunes of the plebs he was driven from the city by his colleague Gnaeus Octavius; and after his imperium was terminated, he bribed Appius Claudius’ army, took control of it, and waged war upon the city, summoning Gaius Marius and other exiles from Africa. In this war, two brothers, one from the Pompeian army, the other from Cinna’s, unwittingly fought against each other, and when the victor stripped the spoils from the deceased, he recognized his brother and let out a huge wail; he built a funeral pyre for him, and he stabbed himself over the pyre and was incinerated by the same fire. And although the war could have been suppressed in the early stages, Cinna and Marius were fortified both by the deception of Gnaeus Pompeius who, in aiding both sides, strengthened Cinna and did not bring help to the affairs of the best men until they were entirely ruined, and by the torpor of the consul. They surrounded the city with four armies, of which two were given to Quintus Sertorius and Carbo. Marius captured the colony of Ostia and plundered it savagely.
Citizenship was conferred on the peoples of Italy by the Senate. The Samnites, who alone took up their weapons again, joined themselves to Cinna and Marius. The lieutenant Plautius was killed, along with his army, by these men. Cinna and Marius, with Carbo and Sertorius, attacked the Janiculum, but they were put to flight by the consul Octavius and retreated. Marius captured the colonies of Antium and Aricia and Lanuvium. When the optimates had no hope of resisting because of the sluggishness and treachery both of their leaders and of their troops, who had been bribed and either were unwilling to fight or were deserting to the opposing side, Cinna and Marius were allowed to enter the city; they devastated it with murder and looting just as if it had been captured; and the consul Gnaeus Octavius was murdered, and all the nobiles* of the opposing party were butchered, including Marcus Antonius, an extremely eloquent orator, and Gaius and Lucius Caesar, whose heads were placed on the Rostra. Crassus the son was killed by Fimbria’s equestrians, while Crassus the father ran himself through with his sword to avoid suffering anything unworthy of his courage. And without recourse to any elections Cinna and Marius declared themselves consuls for the following year. On the very day they entered the magistracy, Marius ordered the senator Sextus Licinius to be thrown from the Rock. Having committed many crimes, Marius died on the thirteenth of January, a man of whom, if his faults were weighed alongside his virtues, it would by no means be easier to say whether he was more helpful in war or more disastrous in peace. To such a degree did he, as a soldier, save the Republic, and as a civilian, ruin it first with every kind of deception and ultimately with armed force, just as if he were an enemy.
After a siege and great exertions to capture <…>, Lucius Sulla restored liberty and its possessions to Athens, which Archelaus, Mithridates’ commander, had occupied. Magnesia, the only city in Asia that had remained loyal, was defended against Mithridates with the greatest courage. The book contains also the expeditions of the Thracians into Macedonia.
Sulla defeated in battle the king’s forces, which had occupied Macedonia and moved into Thessaly, and 100,000 of the enemy were killed, and also their camp was captured. When the war was subsequently revived, Sulla routed and eradicated the king’s army a second time. Archelaus turned himself and the royal fleet over to Sulla. The consul Lucius Valerius Flaccus, Cinna’s colleague, was sent to succeed Sulla, but because of his greed he was hated by his own army, and he was killed by his own lieutenant, Gaius Fimbria, a man of the utmost audacity; and his military authority was transferred to Fimbria. Also recorded are the cities in Asia that were captured by Mithridates, and the savage pillaging of the province, and the Thracians’ incursions into Macedonia.
In Asia, Flavius Fimbria routed several of Mithridates’ commanders in battle, took the city of Pergamum, besieged the king, and was not far from capturing him. Fimbria captured and razed the city of Ilium,* which was waiting to put itself under Sulla’s power, and he recovered the majority of Asia. Sulla cut the Thracians to pieces in several battles. When Lucius Cinna and Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, who had made themselves consuls for two consecutive years, were preparing for war against Sulla, Lucius Valerius Flaccus, the leader of the Senate, who gave a speech in the Senate, and those who were eager for a resolution of conflict brought it about that envoys were sent to Sulla about peace. Cinna was killed by his own army, which he was forcing against its will to board ships and set out against Sulla. Carbo administered the consulship on his own. When Sulla had crossed into Asia, he made peace with Mithridates on condition that Mithridates would retreat from the provinces of Asia, Bithynia, and Cappadocia. Fimbria was deserted by his army, which had crossed over to Sulla; Fimbria stabbed himself and, presenting his neck, got his slave to kill him.
Sulla replied to the envoys that had been sent by the Senate that he would put himself in the Senate’s hands if the citizens who had been expelled by Cinna and had fled to him were reinstated. Although this condition seemed reasonable to the Senate, agreement on it was prevented by Carbo and his party, to whom war seemed more advantageous. When this same Carbo wished to demand hostages from all the towns and colonies of Italy, so that he might guarantee their loyalty to him against Sulla, he was prohibited by a consensus of the Senate. The franchise was granted to new citizens by a decree of the Senate. When Quintus Metellus Pius, who had followed the faction of the optimates, was in Africa preparing for war, he was repulsed by the praetor Gaius Fabius, and a senatorial decree was made through the faction of Carbo and the Marian party that all armies everywhere should be disbanded. Freedmen were distributed into the thirty-five tribes. The book contains in addition the preparation for the war that was being set in motion against Sulla.
Sulla crossed to Italy with his army. He sent envoys to discuss peace, and when their sanctity was violated by the consul Gaius Norbanus, Sulla defeated that same Norbanus in battle. And when Sulla was about to besiege the camp of Lucius Scipio, the other consul, with whom he had striven in every way to make peace and had not been able to, the consul’s entire army, incited by soldiers dispatched by Sulla, transferred its allegiance to Sulla. Although Scipio could have been killed, he was allowed to go away. Gnaeus Pompeius,* the son of that Gnaeus Pompeius who had taken Asculum, raised an army of volunteers and went to Sulla with three legions. The entire nobility betook itself to Sulla so that by going to the camp they left the city deserted. Also recorded are the campaigns of the leaders of both sides throughout the whole of Italy.
While Gaius Marius, the son of Gaius Marius, was made consul through force before he was twenty, in Africa Gaius Fabius was burned alive in his headquarters because of his savagery and greed. Sulla’s lieutenant, Lucius Philippus, defeated and killed the praetor Quintus Antonius and occupied Sardinia. Sulla made a treaty with the Italian people so that they would not fear that he was about to take away their citizenship and the right to vote that had recently been conferred. Out of confidence that his victory was already certain, Sulla also told litigants who were approaching him to take their summonses to Rome, although the city was still in the hands of the opposing side. When the praetor Lucius Damasippus had assembled the Senate in accordance with the wishes of the consul Gaius Marius, he butchered everyone of noble birth who was in the city. Of this group the pontifex maximus Quintus Mucius Scaevola took flight and was killed in the forecourt of the temple of Vesta. The book contains in addition the renewal of the war by Lucius Murena against Mithridates in Asia.
Sulla routed Gaius Marius’ army and destroyed it at Sacriportus and besieged him in the town of Praeneste, and he recovered the city of Rome from the hands of his rivals. He thwarted Marius when Marius tried to escape from his confinement. The book contains in addition the campaigns conducted by Sulla’s lieutenants, with the same result everywhere for his party.
Sulla wiped out Carbo’s army at Clusium, Faventia, and Fidentia and drove him from Italy. He achieved a decisive victory over the Samnites, who alone of the Italian peoples had not laid down their arms, near to the city of Rome outside the Colline Gate, and having regained control of the Republic, he defiled his most beautiful victory with a cruelty paralleled by no previous human being. In the Civic Villa* he butchered 8,000 men who had surrendered, he posted a proscription list,* he filled the city and all Italy with corpses, including those of all the Praenestini, whom he ordered to be slaughtered unarmed, and he murdered Marius, a man of the senatorial order, after breaking his arms and legs, cutting off his ears, and gouging out his eyes. Gaius Marius was besieged at Praeneste by Lucretius Ofella, a man of the Sullan party; when he tried to escape through a tunnel blocked by the army, he chose to die. That is to say, in the tunnel itself, when he realized that he was not able to escape, he and Telesinus, his companion in flight, drew their swords and rushed at one another; when he had killed Telesinus, the wounded Marius succeeded in having a slave kill him.
From Cossyra, where they had put in, Marcus Brutus was sent by Gnaeus Papirius Carbo in a fishing boat to Lilybaeum to investigate whether Pompeius was already there, and when he was surrounded by ships that Pompeius had sent, Brutus braced himself against a thwart of the boat, turned the point of his sword towards himself, and threw himself on it with the weight of his body. Gnaeus Pompeius was sent to Sicily by the Senate with military authority and captured and killed Gnaeus Carbo, who died weeping like a woman. Sulla was made dictator and appeared in public with twenty-four fasces, something that no one had ever done before. He strengthened the condition of the Republic with new laws: he diminished the power of the tribunes of the plebs, and he completely took away their power of proposing legislation, he expanded the college of priests and augurs so that there were fifteen, he filled out the Senate with men from the equestrian order, he deprived the sons of people who had been proscribed of the right of seeking office, and he auctioned off their property, from which he initially seized the most. Three hundred and fifty million sesterces were realized. He ordered Quintus Lucretius Ofella, who had dared to seek the consulship against Sulla’s will, to be killed in the Forum, and when the Roman people showed their indignation, he summoned a public meeting and said that he had ordered it.
In Africa, Gnaeus Pompeius defeated Gnaeus Domitius, who had been proscribed, and Hierta, king of Numidia; they were preparing a war, and Pompeius killed them. And when he was twenty-four years old and still a Roman equestrian, he celebrated a triumph for Africa, a thing which had never happened to anyone before. When Gaius Norbanus, a former consul who had been proscribed, was apprehended in the city of Rhodes, he committed suicide. When Mutilus, one of the proscribed, had covered his head and secretly approached the back door of the house of his wife, Bastia, he was not allowed in since she said that he had been proscribed. Consequently he ran himself through and spattered his wife’s door with his blood. Sulla recovered Nola in Samnium. He conducted forty-seven legions into captured territory and shared it among them. He besieged Volaterrae, a town that was still in arms, and accepted its surrender. Also Mytilene in Asia, which was the only city to keep its weapons after Mithridates had been defeated, was captured and sacked.
Sulla died, and the Senate allowed him the honour of being buried in the Campus Martius. When Marcus Lepidus attempted to rescind Sulla’s acts, he stirred up war. He was driven from Italy by his colleague Quintus Catulus and, having tried in vain to prepare war in Sicily, he died. Marcus Brutus, who had control of Cisalpine Gaul, was killed by Gnaeus Pompeius. Quintus Sertorius, who had been proscribed, started a major war in Farther Spain. The proconsul Lucius Manlius and his lieutenant Marcus Domitius were beaten in battle by the quaestor Hirtuleius. The book contains in addition the campaigns of Publius Servilius against the Cilicians.
Gnaeus Pompeius was still a Roman equestrian when he was sent with proconsular authority against Sertorius. Sertorius captured several cities and brought many more under his control. The proconsul Appius Claudius defeated the Thracians in many battles. The proconsul Quintus Metellus cut to pieces Lucius Hirtuleius, Sertorius’ quaestor, along with his army.
Gnaeus Pompeius fought against Sertorius with no decisive result, one wing on each side being victorious. Quintus Metellus routed in battle Sertorius and Perperna with their two armies. Pompeius, eager to have a share of this victory, fought with little success. Then Sertorius was besieged at Clunia and, with repeated sorties, he inflicted no less damage than the besiegers. The book contains in addition campaigns undertaken by the proconsul Curio in Thrace against the Dardani and the many cruel acts of Quintus Sertorius committed against his own men; he trumped up accusations of betrayal against many of his friends and those who had been proscribed with him, and killed them.
In Cilicia, the proconsul Publius Servilius subdued the Isauri and captured several cities of the pirates. Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, made the Roman people his heirs, and his kingdom was reorganized with the status of a province. Mithridates made a treaty with Sertorius and started a war against the Roman people. Then occurred the organization of the royal infantry and naval resources; and after the consul Marcus Aurelius Cotta occupied Bithynia, he was defeated by the king in a battle near Chalcedon; and campaigns by Pompeius and Metellus against Sertorius <…> he was their equal in all the arts of war and military science, <…> he drove them off from the siege of the town of Calagurris and forced them to make their way to different places: Metellus to Farther Spain, and Pompeius to Gaul.
The consul Lucius Licinius Lucullus fought successfully against Mithridates in cavalry battles, and he conducted some successful operations, and he restrained his soldiers, who were demanding to fight, from mutiny. Deiotarus, the tetrarch of Galatia, cut to pieces Mithridates’ commanders who were stirring up war in Phrygia. The book contains in addition the successful campaigns of Gnaeus Pompeius against Sertorius in Spain.
In Thrace, the proconsul Gaius Curio subdued the Dardani. At Capua, seventy-four gladiators escaped from Lentulus’ training camp; they collected a mass of slaves and men from work crews, and with Crixus and Spartacus as their leaders, they started a war and defeated the lieutenant Claudius Pulcher and the praetor Publius Varenus in battle. The proconsul Lucius Lucullus obliterated Mithridates’ army through starvation and combat near the city of Cyzicus, and he drove the king from Bithynia, who was broken by various mishaps of war and shipwrecks, and forced him to flee to Pontus.
The praetor Quintus Arrius defeated Crixus, a leader of the fugitives, along with 20,000 men. The consul Gnaeus Lentulus met with a reverse against Spartacus. The consul Lucius Gellius and the praetor Quintus Arrius were defeated in a pitched battle by him also. Sertorius was killed by Marcus Perperna and Marcus Antonius and other conspirators at a banquet in the eighth year of his leadership; he was a magnificent general, and one who had been the victor more often than not against two generals, Pompeius and Metellus, but in the end he was both ruthless and extravagant. Authority over his partisans passed to Marcus,* whom Gnaeus Pompeius defeated, captured, and killed, and Pompeius recovered Spain around the tenth year after the conflict had begun. The proconsul Gaius Cassius and the praetor Gnaeus Manlius met with a reverse against Spartacus, and the war was entrusted to the praetor Marcus Crassus.
At first the praetor Marcus Crassus fought successfully against some fugitive slaves, a group composed of Gauls and Germans, killing 35,000 of his opponents and their leaders Castus and Gannicus. Then, when he fought to the finish against Spartacus he killed him and 60,000 men. The praetor Marcus Antonius undertook the war against the Cretans with little success; he ended it with his death. The proconsul Marcus Lucullus subdued the Thracians. In Pontus, Lucius Lucullus fought successfully against Mithridates, killing more than 60,000 of the enemy. Marcus Crassus and Gnaeus Pompeius were made consuls (Pompeius, a Roman equestrian, by a decree of the Senate, before he had held the quaestorship), and they restored tribunician power. The courts also were transferred to the Roman equestrians by the praetor Marcus Aurelius Cotta. Mithridates was forced by the desperation of his situation to flee to Tigranes, king of Armenia.
A friendship with Machares, the son of Mithridates and king of Bosporus, was entered into by Lucius Lucullus. The censors Gnaeus Lentulus and Lucius Gellius conducted the census strictly and removed sixty-four men from the Senate. They ritually closed the lustrum, and the number of citizens totalled 900,000. In Sicily, the praetor Lucius Metellus conducted a successful campaign against the pirates. The temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, which had been destroyed by fire and rebuilt, was dedicated by Quintus Catulus. In Armenia, Lucius Lucullus routed Mithridates and Tigranes and vast forces of both kings in several battles. The proconsul Quintus Metellus was entrusted with the war against the Cretans and besieged the city of Cydonia. Gaius Triarius, a lieutenant to Lucullus, fought with little success against Mithridates. A mutiny among the soldiers prevented Lucullus from pursuing Mithridates and Tigranes and adding the last touches to the victory, for the soldiers refused to follow, specifically the two Valerian legions, who said they had completed their period of service and abandoned Lucullus.
The proconsul Quintus Metellus captured Gnossus and Lyctus and Cydonia and many other cities. The tribune of the plebs Lucius Roscius proposed legislation that the first fourteen rows in the theatre should be assigned to the Roman equestrians. By a law proposed before the people, Gnaeus Pompeius was ordered to pursue the pirates who had blocked the grain-trade; within forty days he had driven them from the entire sea, and having ended the war against them in Cilicia, he accepted the surrender of the pirates and assigned them land and towns. The book contains in addition the campaigns of Quintus Metellus against the Cretans and the letters exchanged by Metellus and Gnaeus Pompeius. Quintus Metellus complains that the glory for his accomplishments had been stripped from him by Pompeius, who had sent a lieutenant of his own to Crete to accept the surrender of the cities. Pompeius gives an explanation of how he was obliged to do this.
To the great indignation of the nobles, the tribune of the plebs Gaius Manilius proposed legislation that the Mithridatic war be entrusted to Pompeius. <…> His public speech was good. Quintus Metellus dispensed laws to the defeated Cretans for their island, which had been free until that time. Gnaeus Pompeius set out to conduct war against Mithridates and renewed the friendship with Phraates, the king of the Parthians. Pompeius defeated Mithridates in a cavalry battle. The book contains in addition the war that transpired between Phraates, king of the Parthians, and Tigranes, the king of the Armenians, and then the war between Tigranes the son and Tigranes the father.
Gnaeus Pompeius defeated Mithridates in a battle at night and forced him to flee to the Bosporus. Pompeius accepted the surrender of Tigranes and took from him Syria, Phoenicia, and Cilicia while restoring the kingdom of Armenia to him. A conspiracy to kill the consuls was formed by men who had been convicted of bribery during a bid for the consulship; it was suppressed. As Gnaeus Pompeius was pursuing Mithridates, he made his way to remote and unknown peoples. He defeated in battle the Hiberi and the Albani, who were not allowing him to pass. The book contains in addition the flight of Mithridates through the lands of the Colchians and the Heniochi, as well as his actions in the Bosporus.
Gnaeus Pompeius reorganized Pontus into a province. Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, attacked his father. When Mithridates was blockaded in the palace by him and took poison but did not manage to die, he was killed by a Gallic soldier named Bitocus, whose assistance he had sought. Gnaeus Pompeius subdued the Jews and took their temple at Jerusalem, which had been inviolate up to that time. After Lucius Catilina had twice endured defeats in his bid for the consulship, he conspired with the praetor Lentulus and Cethegus and many others to assassinate the consuls and the Senate, burn the city, and take over the Republic, and also he had an army marshalled in Etruria. This conspiracy was rooted out by the diligence of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Catilina was driven from the city, and punishment was inflicted on the rest of the conspirators.
Catilina and his army were cut down by the proconsul Gaius Antonius. Publius Clodius was put on trial on the charge that, dressed in women’s clothes, he had infiltrated a sacred space where it was sacrilege for a man to enter, and committed adultery with <…>, the wife of Metellus the priest; he was acquitted. Near Solo, the praetor Gaius Pontinus subdued the Allobroges, who had revolted. Publius Clodius transferred to the plebeians. Gaius Caesar subdued the Lusitani. When he was a candidate for the consulship and trying to gain control of the Republic, a conspiracy formed among three leading citizens: Gnaeus Pompeius, Marcus Crassus, Gaius Caesar. Agrarian legislation was passed by the consul Caesar amongst fierce argument and against the opposition of the Senate and the other consul, Marcus Bibulus. The proconsul Gaius Antonius campaigned in Thrace with little success. Marcus Cicero was sent into exile by a law proposed by the tribune of the plebs Publius Clodius because Cicero had had citizens executed without a trial. Caesar left for the province of Gaul and subdued the Helvetii, a nomadic people that, seeking a home, wished to pass through Narbonensis, Caesar’s province. The book contains in addition the geography of Gaul. Pompeius celebrated a triumph over <…> the children of Mithridates, and Tigranes, and the son of Tigranes; and he was hailed as ‘the Great’ by the entire assembly.
The first part of the book contains the geography of Germany and the local customs. At the request of the Aedui and the Sequani, whose land was being occupied, Gaius Caesar led his army against the Germans who had crossed into Gaul with their leader Ariovistus; he checked with an exhortation the trepidation that arose among the soldiers out of fear of unfamiliar enemies, and he defeated the Germans in battle and drove them from Gaul. Marcus Cicero was brought back from exile by, among others, Pompeius and Titus Annius Milo, the tribune of the plebs, to the great joy of the Senate and the whole of Italy. Responsibility for the grain-supply was entrusted to Gnaeus Pompeius for a term of five years. Caesar defeated in battle the Ambiani, the Suessiones, the Viruomandui, the Atrebates, and the peoples of Belgium, of whom there were a great many, and accepted their surrender, and then he fought at great risk against the Nervii, one of these peoples, and he wiped them out, although they fought until 500 out of 60,000 remained, and three alone from a senate of 600 escaped. A law was passed about the reorganization of Cyprus into a province and the confiscation of the king’s treasury; the administration of the matter was entrusted to Marcus Cato. Ptolemy, king of Egypt, left his kingdom and came to Rome because of injuries he had suffered from his own people. Gaius Caesar defeated the Veneti, a people next to the ocean, in a naval battle. The book contains in addition campaigns conducted by his lieutenants with the same good fortune.
When the elections were obstructed by the intervention of the tribune of the plebs Gaius Cato, the Senate changed its attire.* In the competition for the praetorship Marcus Cato suffered a reverse, with Vatinius being preferred. When that same man was impeding a law, by which provinces would be given to the consuls for five-year terms (the Spanish provinces to Pompeius, Syria and the Parthian war to Crassus), he was taken away in chains by Gaius Trebonius, a tribune of the plebs and the sponsor of the law. The proconsul Aulus Gabinius escorted Ptolemy back to the kingdom of Egypt and expelled Archelaus, whom the Egyptians had adopted as their king. After defeating the Germans in Gaul, Caesar crossed the Rhine and subdued the nearest part of Germany, and then he crossed the ocean to Britain, at first with little success because of bad weather, but with greater success the second time, and having killed a great number of the enemy, he established control over part of the island.
Julia, Caesar’s daughter and Pompeius’ wife, died, and the people allowed her the honour of being buried in the Campus Martius. Some of the Gallic people defected with their leader Ambiorix, king of the Eburones. Caesar’s lieutenants Cotta and Titurius were trapped in an ambush by them and were killed with the army they commanded. And when the camps of the other legions too—including the one Quintus Cicero was in charge of amongst the Treveri—were besieged and defended with great effort, the enemy was routed in battle by Caesar himself. Marcus Crassus crossed the Euphrates river intending to attack the Parthians, and he was defeated in a battle in which his son was killed too. When Crassus had withdrawn the remnants of his forces to a hill, he was called to a parley by the enemy (whose leader was Surenas) as if they intended to discuss peace. Crassus was apprehended and, in his struggle not to be subjected to anything degrading while alive, he was killed.
When the Treveri had been defeated in Gaul, Caesar crossed into Germany for the second time and, not encountering any enemy there, he returned to Gaul and conquered the Eburones and other communities that had conspired against him, and he pursued Ambiorix as he fled. Publius Clodius, who had been killed at Bovillae on the Appian Way by Titus Annius Milo, a candidate for the consulship, was cremated in the Curia by the plebs. When there was discord among the candidates for the consulship, Hypsaeus and Scipio and Milo, who were fighting with armed force, in order to suppress this, to Gnaeus Pompeius* <…> he was made consul by the Senate for the third time, in his absence and on his own, something that never <happened>* to anyone else. An inquiry into the death of Publius Clodius was decreed, and Milo was convicted in the trial and sent into exile. A law was passed to accept Caesar’s candidacy for the consulship in his absence, although Marcus Cato was opposed and spoke against it. The book contains in addition the campaigns of Gaius Caesar against the Gauls, almost all of whom revolted under the leadership of the Arvernian Vercingetorix, as well as the laborious sieges of cities, including Avaricum of the Bituriges and Gergovia of the Arverni.
Gaius Caesar defeated the Gauls at Alesia and accepted the surrender of all the Gallic peoples that had been in arms. Gaius Cassius, quaestor to Marcus Crassus, cut to pieces the Parthians, who had crossed into Syria. In his candidacy for the consulship, Marcus Cato met with rejection as Servius Sulpicius and Marcus Marcellus were elected. Gaius Caesar subdued the Bellovaci together with other peoples of Gaul. The book contains in addition the disputes between the consuls about dispatching a successor to Gaius Caesar, as Marcellus argued in the Senate that Caesar should come back to seek the consulship although, in accordance with the law that had been passed, he should have kept his provinces until the period of his consulship; and it contains also the campaigns of Marcus Bibulus in Syria.
The causes of the civil war and its beginnings are recorded, as are the quarrels about dispatching a successor to Gaius Caesar, since he said that he would not disband his armies unless Pompeius disbanded his. And the book contains the actions of the tribune of the plebs Gaius Curio, first against Caesar, then on his behalf. When there was a decree of the Senate to dispatch a successor to Caesar, and the tribunes of the plebs Marcus Antonius and Quintus Cassius were driven from the city because they obstructed this decree of the Senate with their veto <…> and the Senate entrusted the consuls and Gnaeus Pompeius to see to it that the Republic suffer no harm. Gaius Caesar entered Italy with an army to pursue political enemies militarily, he took Corfinium with Lucius Domitius and Publius Lentulus, and he let them go, and he drove Gnaeus Pompeius and the rest of his party from Italy.
Gaius Caesar besieged Massilia, which had barred its gates, and left his lieutenants Gaius Trebonius and Decimus Brutus to besiege that city. He set out for Spain, accepted the surrender of Gnaeus Pompeius’ lieutenants Lucius Afranius and Marcus Petreius with seven legions near Ilerda, and let them all go unharmed. Also Varro, Pompeius’ lieutenant, and his army were brought under Caesar’s control. Caesar conferred citizenship on the people of Gades. The Massilians were defeated in two fights at sea and after a long siege relinquished themselves to Caesar’s control. Caesar’s lieutenant Gaius Antonius campaigned unsuccessfully against the Pompeians in Illyricum and was taken captive. In this conflict the Opitergini, from across the Po, were allies of Caesar. When their ship was surrounded by an enemy fleet, rather than coming under the control of their enemies, they died fighting each other. After Caesar’s lieutenant in Africa, Gaius Curio, had fought successfully against Varus, a leader of the Pompeian party, he was killed with his army by Juba, king of Mauretania. Gaius Caesar crossed to Greece.
When the praetor Marcus Caelius Rufus stirred up revolt in the city by inciting the plebs with the expectation that debt would be cancelled, his magistracy was terminated, and he was driven from the city and joined forces with the exiled Milo, who had assembled an army of fugitive slaves. Both men were killed while they were preparing for war. Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, was driven from the kingdom by her brother Ptolemy. Because of the praetor Quintus Cassius’ greed and cruelty, the people of Corduba in Spain deserted Caesar’s party with two of the legions of Varro. Gnaeus Pompeius was besieged at Dyrrachium by Caesar and, after he had stormed Caesar’s outposts with heavy losses to the latter’s side, Pompeius was freed from the siege, and the war shifted to Thessaly where he was killed in a pitched battle at Pharsalia. Cicero remained in the camp, a man born for anything rather than armed conflict. Caesar pardoned all those of the opposite side who had surrendered to the victor.
The panic of the defeated party and their flight to different parts of the world are recorded. Gnaeus Pompeius had made his way to Egypt. By the agency of his tutor Theodotus (who had more authority over him) and of Pothinus, King Ptolemy, who was Pompeius’ ward, gave the order and, before Pompeius stepped ashore, he was killed aboard his ship by Achillas, to whom the deed had been delegated. Pompeius’ wife Cornelia and his son Sextus Pompeius fled to Cyprus. Caesar followed three days later; when Theodotus had shown him Pompeius’ head and ring, Caesar was furious and wept. He entered Alexandria, which was in turmoil, without danger. Caesar was made dictator and restored Cleopatra to her kingdom in Egypt. And at great personal risk he utterly defeated Ptolemy, who undertook the war on the advice of the same men under whose influence he had killed Pompeius. As Ptolemy was fleeing, his ship sank in the Nile. The book contains in addition the laborious journey of Marcus Cato with his legions in Africa through the desert, and the war conducted with little success by Gnaeus Domitius against Pharnaces.
The Pompeian party built itself up in Africa, and the command of it passed to Publius Scipio as Cato, to whom a shared command was offered, ceded it. And when there were deliberations about destroying the city of Utica on account of that city’s support for Caesar, Juba urged that it be destroyed; but Marcus Cato had prevented this from happening, and its protection and care were entrusted to him. In Spain, Gnaeus Pompeius, the son of Pompeius Magnus,* gathered forces of which neither Afranius nor Petreius wished to take charge, and renewed the war against Caesar. Pharnaces, son of Mithridates and king of Pontus, was defeated without any delay to the war. Revolt was stirred up at Rome by the tribune of the plebs Publius Dolabella proposing a law about the cancellation of debt; and when the plebs were in an uproar for this reason, soldiers were brought into the city by Marcus Antonius,* the master of horse; and 800 plebeians were killed. Caesar granted a discharge to those veterans who mutinied and demanded it. And when he had crossed to Africa, he fought at great risk against the forces of King Juba.
In Syria, a Roman equestrian of the Pompeian party, Caecilius Bassus, provoked a war after Sextus Caesar had been abandoned by his legion (which had transferred its allegiance to Bassus) and been killed. Caesar defeated the praetor Scipio and Juba near Thapsus, and captured their camp. When Cato heard the news, he stabbed himself at Utica; and although his son intervened and he was nursed, during the ministrations Cato reopened the wound and died, in the forty-eighth year of his life. Petreius killed Juba and himself. Publius Scipio was surrounded on his ship and added a comment to his noble death. For when his enemies asked for the leader, he said, ‘The leader is doing well.’ Faustus and Afranius were killed. Pardon was granted to Cato’s son. In Gaul, Caesar’s lieutenant Brutus defeated in battle the Bellovaci, who were rebelling.
Caesar celebrated four triumphs, over Gaul, Egypt, Pontus, and Africa, and he gave a banquet and spectacles of every kind. Upon the Senate’s request, he allowed the former consul Marcus Marcellus to return. Marcellus was not able to enjoy this favour from Caesar since he was killed at Athens by Gnaeus Magius, his own client.* Caesar conducted a census, in which the number of citizens totalled 150,000. And he set out for Spain against Gnaeus Pompeius. After many operations on both sides and the capture of some cities, Caesar achieved the final victory, at great risk, near the city of Munda. Gnaeus Pompeius was killed; Sextus fled.
Caesar celebrated his fifth triumph, over Spain. And a vast number of extremely high honours was voted to him by the Senate, including that he be called ‘Father of the Country’ and that he be sacrosanct* and dictator in perpetuity. Then a reason for hostility towards him was created by these factors: that when he was sitting in front of the temple of Venus Genetrix, he did not rise for the Senate when it came to confer these honours; and that when his colleague Marcus Antonius was running with the Luperci* and placed a crown on Caesar’s head, Caesar put it down on his chair; and that the authority of the tribunes of the plebs Epidius Marullus and Caesetius Flavus was terminated when they <fostered> hostility towards him for supposedly aiming at monarchy. For these reasons a plot was formed against him; the leaders of it were Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius and, from the Caesarian party, Decimus Brutus and Gaius Trebonius, and Caesar was killed in the Curia of Pompeius with twenty-three wounds. The Capitol was occupied by his killers. Then amnesty for his murder was decreed by the Senate, and, after hostages were taken from the children of Antonius and Lepidus, the conspirators came down from the Capitol. According to Caesar’s will, his nephew Gaius Octavius was instituted his heir to one-half of his estate, and he was adopted as Caesar’s son. When Caesar’s body was carried into the Campus Martius, it was cremated by the plebs in front of the Rostra. The honour of ‘dictatorship in perpetuity’ was banned. Chamates, a man of the lowest kind, who claimed that he was the son of Gaius Marius, was put to death when he stirred up a rebellion among the credulous plebs.
Gaius Octavius came to Rome from Epirus (for Caesar had sent him there in advance, intending to wage war in Macedonia), he was greeted by favourable omens, and he assumed the name of Caesar.* In the confused state of affairs and the upheaval, Marcus Lepidus appropriated the position of pontifex maximus. Further, Marcus Antonius, as consul, was wielding power without restraint and had forced through legislation about the redistribution of provinces, and in addition, when Caesar asked Antonius to help him against his uncle’s assassins, Antonius subjected him to grave insults. Consequently Caesar, in order to acquire resources for himself and the Republic against Antonius, stirred up the veterans, who had been settled in colonies. The fourth and the Martian legions too transferred their allegiance from Antonius to Caesar; and then because of the savagery of Marcus Antonius, who throughout his camp was butchering those of his own men whom he did not trust, many men deserted to Caesar. Decimus Brutus occupied Mutina with his army in order to block Antonius when he was making for Cisalpine Gaul. The book contains in addition the dispersal of men of both parties to take up their provinces, as well as preparations for war.
In Greece, Marcus Brutus, under the pretext of the good of the Republic and a war undertaken against Marcus Antonius, took control of the army that Publius Vatinius was commanding, as well as his province. Gaius Caesar, who as a private citizen had taken up arms for the Republic, was granted propraetorian power by the Senate, together with consular regalia, and it was added that he be a senator. Marcus Antonius besieged Decimus Brutus at Mutina, and the envoys sent to him by the Senate about peace made little headway in arranging one. The Roman people adopted military garb. In Epirus, Marcus Brutus brought the praetor Gaius Antonius and his army under his control.
In Asia, Gaius Trebonius was killed through the deception of Publius Dolabella. For this deed Dolabella was decreed an enemy of the state by the Senate. When the consul Pansa had suffered a reverse against Antonius, the consul Aulus Hirtius, arriving on the scene with his army, routed Marcus Antonius’ forces and balanced the fortunes of the two sides. Then Antonius was defeated by Hirtius and Caesar and fled to Gaul, and he attached to himself Marcus Lepidus and the legions that were under him there, and Antonius was decreed an enemy of the state by the Senate, along with all those who were within his lines. Aulus Hirtius, who had actually fallen in the enemy camp after the victory, and Gaius Pansa, who died from a wound that he had suffered in the battle he lost, were buried in the Campus Martius. The Senate was insufficiently grateful to Gaius Caesar, who alone of the three leaders had survived. For although Decimus Brutus, who had been liberated from the siege of Mutina by Caesar, was voted the honour of a triumph, the Senate did not make sufficiently grateful reference to Caesar and his men. For these reasons Gaius Caesar, once good relations with Antonius had been restored through the agency of Marcus Lepidus, came to Rome with his army; those men who were hostile to him were kept out by its arrival, and so he was made consul when he was nineteen years old.
As consul, Gaius Caesar proposed legislation to try the men by whose doings his father Caesar was killed; Marcus Brutus, Gaius Cassius, and Decimus Brutus were prosecuted under this law and convicted in their absence. Asinius Pollio and Munatius Plancus joined Marcus Antonius and increased his forces with their armies. And Decimus Brutus, to whom the Senate had entrusted the pursuit of Antonius, was abandoned by his legions and fled; he then fell into Antonius’ power and was killed, at Antonius’ command, by Capenus of the Sequani. Gaius Caesar made peace with Antonius and Lepidus on the terms that they would become a triumvirate for a five-year period to organize the Republic and that he and Lepidus and Antonius would each proscribe their personal enemies. In this proscription there were many Roman equestrians, and the names of 130 senators, including Lucius Paullus, the brother of Marcus Lepidus, and Lucius Caesar, the uncle of Antonius, and Marcus Cicero. When Cicero was killed by Popillius, a legionary, he was sixty-three years old, and moreover his head was placed with his right hand on the Rostra. The book contains in addition the campaigns of Marcus Brutus in Greece.
Gaius Cassius had been entrusted by the Senate to prosecute war against Dolabella, who had been decreed an enemy of the state; assisted by the authority of the Republic, he brought Syria under control with the three armies that were in that province, and he besieged Dolabella in the city of Laodicia and forced him to die. Also, on the order of Marcus Brutus, Gaius Antonius was captured and killed.
Marcus Brutus campaigned successfully against the Thracians for a little while, and when all the overseas provinces and armies were under the control of Gaius Cassius and him, they met at Smyrna to make plans for the approaching war. By common agreement they granted a pardon to Publicola, who was in chains, at the request of his brother, Marcus Messalla.
From Epirus, Sextus Pompeius, the son of Pompeius Magnus, collected proscribed men and fugitive slaves. He had an army, but for a long time lacked any control over any territory; he engaged in piracy before he occupied first Messana, a town in Sicily, and then the entire province; and having killed the praetor Pompeius Bithynicus, he defeated Caesar’s lieutenant Quintus Salvidienus in a sea battle. Caesar and Antonius crossed to Greece with their armies to wage war on Brutus and Cassius. In Africa, Quintus Cornificius defeated in battle Titus Sextius, a leader of the Cassian faction.
Gaius Caesar and Antonius fought at Philippi with mixed results against Brutus and Cassius: on both sides the right wing being victorious, and both camps being captured by those who had been victorious. But the death of Cassius made the fortune of the two sides unequal: since he had been on the wing that had been beaten back, he thought that the entire army had been routed, and he committed suicide. Then on the next day Marcus Brutus was defeated, and he ended his life by prevailing upon Straton, a companion of his flight, to plunge a sword into him. He was around forty years old, <…>. Among them Quintus Hortensius was killed.
Leaving Antonius behind overseas (for the provinces situated in this part of the empire had passed to him), Caesar returned to Italy and distributed land to the veterans. In grave danger, he suppressed the mutiny of his army that soldiers corrupted by Fulvia, the wife of Marcus Antonius, had provoked against their own commander. The consul Lucius Antonius, the brother of Marcus Antonius, waged war against Caesar on the advice of that same Fulvia. Antonius took into his own party the people whose lands had been assigned to veterans, and after Marcus Lepidus, who had been in charge of the city with an army, had been defeated, he forced his way into the city.
When Caesar was twenty-three, he drove Lucius Antonius, who had been blockaded in the city of Perusia and had attempted to break out several times but had been driven back, to surrender out of hunger. Caesar pardoned him and all his soldiers, destroyed Perusia, and having brought under his control all the troops of the opposing side, he finished the war without any recourse to bloodshed.
With Labienus, a former member of the Pompeian side, as their leader, the Parthians invaded Syria, and once they had defeated Marcus Antonius’ lieutenant Decidius Saxa, they occupied the entire province. When Marcus Antonius, to wage war against Caesar <…> his wife Fulvia <…> to eliminate any obstacle to harmony between the leaders, made peace with Caesar and married his sister Octavia. He revealed with his own evidence that Quintus Salvidienus had plotted evil deeds against Caesar, and Salvidienus was convicted and committed suicide. Antonius’ lieutenant Publius Ventidius defeated the Parthians in battle and drove them from Syria after he had killed their leader, Labienus. Since the enemy next to Italy, Sextus Pompeius, controlled Sicily and blocked the grain-trade, Caesar and Antonius made the treaty with him that he demanded, which gave him Sicily as his province. The book contains in addition the unrest in Africa and the fighting that took place there.
When Sextus Pompeius was again making the sea dangerous with piracy and was not providing the peace he had agreed to, Caesar out of necessity undertook a war with him and fought two naval battles with no decisive outcome. Marcus Antonius’ lieutenant Publius Ventidius defeated the Parthians in battle in Syria and killed their king. The Jews were also subdued by lieutenants of Antonius. The book contains in addition the preparation for the Sicilian war.
There was fighting at sea against Sextus Pompeius with varying results: of Caesar’s two fleets, the one commanded by Agrippa was victorious while the one led by Caesar was destroyed and the soldiers set down on land were in great danger. Then Pompeius was defeated and fled to Sicily. Marcus Lepidus had crossed over from Africa as if he were Caesar’s ally in the war he was to wage against Sextus Pompeius; when he actually attacked Caesar, he was abandoned by his army; and although his office of triumvir was terminated, he was allowed to keep his life. Marcus Agrippa was rewarded by Caesar with a naval crown, an honour that no one before him had achieved.
During the time when Marcus Antonius was living a life of abandon with Cleopatra, he entered Media late and started a war against the Parthians with eighteen legions and 16,000 cavalry. When he had lost two legions, since nothing was going well, he began to retreat. As he returned to Armenia, the Parthians immediately followed and caused great fear and greater danger to the entire army; in his flight Antonius covered 300 miles in twenty-one days. He lost approximately 8,000 men because of the weather. It was his own fault that he suffered from adverse weather in addition to the Parthian campaign he had undertaken so disastrously, since in his rush to return to Cleopatra, he refused to spend the winter in Armenia.
Even as Sextus Pompeius entrusted himself to Marcus Antonius, he was preparing a war against him in Asia, and he was caught by Antonius’ lieutenants and killed. Caesar suppressed a mutiny of the veterans that had broken out and caused great evil, and he subdued the Iapydae and the Dalmatae and the Pannonii. Antonius enticed Artavasdes, king of Armenia, with a promise of safe conduct and then ordered him to be thrown in chains. He gave the kingdom of Armenia to the son he had by Cleopatra, whom he, long since ensnared by love, had begun to regard as his wife.
In Illyricum, Caesar subdued the Dalmatae. Because of his love for Cleopatra, by whom he had two sons, Philadelphus and Alexander, Marcus Antonius wished neither to return to Rome nor, although the term of the triumvirate had expired, to give up his power; he began to prepare to wage war on Rome and Italy, and he amassed equally great naval forces and infantry for it; and he sent a notification of divorce to Octavia, Caesar’s sister. Caesar crossed to Epirus with an army. Then Caesar’s naval battles and successful cavalry battles are recorded.
Marcus Antonius was defeated at Actium by the navy and fled to Alexandria. He was besieged by Caesar, and in the depths of despair at the situation, driven above all by the false rumour that Cleopatra had been killed, he committed suicide. Caesar took control of Alexandria and, in order not to be at the dispensation of the victor, Cleopatra voluntarily took her own life. Caesar returned to Rome and celebrated three triumphs, one for Illyricum, the second for the victory of Actium, the third over Cleopatra, and he put an end to twenty-two years of civil war. Marcus Lepidus, the son of Lepidus who had been a triumvir, formed a conspiracy and fomented war against Caesar, but was caught and killed.
After Gaius Caesar had settled matters and made as definitive arrangement for the provinces, he was given the name of Augustus too; and the month of Sextilis was named in his honour. When he <…> he held assizes at Narbo and conducted a census of the three Gauls that his father Caesar had conquered. War against the Bastarnae and the Moesi and other peoples by Marcus Crassus <…> are recorded.
War conducted by Marcus Crassus against the Thracians and by Caesar against the Spaniards is recorded, and the Salassi, a people of the Alps, were subdued.
[There are no surviving Periochae for Books 136 and 137.]
The Raeti were subdued by Tiberius Nero and Drusus, Caesar’s stepsons. Agrippa, Caesar’s son-in-law, died. The census was conducted by Drusus.
The German communities located on the near and far sides of the Rhine are attacked by Drusus, and the uprising that had arisen in Gaul because of the census is settled. An altar for Caesar the god was dedicated at the confluence of the Arar and the Rhône, and the Aeduan Gaius Julius Vercondaridubnus was made the priest.
The crushing of the Thracians by Lucius Piso, and equally the subduing by Drusus of the Cherusci, the Tencteri, the Chauci, and other German peoples on the far side of the Rhine are recorded. Augustus’ sister Octavia died after she had lost her son Marcellus, who was commemorated by the theatre and portico dedicated in his name.
The war conducted by Drusus against the peoples on the far side of the Rhine is recorded. In this war Chumstinctus and Avectius, military tribunes from the Nervii, fought amongst the leaders. Drusus’ brother Nero subdued the Dalmatae and the Pannonii. Peace was made with the Parthians when the standards that had been captured under Crassus and subsequently under Antonius were returned by their king.
The war conducted by Drusus against the communities of the Germans across the Rhine is recorded. His horse fell on his leg, and thirty days after this happened Drusus died from the fracture. The body was transported to Rome by his brother Nero who, summoned by the news of his health, had rushed to him immediately, and the body was interred in the grave of Gaius Julius. The funeral oration was delivered by his stepfather Caesar Augustus. And at the funeral rites many honours were conferred on him.