25.5
Such was
the issue of the dishonesty of the State contractors, and their daring attempt
to screen themselves. The next thing was the election of the chief pontiff.
The new pontiff, M. Cornelius Cethegus, conducted the election, which was
very keenly contested. There were three candidates: Q. Fulvius Flaccus, the
consul, who had previously been twice consul as well as censor; T. Manlius
Torquatus, who could also point to two consulships and the censorship; and
P. Licinius Crassus, who was about to stand for the curale aedileship. This
young man defeated his old and distinguished competitors; before him there
had been no one for a hundred and twenty years, with the sole exception of
P. Cornelius Calussa, who had been elected chief pontiff without having first
sat in a curule chair. The consuls found the levying of troops a difficult task,
for there were not sufficient men of the required age to answer both
purposes, that of raising the new City legions and also bringing the existing
armies up to their full strength. The senate, however, would not allow them
to give up the attempt, and ordered two commissions, each consisting of
three members, to be appointed, one to work within a radius of fifty miles
from the City, the other outside that radius. They were to inspect all the
villages, market towns, and boroughs, and ascertain the total number of
free-born men in each, and were to make soldiers of all who appeared strong
enough to bear arms, even though they were below the military age. The
tribunes of the plebs might, if they thought good, make a proposal to the
people that those who had taken the military oath when under seventeen
years of age should have their pay reckoned to them on the same scale as if
they had been enlisted at seventeen, or older. The commissions so appointed
recruited all the free-born men in the country districts. About this time a
despatch was read in the senate from M. Marcellus in Sicily, in which he put
forward the request made to him by the soldiers who were serving with P.
Lentulus. These were the remains of the army of Cannae, they had been sent
away to Sicily, as has been stated above, and were not to be brought back to
Italy before the Punic war had come to an end.
