30.26
The
above-described events all happened during this year, the subsequent ones
belong to the year following when M. Servilius the Master of the Horse and
Tiberius Claudius Nero were the consuls. Towards the close of the year a
deputation came from the Greek cities in alliance with us to complain that
their country had been devastated and the envoys who had been sent to
demand redress were not allowed to approach Philip. They also brought
information that 4000 men under Sopater had sailed for Africa to assist the
Carthaginians, taking a considerable sum of money with them. The senate
decided to send to Philip and inform him that they regarded these
proceedings as a violation of the treaty. C. Terentius Varro, C. Mamilius and
M. Aurelius were entrusted with this mission, and they were furnished with
three quinqueremes. The year was rendered memorable by an enormous fire,
in which the houses on the Clivus Publicius were burnt to the ground, and
also by a great flood. Food, however, was extremely cheap, for not only was
the whole of Italy open, now that it was left in peace, but a great quantity of
corn had been sent from Spain, which the curule aediles, M. Valerius Falto
and M. Fabius Buteo, distributed to the people, ward by ward, at four ases
the peck. The death occurred this year of Quintus Fabius Maximus at a very
advanced age, if it be true, as some authorities assert, that he had been augur
for sixty-two years. He was a man who deserved the great surname he bore,
even if he had been the first to bear it. He surpassed his father in his
distinctions, and equalled his grandfather Rullus. Rullus had won more
victories and fought greater battles, but his grandson had Hannibal for an
opponent and that made up for everything. He was held to be cautious rather
than energetic, and though it may be a question whether he was naturally
slow in action or whether he adopted these tactics as especially suitable to
the character of the war, nothing is more certain that that, as Ennius says,
"one man by his slowness restored the State." He had been both augur and
pontifex; his son Q. Fabius Maximus succeeded him as augur, Ser. Sulpicius
Galba as pontifex. The Roman and the Plebeian Games were celebrated by
the aediles M. Sextius Sabinus and Cnaeus Tremellius Flaccus, the former
for one day, the latter were repeated for three days. These two aediles were
elected praetors together with C. Livius Salinator and C. Aurelius Cotta.
Authorities are divided as to who presided over the elections, whether the
consul C. Servilius did so or whether, owing to his being detained in Etruria
by the conspiracy trials which the senate had ordered him to conduct, he
named a Dictator to preside.
