27.
At the same time Gnaeus Cornelius Blasio,1 who had been the predecessor of Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus in the governorship of Nearer Spain, entered the city in ovation by authorization of the senate.
[2]
He displayed in the procession fifteen hundred and fifteen pounds of gold, twenty thousand pounds2 of silver, and thirty-four thousand five hundred denarii of coined silver.
[3]
Lucius Stertinius,3 returning from Farther Spain, without even putting in a claim to a triumph, deposited in the treasury fifty thousand pounds of silver, and out of
[4]
the booty erected two arches in the Forum Boarium in front of the temples of Fortuna and Mater Matuta,4 and one in the Circus Maximus, and on these arches he placed gilded statues.
[5]
These were the events of the winter. [p. 351]
Titus Quinctius was at this time wintering at5 Elatia, and when the allies were making many requests of him, the Boeotians asked and were permitted to recover their fellow-countrymen who had served with Philip.
[6]
Quinctius readily granted this, not because he thought they really deserved it, but because in view of the suspicions entertained about King Antiochus he was anxious to win sympathy for the Roman people among the Greek states.
[7]
When these had been restored, it at once became clear how little gratitude he had won from the Boeotians; for they sent ambassadors to Philip, thanking him for restoring their countrymen, just as if that boon had been granted to them and not to Quinctius and the Romans,6 and at the next election they chose as Boeotarch7 one Brachyllas, for no other reason than that he had commanded the Boeotians who had served
[8]
with the king, passing over Zeuxippus and Pisistratus and others who had sponsored the alliance with Rome.
[9]
These men were incensed at this action for the moment and also fearful for the future:
[10]
since such things happened with the Roman army encamped almost at the gates, what in the world would become of them when the Romans had gone back to Italy, and Philip, from his kingdom near by, was aiding his friends and
[11]
opposing those who had belonged to the other party?
1 See XXXI. 1. 11, where he is called Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus.
2 Livy does not specify the unit here, but comparison with the next clause suggests that this is silver bullion. The coins of the following phrase are probably Spanish and comparable in value to the Roman denarius.
3 He had gone to Spain with Blasio (XXXI. 1. 11).
4 These may be the well-known temples called by these names and still standing in this region. The arches were probably formal entrances to the temples.
5 B.C. 196
6 If the text is right as it stands here, Livy implies that Quinctius transmitted to Philip, with his approval, the request, and that the Boeotians ignored his intercession on their behalf.
7 A typical Greek coinage, used as the title of the presiding magistrate of a Greek state.
Livy. Books XXXI-XXXIV with an English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1935: no copyright notice.
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