45.
For the following year they announced the election of Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Quintus Fabius Labeo as consuls.
Marcus Claudius and Quintus Fabius, on the Ides1 of March, the day on which they were inaugurated, brought up the question of provinces for themselves and the praetors.
[2]
The praetors who had been elected were Gaius Valerius, the flamen Dialis, who had been a candidate the preceding year also, and Spurius Postumius Albinus and Publius Cornelius Sisenna, Lucius Pupius, Lucius Julius, Gnaeus Sicinius.2
[3]
To the consuls the Ligurians were decreed as their province, with the same armies which Publius Claudius and Lucius Porcius had had. The Spains, excluded from the lot, were reserved for the praetors of the previous year, along with their armies.
[4]
The praetors were ordered to draw lots with the provision that the province of the flamen Dialis should be one of the jurisdictions in Rome:3 the praetorship which he drew dealt with cases between citizens and aliens.
[5]
The civil jurisdiction fell to Cornelius Sisenna, Sicily to Spurius Postumius, Apulia to Lucius Pupius, Gaul to Lucius Julius, Sardinia to Gnaeus Sicinius. Lucius Julius was directed to [p. 365]hasten his departure.
[6]
Transalpine Gauls, as has4 been said before,5 crossing into Italy by a pass hitherto unknown, were building a city in the territory which now belongs to Aquileia.
[7]
The praetor was instructed to prevent them from doing this, so far as it was possible for him to do so without war. If they had to be prevented by arms, he was to inform the consuls: it was the senate's desire that one of them should lead the legions against the Gauls.
[8]
At the end of the preceding year an election had been held to choose an augur in the place of Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus, who had died; Spurius Postumius Albinus had been elected.6
1 B.C. 183
2 It seems strange that Livy should have separated the praetorian election from the consular in this fashion, and the use of conjunctions in this sentence is unusual. Yet the MSS. show no signs of dislocation, and the tense of creati erant shows that the sentence was meant to be here, unless it was emended by some very early scribe after the dislocation had occurred.
3 He was not permitted, by virtue of his priesthood, to be away from Rome overnight (V. lii. 13). Livy says nothing about the arrangement about his oath, which he had to take by proxy when he held the office of aedile (XXXI. i. 7 and the note).
4 B.C. 183
5 Cf. xxii. 6-7 above and the note.
6 I have chosen the simplest course, by retaining the reading of M as the nearest possible approach to the true text now available. The various readings of ς differ as to the proper nouns but agree on creatus erat, so that Mς all preserve the apparent error of fact that Postumius is said to have been elected, whereas co-optation was the rule until 104 B.C. There is, then, nothing to be gained by piecemeal emendation. The question of dislocation again arises (cf. the note to sect. 2 above), and it can be argued here that the displacement was deliberate, for the sake of continuity with the following sentence, but this emphasis seems disproportionate to the historical or rhetorical importance of the sentence. Again the MSS. show no signs of dislocation and the tense of the verbs must have been changed very early, if at all.
Livy. Books XXXVIII-XXXIX with an English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1936: published without copyright notice.
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