6.
The time for the consular elections was now at hand; for these, since Marcus Aemilius, to whom [p. 235]this responsibility had fallen by lot, was unable to1 come, Gaius Flaminius came to Rome. He announced the choice of Spurius Postumius Albinus and Quintus Marcius Philippus as consuls.
[2]
Then the praetors were elected, Titus Maenius, Publius Cornelius Sulla, Gaius Calpurnius Piso, Marcus Licinius Lucullus, Gaius Aurelius Scaurus, Lucius Quinctius Crispinus.2
At the end of the year, when the new magistrates had already been elected, on the third day before the Nones of March, Gnaeus Manlius Volso triumphed over the Gauls who inhabit Asia.
[3]
His purpose in delaying so long to celebrate his triumph was to avoid pleading his cause under the Petillian
[4??]
law before the praetor Quintus Terentius Culleo and being himself consumed in the flames of another's trial, in which Lucius Scipio had been condemned,3 seeing that the jurors were far more hostile to him than to Scipio because it was rumoured
[5??]
that he, when he succeeded Scipio, had ruined the military discipline, strictly maintained by his predecessor, by permitting every kind of licence. Nor was this only a matter of unfavourable report of what was said to have happened in the province, far from their eyes, but still more of what was apparent every day among his soldiers.
[6]
For the beginnings of foreign luxury were introduced into the City by the army from Asia.
[7]
They for the first time imported into Rome couches of bronze, valuable robes for coverlets, tapestries and other products of the loom, and what at that time was considered luxurious furniture —tables with one [p. 237]pedestal and sideboards.4 Then female players of5 the lute and the harp and other festal delights of entertainments6 were made adjuncts to banquets; the banquets themselves, moreover, began to be planned with both greater care and greater expense.
[8]
At that time the cook, to the ancient Romans the most worthless of slaves, both in their judgment of values and in the use they made of him, began to have value, and what had been merely a necessary service came to be regarded as an art.
[9]
Yet those things which were then looked upon as remarkable were hardly even the germs of the luxury to come.
1 B.C. 187
2 It may be accidental that so many of the names on this list are relatively unfamiliar; it may also be true that conditions had made the Romans somewhat distrustful of the families that had been exercising political and military leadership and had encouraged them to look elsewhere for talent.
3 Manlius probably had good reason to fear prosecution, especially before Culleo, who had displayed his inflexibility in the trial of Scipio. Until his triumph Manlius was outside the City and exempt from prosecution by virtue of his proconsulship; in the brief interval between the triumph and the Ides (when a new praetor would succeed Culleo) a trial could not be completed. See the notes to XXXVIII. liv. 3; 7; lviii. 12 above.
4 Pliny (XXXIV. 14) derives from the annalist Piso a similar list of articles of luxury first imported at this time. It does not necessarily follow that Piso was Livy's source also.
5 B.C. 187
6 He probably includes dancing-girls, buffoons, and the like.
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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