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The snow had now entirely covered the face of the country, and they could no longer dispense with the shelter of houses: the consul therefore led home his troops from Samnium. While he was on his way to Rome, a triumph was decreed him with universal consent; and accordingly he triumphed while in office, and with extraordinary splendour, considering the circumstances of those times. The cavalry and infantry marched in the procession, adorned with presents. Great numbers of civic, vallar, and mural crowns were seen.[[8]] The spoils of the Samnites were inspected with much curiosity, and compared, in respect of magnificence and beauty, with those taken by his father, which were well known, from being frequently exhibited as ornaments of the public places. Several prisoners of distinction, renowned for their own exploits and those of their ancestors, were led in the cavalcade. There were carried in the train two millions and thirty-three thousand asses in weight.[[9]] This money was said to be produced by the sale of the prisoners. Of silver, taken in the cities, one thousand three hundred and thirty pounds. All the silver and brass were lodged in the treasury, no share of this part of the spoil being given to the soldiers. The ill humour in the commons was further exasperated, because the tax for the payment of the army was collected by contribution; whereas, said they, if the vain parade of conveying the produce of the spoil to the treasury had been disregarded, donations might have been made to the soldiers out of the spoil, and the pay of the army also supplied out of that fund. The temple of Quirinus, vowed by his father when dictator, (for that he himself had vowed it in the heat of battle, I do not find in any ancient writer, nor indeed could he in so short a time have finished the building of it,) the son, in the office of consul, dedicated and adorned with military spoils. And of these, so great was the abundance, that not only that temple and the forum were decorated with them, but some were also distributed among the allies and colonies in the neighbourhood, to serve as ornaments to their temples and public places. Immediately after his triumph, he led his army into winter quarters in the territory of Vescia; because that country was harassed by the Samnites. Meanwhile, in Etruria, the consul Carvilius having set about laying siege to Troilium, suffered four hundred and seventy of the richest inhabitants to depart; they had paid a large sum of money for permission to leave the place: the town, with the remaining multitude, he took by storm. He afterwards reduced, by force, five forts strongly situated, wherein were slain two thousand four hundred of the enemy, and not quite two thousand made prisoners. To the Faliscians, who sued for peace, he granted a truce for a year, on condition of their furnishing a hundred thousand asses in weight,[[10]] and that year's pay for his army. This business completed, he returned home to a triumph, which, though it was less illustrious than that of his colleague, in respect of his share in the defeat of the Samnites, was yet raised to an equality with it, by his having put a termination to the war in Etruria. He carried into the treasury three hundred and ninety thousand asses in weight.[[11]] Out of the remainder of the money accruing to the public from the spoils, he contracted for the building of a temple to Fors Fortuna, near to that dedicated to the same goddess by king Servius Tullius; and gave to the soldiers, out of the spoil, one hundred and two asses each, and double that sum to the centurions and horsemen, who received this donative the more gratefully, on account of the parsimony of his colleague.
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The favour of the consul saved from a trial, before the people, Postumius; who, on a prosecution being commenced against him by Marcus Scantius, plebeian tribune, evaded, as was said, the jurisdiction of the people, by procuring the commission of lieutenant-general, so the indictment against him could only be held out as a threat, and not put in force. The The year having now elapsed, new plebeian tribunes had come unto office; and for these, in consequence of some irregularity on their appointments, others had been, within five days after, substituted in their room. The lustrum was closed this year by the censors Publius Cornelius Arvina and Caius Marcius Rutilus. The number of citizens rated was two hundred and sixty-two thousand three hundred and twenty-two. These were the twenty-sixth pair of censors since the first institution of that office; and this the nineteenth lustrum. In this year, persons who had been presented with crowns, in consideration of meritorious behaviour in war, first began to wear them at the exhibition of the Roman games. Then, for the first time, palms were conferred on the victors according to a custom introduced from Greece. In the same year the paving of the road from the temple of Mars to Bovillae was completed by the curule aediles, who exhibited those games out of fines levied on the farmers of the pastures. Lucius Papirius presided at the consular election, and returned consuls Quintus Fabius Gurges, son of Maximus, and Decius Junius Brutus Scaeva. Papirius himself was made praetor. This year, prosperous in many particulars, was scarcely sufficient to afford consolation for one calamity, a pestilence, which afflicted both the city and country: the mortality was prodigious. To discover what end, or what remedy, was appointed by the gods for that calamity, the books were consulted: in the books it was found that Aesculapius must be brought to Rome from Epidaurus. Nor were any steps taken that year in that matter, because the consuls were fully occupied in the war, except that a supplication was performed to Aesculapius for one day.
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Here ten books of the original are lost, making a chasm of seventy-five years. The translator's object being to publish the work of Livy only, he has not thought it his duty to attempt to supply this deficiency, either by a compilation of his own, or by transcribing or translating those of others. The leader, however, who may be desirous of knowing the events which took place during this interval, will find as complete a detail of them as can now be given, in Hooke's or Rollin's Roman History.The contents of the lost books have been preserved, and are as follows--