History of Rome

​The year having already expired, the new tribunes of the plebs entered upon their magistracy; and because they themselves had been elected under an irregular omen, five days later others were substituted in their place.

​A lustrum was performed that year by the censors Publius Cornelius Arvina and Gaius Marcius Rutilus; two hundred and sixty-two thousand three hundred and twenty-one citizens were registered.

​These were the twenty-sixth censors since the first, and it was the nineteenth lustrum. In the same year, those who had been crowned for the first time on account of successful exploits in war spectated the Roman Games, and then for the first time, by a custom imported from Greece, palms were given to the victors.

​In the same year, by the curule aediles who exhibited those games, a road was paved from the basalt temple-stone of Mars to Bovillae, using the fines of several condemned cattle-owners. Lucius Papirius held the consular elections;

​he elected as consuls Quintus Fabius Gurges, son of Maximus, and Decimus Junius Brutus Scaeva; Papirius himself was made praetor.

​A year joyful in many respects was scarcely sufficient to alleviate a single evil, a pestilence wasting both the city and the countryside at the same time; and the disaster was already like a portent, and the books were consulted as to what end or what remedy for that evil would be given by the gods.

​It was found in the books that Aesculapius must be summoned from Epidaurus to Rome. Nor was anything done in that matter during that year, because the consuls were occupied with war, except that a supplication was held to Aesculapius for one day.