History of Rome

​These things were done in Africa in that year; the subsequent events extend into that year in which Marcus Servilius Geminus, who was then master of the horse, and Tiberius Claudius Nero were made consuls.

​For the rest, at the close of the preceding year, when envoys from the allied cities in Greece had complained that their lands had been devastated by the royal garrisons and that the envoys who had set out for Macedonia to demand restitution had not been admitted to King Philip, ​and at the same time had reported that four thousand soldiers with Sopatrus as leader were said to have been crossed over into Africa to serve as a guard for the Carthaginians, and that a considerable amount of money had been sent along with them, ​the senate decreed that envoys should be sent to the king to announce that these things appeared to the conscript fathers to have been done contrary to the treaty. Gaius Terentius Varro, Gaius Mamilius, and Marcus Aurelius were sent; to them three quinqueremes were given.

​The year was remarkable for a huge fire by which the Publician Hill was burned to the ground, and for a great flood, and for the low price of grain, besides the fact that all Italy was opened up by peace, ​and also because Marcus Valerius Falto and Marcus Fabius Buteo, the curule aediles, distributed to the people ward by ward a great quantity of grain sent from Spain, at four asses per peck.

​In the same year Quintus Fabius Maximus died at an advanced age, if indeed it is true that he had been an augur for sixty-two years, as some authors state.

​He was certainly a man worthy of so great a cognomen, even if it had begun as a new one with him. He surpassed his father’s honors and equaled his grandfather’s. His grandfather, Rullus, was distinguished for more victories and greater battles; but a single enemy, Hannibal, can make all things equal.

​Yet he was considered more cautious than prompt; and just as you might doubt whether he was a delayer by temperament or because it was uniquely suited to the war then being waged, so nothing is more certain than that one man restored our state by delaying, as Ennius says.

​In his place, his son Quintus Fabius Maximus was inaugurated as augur; in his place as pontiff — for he held two priesthoods — Servius Sulpicius Galba was appointed.

​The Roman Games were repeated for one day, and the Plebeian Games three times in their entirety, by the aediles Marcus Sextius Sabinus and Gnaeus Tremellio Flaccus. Both of them were made praetors, and with them Gaius Livius Salinator and Gaius Aurelius Cotta.

​Different authors make it uncertain whether the consul Gaius Servilius held the elections of that year, or whether, because affairs in Etruria detained him while holding inquiries decreed by the senate concerning conspiracies of the leading citizens, Publius Sulpicius, who was named dictator by him, held them.