CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE WAR WITH JUGURTHA.

B.C. 111-108.

IN the consulship of P. Scipio Nasica and L. Calpurnius Bestia (B.c. 111) a large part of Rome was burnt and the temple of the Great Idaean mother on the Palatine. A statue of Claudia, which stood in the vestibule of the temple, remained on its pedestal untouched by the fire; and the statue escaped a second time when the restored temple was again destroyed in A.D. 3. This Claudia was probably the Vestal or the matron, for the opinions differ on this point, who was one of the Roman women appointed to receive with due honour on its arrival in the Tiber the stone from Pessinus, which the people of that place called the Mother of the Gods. King Attalus I. of Pergamum gave the precious treasure to the Romans, who brought it from the central parts of Asia Minor all the way to Rome, and built the Mother a temple on the Palatine.

M. Minucius Rufus, or Q. Minucius Rufus, as Sallust names him, the colleague of Sp. Postumius Albinus (B.c. 110), had Macedonia for his province. There was still disturbance in those parts, and Rufus held the province as proconsul in the following year.

It is a great question with the critics in what year P. Licinius Crassus Dives proposed and carried the Lex Licinia Sumptuaria. There are at least as good reasons for assigning the Lex to B.C. 110 as to any other year. This sumptuary legislation has been noticed before, and it is worth notice as often as it occurs. Luxury and extravagance still went on

may

increasing at Rome, and those who wished to check them thought that it could be done by legislation. Gellius (xv. 8) quotes part of an old speech of an orator whom he names Favorinus. This Favorinus is a name quite unknown, and it be that the title of Gellius' chapter, which declares that Favorinus delivered this speech in favour of the Lex Licinia, is not genuine. The extract however will give us some notion of the luxury of the Romans at that time. It states "that the masters in the cooking art do not admit any dinner to be perfect, unless, when you are in the full enjoyment of a dish, it is immediately removed and succeeded by another and a better. Such a series of courses was called 'the flower of a supper' by all lovers of expense and daintiness. These are the men who maintain that there is no bird which ought to be wholly eaten except the beccafico; as to other birds and the domestic fowls, it is a mean entertainment, unless sufficient is served up of the hinder parts to satisfy the guests; those who eat the forepart of birds and domestic fowls are men without a palate." Whether this speech belongs to the date B.C. 110 or not, we see that the Romans had begun to establish the principles of gastronomy, and were laying the foundation of the science which was afterwards brought to perfection under the later republic and the empire. Macrobius (Sat. ii. 13) informs us that the Licinia Lex was so well received by the aristocratical class that a senatusconsultum declared that it should be in force from the time of its promulgation (notice) and before it was confirmed by the popular vote. It is impossible to conceive what was the reason for this great zeal and hurry. One cause, we are told, was this. It was some time since the Fannia was enacted, and people were beginning to disregard it. Accordingly it was proposed to give the law fresh life by enacting it again, for the Licinia was really the same as the Fannia with a few alterations, which of course were improvements. We must conclude that the Fannia had not been enforced. Macrobius sums up the chief provisions of the Licinia in these terms: on the Kalendae, Nonae, and Roman Nundinae every person was allowed to spend only thirty asses each day on eatables; on other days the amount of

dried flesh and salt fish was limited, only a pound of salt fish being allowed, quite enough of such stuff one would suppose for any single person. But to make amends for this restriction a man might indulge as freely as he liked, so Gellius (ii. 24) reports this part of the law, in any thing which was the product of the earth, the vine, or of fruit trees. He might therefore get drunk, if he liked. One object of the Lex may have been to keep down the prices of meat, fowls, and fish and to bring people to a vegetable diet, for such, as Gellius hints, would be a supper according to the Lex Licinia. The law would interfere terribly with the pleasures of those gourmands who would only eat the nice bits. Gellius states a few other particulars about the Licinia, such as the larger allowance permitted on the occasion of a marriage feast. We know nothing of the penalties of this law, or how it was enforced. It is not an improbable conjecture that this and other absurd laws prepared the way for the class of people named 'delatores' (informers), who under the empire were the terror of every body.

While Metellus was carrying on the war against Jugurtha (B.c. 109), his colleague M. Junius Silanus was in the south of France, in the country which the Romans now named the Provincia. The Cimbri who had threatened Italy in the consulship of Carbo on the side of the Noric Alps were now in Gaul, and the consul Silanus, according to Livy's Epitome, was defeated by them. Eutropius, on the contrary, says that Silanus defeated the Cimbri, but this evidence is also contradicted by that of Asconius (in Cornelianam, p. 68, Orelli), who speaks of Silanus being unsuccessful against the Cimbri. According to the order of events as they stand in Livy's Epitome, the envoys of the Cimbri after the defeat of Silanus asked the Senate to give them lands to settle on, and the Senate refused. In fact they had none to give.

The proconsul of Macedonia, M. Minucius Rufus, gained a victory over the Scordisci, who must have given the Romans a great deal of trouble, for they had been defeated several times before. The Scordisci were aided by the Daci, a people north of the Danube, or by the Triballi, according to Eutropius. The proconsul, who was inferior in numbers to the

enemy, made use of a stratagem, which Frontinus has recorded among the numerous military tricks of antiquity. He sent on his brother with a few horsemen and some trumpeters, who were ordered to show themselves somewhere in the rear or flank of the enemy as soon as the battle began, and to sound the trumpets. The sounds were re-echoed by the mountains, and the enemy believing that a great force was going to fall on them turned to flight. Florus, in his vague Epitome, speaks of Minucius losing many of his men as they were crossing the frozen Hebrus. Minucius had a triumph for his victory, and he built a Porticus at Rome somewhere near the site of the Circus Flaminius.

The censorship of M. Aemilius Scaurus belongs to B.c. 109. The epitomator of Livy has not recorded any Lustrum. Scaurus built, as Aurelius Victor says, the Pons Milvius or Mulvius (Ponte Molle), which was over the Tiber, and beyond the limits of the city. But there was already a bridge named the Mulvius, and so we must suppose that Scaurus only repaired or rebuilt it. Scaurus also continued the coast road from Pisae in Etruria (Pisa) through Luna to Vada Sabbata (Vado) west of Genua, and from Sabbata over the mountains to Dertona (Tortona) in the basin of the Po. The continuation of the sea-coast road from Pisae is often called the Aurelia, which was the name of the original coast road from Rome through Alsium to Pisae before this extension in the censorship of Scaurus. But Strabo gives the name Aemilia to the continuation of the Aurelia from Pisae to Sabbata and Dertona. It seems however that the whole coast road, with its extension from Sabbata to Forum Julii (Fréjus) in Gaul, was usually named the Aurelia. The older road. properly called the Aemilia began at Ariminum, where the Flaminia terminated, and it ran in a straight line in the basin of the Po from Ariminum through Bononia (Bologna), Mutina (Modena), and Parma to Placentia (Piacenza) on the Po. It was continued from the north side of the Po to Mediolanum (Milan). Scaurus also drained the flat marshy lands which extended from the Po to Parma by making navigable canals, as Strabo describes it. The Trebia and the other rivers which flow into the Po between Placen

It

tia and Parma, sometimes brought down more water than the Po could carry off, and the country to a great extent was made a swamp. If the Po could not carry off all the water, Scaurus could not drain the country by his canals, for the water must ultimately go into the Po. When the great stream was full, there may always have been some difficulty in preventing the tributaries which descend from the Apennines from drowning the flat lands, but in ordinary seasons the bed of the Po would be sufficient. seems probable that Scaurus improved the river embankments, and gave a better outfall to the water from the Apennines by making cuts in those parts where the course of the Trebia and the other rivers was tortuous, and thus giving to these tributaries of the Po a straighter course and deeper channels. The magnificent censor also decorated Rome. The Capitoline contained many sacred buildings besides the temple of Jupiter. Numa, it is said, laid the foundations of a temple of Fides or Fidelity. The temple was not consecrated till the first Punic war, and we may therefore assume that it was not completed before that time. It was rebuilt or restored and consecrated by Scaurus. This temple stood near the temple of Jupiter, and was capacious enough to serve sometimes for the meetings of the Senate, as it did on the day when Tiberius Gracchus was killed. Scaurus also restored the temple of Mens or Prudence, which had been erected after the defeat of the Romans at the Trasimene lake. The colleague of Scaurus in the censorship, M. Livius Drusus, died during his office, and it seems that Scaurus ought to have resigned according to the usual practice, but he refused until the Tribunes threatened to put him in prison. There was no Lustrum, as it appears, and this omission is explained by the fact of one of the censors having died, for both were required to be present at the Lustrum. The consuls for the year B.c. 108 were Servius Sulpicius Galba and M. Aurelius Scaurus. Galba probably went to Spain. Scaurus had Gallia for his province. Metellus was continued in his command in Numidia.

During the winter C. Marius was at Utica. On one occasion when he was sacrificing, the haruspex, whose art it was