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.

[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—­]

BOOK XI.—­[Y.R. 460.  B.C. 292.] Fabius Gurges, consul, having fought an unsuccessful battle with the Samnites, the senate deliberate about dismissing him from the command of the army; are prevailed upon not to inflict that disgrace upon him, principally by the entreaties of his father, Fabius Maximus, and by his promising to join the army, and serve, in quality of lieutenant-general, under his son:  which promise he performs, and the consul, aided by his counsel and co-operation, obtains a victory over the Samnites, and a triumph in consequence.  C. Pontius, the general of the Samnites, led in triumph before the victor’s carriage, and afterwards beheaded.  A plague at Rome. [Y.R. 461.  B.C. 291.] Ambassadors sent to Epidaurus, to bring from thence to Rome the statue of Aesculapius:  a serpent, of itself, goes