the books; the nine days’ festival was celebrated, a supplication proclaimed, and the city purified.  At the same time, Marcus Porcius Cato dedicated a chapel to Maiden Victory, near the temple of Victory, two years after he had vowed it.  During this year, a Latin colony was established in the Thurian territory by commissioners appointed for the purpose, Cneius Manlius Vulso, Lucius Apustius Fullo, and Quintus Aelius Tubero, who had proposed the order for its settlement.  There went out thither three thousand foot and three hundred horsemen; a very small number in proportion to the extent of the land.  Thirty acres might have been given to each footman, and sixty to a horseman, but, by the advice of Apustius, a third part was reserved, that they might afterwards, when they should judge proper, send out thither a new colony.  The footmen received twenty acres each, the horsemen forty.

10.  The year was now near a close, and with regard to the election of consuls, emulation was more fiercely kindled than was ever known before.  The candidates, both patrician and plebeian, were many and powerful:  Publius Cornelius Scipio, son to Cneius, and who had lately come home from Spain, having performed great exploits; Lucius Quinctius Flamininus, who had commanded the fleet in Greece; and Cneius Manlius Vulso; these were the patricians.  Then there were, of plebeian rank, Caius Laelius, Cneius Domitius, Caius Livius Salinator, and Manius Acilius.  The eyes of all men were turned on Quinctius and Cornelius; for, being both patricians, they sued for one place; and they were both of them recommended by high and recent renown in war.  Above every thing else, the brothers of the candidates, the two most illustrious generals of the age, increased the violence of the struggle.  Scipio’s fame was the more splendid, and in proportion to its greater splendour, the more obnoxious to envy.  That of Quinctius was the most recent, as he had triumphed in the course of that very same year.  Besides, the former had now for almost ten years been continually in people’s sight; which circumstance, by the mere effect of satiety, causes great characters to be less revered.  He had been a second time consul after the final defeat of Hannibal, and also censor.  All Quinctius’s claims to the favour of the public were fresh and new; since his triumph, he had neither asked nor received anything from the people; “he solicited,” he said, “in favour of his own brother, not of a half-brother; in favour of his lieutenant-general, and partner in the administration of the war; his brother having conducted the operations by sea, while he did the same on land.”  By these arguments he carried his point.  His brother was preferred to the brother of Africanus, though supported by the whole Cornelian family, and while one of the same family presided at the election, and notwithstanding the very honourable testimony given by the senate, in his favour, when it adjudged him to be the best man in the state:  and as such,