to entrust the
business to his colleague Caius Laelius, the father of this Laelius,
who was surnamed the Wise; Publius Africanus, the elder brother of
Lucius Scipio, rose up, and entreated them not to cast such a slur on
his family, and said that in his brother there was united the greatest
possible valour, with the most consummate prudence, and that he too,
notwithstanding his age, and all the exploits which he had performed,
would attend his brother as his lieutenant. And after he had said
this, nothing was changed in respect to Scipio's province, nor was any
extraordinary command sought for any more in that war than in those
two terrible Punic wars which had preceded it, which were carried
on and conducted to their termination either by the consuls or by
dictators, or than in the war with Pyrrhus, or in that with Philippus,
or afterwards in the Achaean war, or in the third Punic war, for which
last the Roman people took great care to select a suitable general,
Publius Scipio, but at the same time it appointed him to the
consulship in order to conduct it.

VIII. War was to be waged against Aristonicus in the consulship of
Publius Licunius and Lucius Valerius. The people was consulted as to
whom it wished to have the management of that war. Crassus, the consul
and Pontifex Maximus, threatened to impose a fine upon Flaccus his
colleague the priest of Mars, if he deserted the sacrifices. And
though the people remitted the fine, still they ordered the priest to
submit to the commands of the pontiff. But even then the Roman people
did not commit the management of the war to a private individual,
although there was Africanus, who the year before had celebrated a
triumph over the people of Numantia, and who was far superior to all
men in martial renown and military skill; yet he only gained the
votes of two tribunes. And accordingly the Roman people entrusted the
management of the war to Crassus the consul rather than to the private
individual Africanus. As to the commands given to Cnaeus Pompeius, that
most illustrious man, that first of men, they were carried by some
turbulent tribunes of the people. For the war against Sertorius was
only given by the senate to a private individual because the consuls
refused it, when Lucius Philippus said that he sent the general in the
place of the two consuls, not as proconsul.

What then is the object of these comitia? Or what is the meaning of
this canvassing which that most wise an