ians and Corsicans rebel, and are subdued. [Y.R. 514. B.C. 238.]
Tuccia, a vestal, found guilty of incest. War declared against the
Illyrians, who had slain an ambassador; they are subdued and brought
to submission. [Y.R. 515. B.C. 237.] The number of praetors increased
to four. The Transalpine Gauls make an irruption into Italy: are
conquered and put to the sword. [Y.R. 516. B.C. 236.] The Roman army,
in conjunction with the Latins, is said to have amounted to no less
than three hundred thousand men. [Y.R. 517. B.C. 235.] The Roman army
for the first time crosses the Po; fights with and subdues the
Insubrian Gauls. [Y.R. 530. B.C. 222.] Claudius Marcellus, consul,
having slain Viridomarus, the general of the Insubrian Gauls, carries
off the _spolia opima_. [Y.R. 531. B.C. 221.] The Istrians
subdued; also the Illyrians, who had rebelled. [Y.R. 532. B.C. 220.]
The censors hold a lustrum, in which the number of the citizens is
found to be two hundred and seventy thousand two hundred and thirteen.
The sons of freed-men formed into four tribes; the Esquiline,
Palatine, Suburran, and Colline. [Y.R. 533. B.C. 219.] Caius
Flaminius, censor, constructs the Flaminian road, and builds the
Flaminian circus.

BOOK XXI.

_Origin of the second Punic war. Hannibal's character. In violation
of a treaty, he passes the Iberus. Besieges Saguntum, and at length
takes it. The Romans send ambassadors to Carthage; declare war.
Hannibal crosses the Pyrenees: makes his way through Gaul; then
crosses the Alps; defeats the Romans at the Ticinus. The Romans again
defeated at the Trebia. Cneius Cornelius Scipio defeats the
Carthaginians in Spain, and takes Hanno, their general, prisoner._

1. I may be permitted to premise at this division of my work, what
most historians [Footnote: Thucydides seems to be specially referred
to.] have professed at the beginning of their whole undertaking; that
I am about to relate the most memorable of all wars that were ever
waged: the war which the Carthaginians, under the conduct of Hannibal,
maintained with the Roman people. For never did any states and nations
more efficient in their resources engage in contest; nor had they
themselves at any other period so great a degree of power and energy.
They brought into action too no arts of war unknown to each other, but
those which had been tried in the first Punic war; and so various was
the fortune of the conflict, and so doubtful the victory, that they
w