rawing lots,
his colleague not opposing it, because the care of the sacred affairs
required the presence of the chief pontiff in Italy; to Crassus,
Bruttium. The provinces of the praetors were then put to the
determination of lots, when the city jurisdiction fell to Servilius;
Ariminum, for so they called Gaul, to Spurius Lucretius; Sicily to
Lucius Aemilius; Sardinia to Cneius Octavius. A senate was held in
the Capitol, when, on the motion of Publius Scipio, a decree was made,
that he should exhibit the games which he had vowed in Spain during
the mutiny of the soldiers, out of the money which he had himself
brought into the treasury.

39. He then introduced into the senate the Saguntine ambassadors,
the eldest of whom thus spoke: "Although there remains no degree of
suffering, conscript fathers, beyond what we have endured, in order
that we might keep our faith towards you to the last; yet such are
the benefits which we have received both from yourselves and your
generals, that we do not repent of the calamities to which we have
ourselves been exposed. On our account you undertook the war, and
having undertaken it, you have continued to carry it on for now the
fourteenth year with such inflexible perseverance, that frequently you
have both yourselves been reduced, and have brought the Carthaginians
to the last extremity. At a time when you had a war of such a
desperate character in Italy, and Hannibal as your antagonist, you
sent your consul with an army into Spain, to collect, as it were, the
remains of our wreck. Publius and Cneius Cornelius, from the time they
entered the province, never ceased from adopting such measures as were
favourable to us and detrimental to our enemies. First of all,
they restored to us our town; and, sending persons to collect our
countrymen, who were sold and dispersed throughout all Spain, restored
them from a state of slavery to freedom. When our circumstances, from
being wretched in the extreme, had nearly assumed a desirable state,
your generals Publius and Cneius Cornelius fell more to be lamented by
ourselves even than by you. Then truly we seemed to have been dragged
back from distant places to our ancient abode, to perish again, and
witness the second destruction of our country. Nor did it appear
that there was any need forsooth of a Carthaginian army or general
to effect our destruction; but that we might be annihilated by the
Turdulans, our most inveterate enemies, who had also