istering justice, and as if colleague to the consuls, and elected
under the same auspices, the senate were in consequence made ashamed to
order the curule aediles to be elected from among the patricians. It was
at first agreed, that they should be elected from the commons every
second year: afterwards the matter was left open. Then, in the consulate
of Lucius Genucius and Quintus Servilius, affairs being tranquil both at
home and abroad, that they might at no period be exempt from fear and
danger, a great pestilence arose. They say that a praetor, a curule
aedile, and three plebeian tribunes died of it, and that several other
deaths took place in proportion among the populace; and that pestilence
was made memorable chiefly by the death of Marcus Furius, which, though
occurring at an advanced age, was still much lamented. For he was a
truly extraordinary man under every change of fortune; the first man in
the state in peace and war, before he went into exile; still more
illustrious in exile, whether by the regret felt for him by the state,
which, when in captivity, implored his aid when absent; or by the
success with which, when restored to his country, he restored that
country along with himself. For five and twenty years afterwards (for so
many years afterwards did he live) he uniformly preserved his claims to
such great glory, and was deemed deserving of their considering him,
next after Romulus, a second founder of the city of Rome.

2. The pestilence continued both for this and the following year, Caius
Sulpicius Peticus and Caius Licinius Stolo being consuls. During that
year nothing worth recording took place, except that for the purpose of
imploring the favour of the gods, there was a Lectisternium, the third
time since the building of the city. And when the violence of the
disease was alleviated neither by human measures nor by divine
interference, their minds being broken down by superstition, among
other means of appeasing the wrath of heaven, scenic plays also are said
to have been instituted, a new thing to a warlike people (for hitherto
there had been only the shows of the circus). But the matter was
trivial, (as all beginnings generally are,) and even that itself from a
foreign source. Without any poetry, or gesticulating in imitation of
such poetry, actors were sent for from Etruria, dancing to the measures
of a musician, and exhibited, according to the Tuscan fashion, movements
by no means ungraceful. The