into the Megalesian games.  Likewise, Caius Licinius Lucullus, being appointed duumvir, dedicated the temple of Youth in the great circus.  This temple had been vowed sixteen years before by Marcus Livius, consul, on the day wherein he cut off Hasdrubal and his army; and the same person, when censor, in the consulate of Marcus Cornelius and Publius Sempronius, had contracted for the building of it.  Games were also exhibited on occasion of this consecration, and every thing was performed with the greater degree of religious zeal, on account of the impending war with Antiochus.

37.  At the beginning of the year in which those transactions passed, after Manius Acilius had gone to open the campaign, and while the other consul, Publius Cornelius, yet remained in Rome, two tame oxen, it is said, climbed up by ladders on the tiles of a house in the Carina.  The aruspices ordered them to be burned alive, and their ashes to be thrown into the Tiber.  It was reported, that several showers of stones had fallen at Tarracina and Amiternum; that, at Minturnae, the temple of Jupiter, and the shops round the forum, were struck by lightning; that, at Vulturnum, in the mouth of the river, two ships were struck by lightning, and burnt to ashes.  On occasion of these prodigies, the decemvirs, being ordered by a decree of the senate to consult the Sibylline books, declared, that “a fast ought to be instituted in honour of Ceres, and the same observed every fifth year; that the nine days’ worship ought to be solemnized, and a supplication for one day; and that they should observe the supplication, with garlands on their heads; also that the consul Publius Cornelius should sacrifice to such deities, and with such victims, as the decemvirs should direct.”  When he had used every means to avert the wrath of the gods, by duly fulfilling vows and expiating prodigies, the consul went to his province; and, ordering the proconsul Cneius Domitius to disband his army, and go home to Rome, he marched his own legions into the territory of the Boians.

38.  Nearly at the same time, the Ligurians, having collected an army under the sanction of their devoting law, made an unexpected attack, in the night, on the camp of the proconsul Quintus Minucius.  Minucius kept his troops, until daylight, drawn up within the rampart, and watchful to prevent the enemy from scaling any part of the fortifications At the first light, he made a sally by two gates at once:  but the Ligurians did not, as he had expected, give way to his first onset; on the contrary, they maintained a dubious contest for more than two hours.  At last, as other and still other troops came out from the camp, and fresh men took the place of those who were wearied in the fight, the Ligurians, who besides other hardships, felt a great loss of strength from the want of sleep, betook themselves to flight.  Above four thousand of the enemy were killed; the Romans and allies lost not quite three hundred.  About