52.
Scipio also, as both Polybius and Rutilius
1 write, died this year. For my part, I agree neither with them nor with Valerius
2 —not with them, because in the censorship of Marcus Porcius and Lucius Valerius I find that the
princeps senatus chosen was the same Lucius Valerius who was censor, whereas in the two preceding
lustra3 Africanus had held this distinction, and while he lived, unless he had been expelled from the senate, a disgrace which no one has recorded, another
princeps would not have been chosen in
[
2]
his stead.
4 The refutation of Antias as an authority is the tribune of the people Marcus Naevius,
[p. 385]against whom was directed, according to the title,
5 6 the speech of Publius Africanus. This Naevius, in the books of the magistrates,
7 is named as tribune of the people in the consulship of Publius Claudius and Lucius Porcius, but he entered upon the tribunate in the consulship of Appius Claudius and Marcus Sempronius, on the fourth day before the
[
3]
Ides of December. From that time it is three months to the Ides of March, when Publius Claudius and Lucius
[
4]
Porcius were inaugurated.
8 Thus it seems that he lived in the tribunate of Naevius and that he might have been accused by him, but died before the censorship of Lucius Valerius and Marcus Porcius.
9
[8]
It seems that the deaths of these three men, each the most famous among his own people, are comparable not so much because of the coincidence of their times, as because no one of them met an end worthy of the brilliance of his life. In the first [p. 387]place, none of them either died or was buried in his B.C. 18310 native
[9??]
land. Hannibal and Philopoemen were carried off by poison; Hannibal was an exile, betrayed by his host, Philopoemen, a captive, died in prison and in chains; Scipio, although not an exile or condemned, yet, because he was absent when summoned, on the day he failed to stand trial, pronounced a sentence of voluntary exile not only upon himself but upon his funeral.