39.
Claudius, the consul, had at last left the city when a very violent storm, which he encountered between the harbour of Cosa
1 and the Portus Loretanus, caused him great alarm.
[
2]
Then after reaching Populonium
2 and lying at anchor there until the rest of the storm should abate, he crossed over to the Island of Elba and from Elba to Corsica, from Corsica to Sardinia. There as he was passing the Raving Mountains, a much more savage storm, descending upon him in a much more dangerous situation, scattered the fleet. Many of the ships were leaking and had lost their rigging, some were wrecked.
[
3]
In this storm-tossed, damaged condition the fleet reached Carales.
3 There, while the beached ships were undergoing repairs, winter overtook him, and as the turn of the year came while no one sought to prolong his command, it was as a private citizen that Tiberius Claudius brought the fleet back to Rome.
[
4]
Marcus Servilius, to avoid being recalled to
[p. 515]the city to hold the elections, named Gaius Servilius
4 Geminus
5 dictator and went to his province. The dictator named Publius Aelius Paetus master of the horse.
[
5]
Repeatedly a date for the elections was announced, but storms prevented them from taking place. Consequently, since the old magistrates had left office on the eve of the Ides of March and new men had not been elected in their places, the state had no curule magistrates.
[6]
Titus Manlius Torquatus,6 the pontiff, died that year and Gaius Sulpicius Galba was named in his place. The Roman Games were repeated three times throughout by Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Quintus Fulvius, the curule aediles.
[7]
For having secretly abstracted money from the Treasury, clerks and messengers of the aediles were condemned on evidence of an informer, not without disgrace for Lucullus as aedile.
[8]
Publius Aelius Tubero and Lucius Laetorius, owing to a defect in their election as plebeian aediles, abdicated their office after they had conducted the games and in connexion with them a banquet for Jupiter, and had placed on the Capitol three statues of which the cost was met by money paid in fines. The festival of Ceres was under the direction of the dictator and master of the horse by decree of the senate.
