Book 17
21
Then, in the two hundred and sixtieth year after the founding (of Rome, or not much later, it is recorded that the Persians were vanquished by the Athenians in the famous battle of Marathon under the lead of Militiades, 490 B.C., but Gellius, here following Nepos. puts it in 493. who after that victory was condemned by the Athenians and died in the public prison. At that time Aesthylus. the tragic poet, flourished at Athens. He lived from 525 to 456 B.C. In Rome, at about the same time, the commons, as the result of a secession, for the first time elected their own tribunes and aediles; 494 B.C. and not much later Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus, harassed and exasperated by the tribunes of the commons, turned traitor to the republic and joined the Volscians, who were then our enemies, Leuze suggests that Gellius so arranged his material as to show that at a time when the Greeks were lighting epochmaking battles the Romans were warring with comparatively insignificant Italian peoples. and lade war upon the Roman people. Then a few years later, King Xerxes was beaten and put to flight by the Athenians and a good part of Greece, under the lead of Themistocles, in the sea-fight at Salamis. 480 B.C. Gellius is here using a Varroian source; Nepos' date would be 483. About three That is, in the fourth year; see note on xvii. 12. 5 (p 252). years afterwards, in the consulship of Menenius Agrippa and Marcus Horatius Pulvillus, during the war with Veii, the patrician Fabii, three hundred and six in number, along with their dependents, Some 4000 in number. This was in 477 B.C. were all ambushed at the river Cremera and slain.
