Kitap 39
5
But it was the speech of his colleague, Tiberius Gracchus, that produced the greatest effect. He said that for a man to use his official position as the instrument of his own personal animosities was in any case setting a bad precedent, but for a tribune of the plebs to become the agent of another man's vindictiveness was a disgraceful proceeding quite unworthy of the power and inviolability of the college of tribunes. Each man ought to judge for himself whom to love and whom to hate, what actions to approve of and what to disapprove of; he must not wait upon another man's look or nod, nor must he be driven hither and thither by the motives which sway another man's mind. A tribune who becomes the tool of an angry consul and is careful to remember what M. Aemilius entrusted to him privately, forgets that the tribuneship was entrusted to him publicly by the people of Rome, and entrusted to him for the protection and liberty of private citizens, not for the defence of an autocratic consul. Albutius does not see that it will go down to posterity that of two members of the same college of tribunes one subordinated his private quarrels to the interests of the State, the other took up a quarrel which was not even a private one, but was entrusted to him by some one else. Smarting under this castigation the tribune left the senate-house, and on the proposal of Ser. Sulpicius a triumph was decreed to M. Fulvius. He thanked the senators and went on to tell them that on the day he took Ambracia he had vowed to exhibit the Great Games in honour of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and that a hundred pounds of gold had been contributed by the cities for this purpose. Out of the money which he was going to place in the treasury after it had been borne in the triumph, he requested the senate to order that this hundred pounds of gold should be set apart. The senate ordered the question to be referred to the college of pontiffs whether it was necessary that all that gold should be spent on the Games. They replied that no question of religion arose as to what amount should be spent on the Games, and the senate consequently allowed Fulvius to spend what he liked on the Games as long as it did not exceed 80,000 sesterces.
