wards the government of Sicily fell to his lot as Prætor, and there is reason to believe that he endeared himself to the provincials by clean-handed justice (Livy xxxIII. 42). His promotion to the consulship did not follow till 222, when he endeavoured to crush the Cisalpine Gauls, already defeated at L. Telamon, by invading the country of the Insubres. In the only account of the campaign which we possess (Polyb. II. 32) he appears to have been wanting in good faith towards the Gauls, and by the neglect of the common rules of strategy to have risked probable disaster, from which he was saved only by the steady valour of the legionaries and the forethought of the military tribunes.

Before the campaign was over he was summoned by the senate to resign his office, on the ground of some technical flaw in his election, but he would not open the despatch till the victory was won, and on his return persisted in entering Rome in forms of triumph, despite the refusal of the senate.

The resentment of the nobles was intense, and they forced a dictator to resign, who had been bold enough to name Flaminius as his Master of the Horse. But it is to the credit of the latter, that in his censorship of 219 he did not stoop to any petty jealousies of rival parties, only linking the memories of that high office with the Circus, and the great Highway which bore his name in after ages.

But it was partly due to his support that the bill of Claudius was passed, which forbade the Senatorian families to own merchant vessels, a law which rested no doubt in part on the aristocratic prejudice of old societies, but aimed also at protecting the provincials from sinister action on the part of Roman governors in the interest of Roman traders. If his generalship really was so questionable in the Gallic war, it is strange that he should have been re-elected to the consulship after the disaster of the Trebia.

There are reasons too for doubting the account of Livy which makes him leave Rome and enter office at Ariminum in contempt of all customary scruples, though military needs might well excuse neglect of purely formal duties. But Polybius is quite silent on the subject, though his informants had no love for Flaminius, and a legal measure, called probably Lex Flaminia minus solvendi, seems to point to the presence of the consul in the capital, although the evidence is not conclusive. The financial policy which it suggests accords indeed with his other measures in favour of the poorer classes, at the expense also of the wealthier.

The position of Flaminius at Arretium seems to have been well chosen for defence, and his plans were probably suggested by the campaign against the Gauls in 224. He must have heard of Hannibal's advance, and have shown no wish to

C. L.

21

force an action, but after sending to his colleague at Ariminum to hasten to the defence of Rome, he was forced to move southward to effect a junction, and to keep the enemy meantime in view.

His one fatal error lay in the unguarded entry into the defile of Trasimene, where his warier rival closed the trap upon him. Aristocratic writers may have gladly taken him as a scapegoat, imagining the neglect of sacred forms as a partial cause of the disaster, and exaggerating the rashness and incapacity of the champion of the commons, just as modern critics may have dwelt too fondly on his fancied virtues because the nobles of his own day hated and maligned him.

INDEX NOMINUM ET LOCORUM.

N.B. I. II. represent books XXI, and XXII. of the Latin text.