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Before the consuls returned to Rome M. Fulvius came back from Aetolia. [2] He had an audience of the senate in the temple of Apollo and gave a detailed report of his operations in Aetolia and Cephallenia. He then asked the senate to pass a resolution that it was right and proper, in consideration of the success and good fortune with which he had served the State, that honours should be paid to the immortal gods and that a triumph should be decreed to him. [3] M. Albutius, one of the tribunes of the plebs, declared his intention of vetoing any decree which should be passed before the arrival of M. Aemilius. [4] The consul had wished to speak against it, and on his departure for his province had charged him, the tribune, to reserve all discussion of the question till his return. Fulvius, he argued, would lose nothing by the delay; even when the consul was present, the senate would decree what it wished. [5] To this Fulvius replied: "Even if Aemilius' hostility to him and the arbitrary and dictatorial temper he showed towards his opponents were not a matter of common knowledge, still it would be intolerable that an absent consul should stand in the way of honour being paid to the immortal gods and should [6??] delay a triumph which was well earned and justly due, or that a general who had achieved brilliant success should be standing before the gate of the City with his [7??] victorious army and the spoils of war and the prisoners until the consul, who was for this very purpose delaying his movements, should please to return to Rome. But as a matter of fact his differences with the consul were notorious. [8] What fair dealing could any one look for from the man who in a thinly attended and secret meeting of the senate got a resolution carried and deposited in the treasury in the temple of Saturn stating that there was no evidence that Ambracia had been carried by assault. [9] Why, that city was besieged by agger and vineae, and when the siege-works were burnt, new ones were constructed; for fifteen days fighting went on there round the walls above ground and below, and even when the soldiers had surmounted the walls, there was a long and doubtful struggle from early dawn till nightfall; more than 3000 of the enemy were slain. [10] What was that malicious story which he told the pontiffs about the spoliation of the temples of the gods in the captured city? [11] Unless, indeed, we are to suppose that whilst the adornments of Syracuse and other captured cities may decorate the City, this right of war does not hold in the solitary case of Ambracia." [12] He implored the senators and begged the tribune not to make him an object of derision to his insolent enemy. [13] The senators were with him to a man; some tried to persuade the tribune to forgo his veto, others assailed him with bitter reproaches.
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