After being employed on minor business of state, he became quaestor in 199,
and, immediately after his year of office, consul, passing over the
aedileship and praetorship, and attaining the consulship at the
extraordinarily early age of 30. In 197 he won the victory of Cynoscephalae
over the Macedonians, which ended the war. At the Isthmian games in the
spring of 196 Flamininus made his famous proclamation of freedom to all the
Greeks. He returned to Rome in 194 to enjoy a splendid triumph. For the
rest of his life was employed chiefly on diplomatic business concerning
Greece and the East. One of his embassies was to Prusias, king of Bithynia,
call on him to surrender Hannibal, who was living at his court in advanced
old age; this led to Hannibal's suicide. Flamininus was censor in 189 (see
below, 42), and lived on till some time after 167, in which year he became
augur; but the date of his death is unknown. He was a man of brilliant
ability both as general and as diplomat, and also possessed much culture
and was a great admirer of Greek literature. -- ILLE VIR etc.: _i.e._ the
shepherd mentioned in n. on line 1. Livy 32, II, 4 says that Flamininus
sent to the master of the shepherd, Charopus, an Epirote prince, to ask how
far he might be trusted. Charopus replied that Flamininus might trust him,
but had better keep a close watch on the operations himself. -- HAUD MAGNA
CUM RE: 'of no great property'; _re_ = _re familiari_, as is often the case
elsewhere in both verse and prose. Cf. pro Caelio 78 _hominem sine re. Cum_
is literally 'attended by'; it is almost superfluous here, since _vir haud
magna re_ would have had just the same meaning. Madvig, Gram. § 258 has
similar examples. -- PLENUS: final _s_ was so lightly pronounced that the
older poets felt justified in neglecting it in their scanning. It was
probably scarcely pronounced at all by the less educated Romans, since it
is often wholly omitted in inscriptions, and has been lost in modern
Italian. Cicero, Orator 161, says that the neglect to pronounce final _s_
is 'somewhat boorish' (_subrusticum_), though formerly thought 'very
refined' (_politius_). Even Lucretius sometimes disregards it in his