In addition to the persons already mentioned, the honour of this crown has been awarded to M. Calpurnius Flamma,[1] then a military tribune in Sicily; but up to the present time it has been given to a single centurion only, Cneius Petreius Atinas, during the war with the Cimbri. This soldier, while acting as primipilus[2] under Catulus, on finding all retreat for his legion cut off by the enemy, harangued the troops, and after slaying his tribune who hesitated to cut a way through the encampment of the enemy, brought away the legion in safety. I find it stated also by some authors, that, in addition to this honour, this same Petreius, clad in the prætexta, offered sacrifice at the altar, to the sound of the pipe,[3] in presence of the then consuls,[4] Marius and Catulus.

The Dictator Sylla has also stated in his memoirs, that when legatus in the Marsic War he was presented with this crown by the army, at Nola; an event which he caused to be com- memorated in a painting at his Tusculan villa, which afterwards became the property of Cicero. If there is any truth in this statement, I can only say that it renders his memory all the more execrable, and that, by his proscriptions, with his own hand he tore this crown from his brow, for few indeed were the citizens whom he thus preserved, in comparison with those he slaughtered at a later period. And let him even add to this high honour his proud surname of "Felix,"[5] if he will; all the glories of this crown he surrendered to Sertorius, from the moment that he put his proscribed fellow-citizens in a stage of siege throughout the whole world.

Varro, too, relates that Scipio Æmilianus was awarded the obsidional crown in Africa, under the consul Manilius,[6] for the preservation of three cohorts, by bringing as many to their rescue; an event commemorated by an inscription upon the base of the statue erected in honour of him by the now deified Emperor Augustus, in the Forum which bears his name. Au- gustus himself was also presented by the senate with the obsidional crown, upon the ides[7] of September, in the consulship[8] of M. Cicero the Younger, the civic crown being looked upon as not commensurate with his deserts. Beyond these, I do not find any one mentioned as having been rewarded with this honour.