not be proclaimed before he had returned thence after completing the business with which he was charged, in order that you might have him as consul whom the situation of the republic required and yourselves prefer.”  Thus nothing was said about the assembly till Marcellus returned.  Meanwhile Quintus Fabius Maximus and Titus Otacilius Crassus were created duumvirs for dedicating temples, Otacilius to Mens, Fabius to Venus Erycina.  Both are situated in the Capitol, and separated by one channel.  It was afterwards proposed to the people, to make Roman citizens of the three hundred Campanian horsemen who had returned to Rome after having faithfully served their period, and also that they should be considered to have been citizens of Cumae from the day before that on which the Campanians had revolted from the Roman people.  It had been a principal inducement to this proposition, that they themselves said they knew not to what people they belonged, having left their former country, and being not yet admitted into that to which they had returned.  After Marcellus returned from the army, an assembly was proclaimed for electing one consul in the room of Lucius Posthumius.  Marcellus was elected with the greatest unanimity, and was immediately to enter upon his office, but as it thundered while he entered upon it, the augurs were summoned, who pronounced that they considered the creation formal, and the fathers spread a report that the gods were displeased, because on that occasion, for the first time, two plebeians had been elected consuls.  Upon Marcellus’s abdicating his office, Fabius Maximus, for the third time, was elected in his room.  This year the sea appeared on fire; at Sinuessa a cow brought forth a horse foal; the statues in the temple of Juno Sospita Lanuvium flowed down with blood; and a shower of stones fell in the neighbourhood of that temple:  on account of which shower the nine days’ sacred rite was celebrated, as is usual on such occasions, and the other prodigies were carefully expiated.

32.  The consuls divided the armies between them.  The army which Marcus Junius the dictator had commanded fell to the lot of Fabius.  To that of Sempronius fell the volunteer slaves, with twenty-five thousand of the allies.  To Marcus Valerius the praetor were assigned the legions which had returned from Sicily.  Marcus Claudius, proconsul, was sent to that army which lay above Suessula for the protection of Nola.  The praetors set out for Sicily and Sardinia.  The consuls issued a proclamation, that as often as they summoned a senate, the senators and those who had a right to give their opinion in the senate, should assemble at the Capuan gate.  The praetors who were charged with the administration of justice, fixed their tribunals in the public fish market; there they ordered sureties to be entered into, and here justice was administered this year.  Meanwhile news was brought to Carthage, from which place Mago, Hannibal’s brother, was on the point