seized. There he continued encamped
for several days, and his soldiers were refreshed, who had been
enfeebled by winter marches and marshy ground, and with a battle more
successful in its result than light or easy. When sufficient time for
rest had been granted for soldiers delighting more in plunder and
devastation than ease and repose, setting out, he lays waste the
territories of Pretutia and Hadria, then of the Marsi, the Marrucini,
and the Peligni, and the contiguous region of Apulia around Arpi and
Luceria. Cneius Servilius, the consul, having fought some slight
battles with the Gauls, and taken one inconsiderable town, when he
heard of the defeat of his colleague and the army, alarmed now for the
walls of the capital, marched towards the city, that he might not be
absent at so extreme a crisis. Quintus Fabius Maximus, a second time
dictator, assembled the senate the very day he entered on his office;
and commencing with what related to the gods, after he had distinctly
proved to the fathers, that Caius Flaminius had erred more from
neglect of the ceremonies and auspices than from temerity and want of
judgment, and that the gods themselves should be consulted as to what
were the expiations of their anger, he obtained a resolution that the
decemviri should be ordered to inspect the Sibylline books, which is
rarely decreed, except when some horrid prodigies were announced.
Having inspected the prophetic books, they reported, that the vow
which was made to Mars on account of this war, not having been
regularly fulfilled, must be performed afresh and more fully; that the
great games must be vowed to Jupiter, temples to Venus Erycina and
Mens; that a supplication and lectisternium must be made, and a sacred
spring vowed, if the war should proceed favourably and the state
continue the condition it was in before the war. Since the management
of the war would occupy Fabius, the senate orders Marcus Aemilius, the
praetor, to see that all these things are done in good time, according
to the directions of the college of pontiffs.

10. These decrees of the senate having been passed, Lucius Cornelius
Lentulus, pontifex maximus, the college of praetors consulting with
him, gives his opinion that, first of all, the people should be
consulted respecting a sacred spring: that it could not be without the
order of the people. The people having been asked according to this
form: Do ye will and order that this thing should be performe