ht contrary to his injunction. That "if the
supreme command and administration of affairs were intrusted to him,
he would soon take care that men should know, that to a good general
fortune was not of great importance; that prudence and conduct
governed every thing; that it was more glorious for him to have saved
the army at a crisis, and without disgrace, than to have slain many
thousands of the enemy." Speeches of this kind having been made
without effect, and Marcus Atilius Regulus created consul, that he
might not be present to dispute respecting the right of command, he
withdrew to the army on the night preceding the day on which the
proposition was to be decided. When there was an assembly of the
people at break of day, a secret displeasure towards the dictator, and
favour towards the master of the horse, rather possessed their minds,
than that men had not sufficient resolution to advise a measure which
was agreeable to the public; and though favour carried it, influence
was wanting to the bill. One man indeed was found who recommended the
law, Caius Terentius Varro, who had been praetor in the former year,
sprung not only from humble but mean parentage. They report that his
father was a butcher, the retailer of his own meat, and that he
employed this very son in the servile offices of that trade.

26. This young man, when a fortune left him by his father, acquired in
such a traffic, had inspired him with the hope of a higher condition,
and the gown and forum were the objects of his choice, by declaiming
vehemently in behalf of men and causes of the lowest kind, in
opposition to the interest and character of the good, first came to
the notice of the people, and then to offices of honour. Having passed
through the offices of quaestor, plebeian, and curule aedile, and,
lastly, that of praetor; when now he raised his mind to the hope of
the consulship, he courted the gale of popular favour by maligning the
dictator, and received alone the credit of the decree of the people.
All men, both at Rome and in the army, both friends and foes, except
the dictator himself, considered this measure to have been passed as
an insult to him; but the dictator himself bore the wrong which the
infuriated people had put upon him, with the same gravity with which
he endured the charges against him which his enemies laid before the
multitude; and receiving the letter containing a decree of the senate
respecting the equalization of the co