e came to an
interregnum.

34. To the consuls the authority was continued for a year longer.
Caius Claudius Centho, son of Appius, and then Publius Cornelius
Asina, were appointed interreges by the fathers. During the
interregnum of the latter the election was held with a violent contest
between the patricians and the people, Caius Terentius Varro, whom, as
a man of their own order, commended to their favour by inveighing
against the patricians and by other popular arts; who had acquired
celebrity by maligning others, by undermining the influence of Fabius,
and bringing into contempt the dictatorial authority, the commons
strove to raise to the consulship. The patricians opposed him with all
their might, lest men, by inveighing against them, should come to be
placed on an equality with them. Quintus Boebius Herennius, a plebeian
tribune, and kinsman of Caius Terentius, by criminating not only the
senate, but the augurs also, for having prevented the dictator from
completing the election, by the odium cast upon them, conciliated
favour to his own candidate. He asserted, "that Hannibal had been
brought into Italy by the nobility, who had for many years been
desirous of a war. That by the fraudulent machinations of the same
persons the war had been protracted, whereas it might have been
brought to a conclusion. That it had appeared that the war could be
maintained with an army consisting of four legions in all, from Marcus
Minucius's having fought with success in the absence of Fabius. That
two legions had been exposed to be slain by the enemy, and were
afterwards rescued from absolute destruction, in order that that man
might be saluted as father and patron, who had deprived them of
victory before he delivered them from defeat. That subsequently the
consuls, pursuing the plans of Fabius, had protracted the war, whereas
it was in their power to have put a period to it. That this was an
agreement made by the nobility in general; nor would they ever have
the war concluded till they had created a consul really plebeian; that
is, a new man: for that plebeians who had attained nobility were now
initiated into the mysteries, and had begun to look down with contempt
upon plebeians, from the moment they ceased to be despised by the
patricians. Who was not fully aware that their end and object was,
that an interregnum should be formed, in order that the elections
might be under the influence of the patricians? That both the consul