in day,
with orders to march the city legions thence to the Claudian camp.
Titus Metilius Croto, lieutenant-general, was sent by Appius Claudius
Pulcher to receive the old army and remove it into Sicily. People at
first had expected in silence that the consul would hold an assembly
for the election of a colleague, but afterwards perceiving that Marcus
Marcellus, whom they wished above all others to be consul this year,
on account of his brilliant success during his praetorship, was
removed to a distant quarter, as it were on purpose, a murmuring arose
in the senate-house, which the consul perceiving, said "Conscript
fathers, it was conducive to the interest of the state, both that
Marcus Marcellus should go into Campania to make the exchange of the
armies, and that the assembly should 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