keeping back the crowd behind in the narrow way, upon
some pretext, when the king approached the door. All was done
according to the arrangement. Dinomenes having delayed the crowd, by
pretending to lift up his foot and loosen a knot which was too tight,
occasioned such an interval, that an attack being made upon the king,
as he passed by unattended by his guards, he was pierced with several
wounds before any assistance could be brought. When the shout and
tumult was heard, some weapons were discharged on Dinomenes, who now
openly opposed them; he escaped from them, however, with only two
wounds. The body-guard, as soon as they saw the king prostrate, betook
themselves to flight. Of the assassins, some proceeded to the forum to
the populace, who were rejoiced at the recovery of their liberty;
others to Syracuse to anticipate the measures of Andranodorus and the
rest of the royal party. Affairs being in this uncertain state, Appius
Claudius perceiving a war commencing in his neighbourhood, informed
the senate by letter, that Sicily had become reconciled to the
Carthaginians and Hannibal. For his own part, in order to frustrate
the designs of the Syracusans, he collected all his forces on the
boundary of the province and the kingdom. At the close of this year,
Quintus Fabius, by the authority of the senate, fortified and
garrisoned Puteoli, which, during the war, had begun to be frequented
as an emporium. Coming thence to Rome to hold the election, he
appointed the first day for it which could be employed for that
purpose, and, while on his march, passed by the city and descended
into the Campus Martius. On that day, the right of voting first having
fallen by lot on the junior century of the Anien tribe, they appointed
Titus Otacilius and Marcus Aemilius Regillus, consuls, when Quintus
Fabius, having obtained silence, delivered the following speech:

8. "If we had either peace in Italy, or had war with such an enemy
that the necessity to be careful was less urgent than it is, I should
consider that man as wanting in respect for your liberty, who would at
all impede that zealous desire which you bring with you into the
Campus Martius, of conferring honours on whom you please. But since
during the present war, and with the enemy we have now to encounter,
none of our generals have ever committed an error which has not been
attended with most disastrous consequences to us, it behoves you to
use the same circumspection in giv