etors. At the very time of the
election, the public were thrown into a state of anxiety relative to
the defection of Etruria. Caius Calpurnius, who held that province as
propraetor, had written word that the Arretians had originated such
a scheme. Accordingly Marcellus, consul elect, was immediately sent
thither to look into the affair, and if it should appear to him of
sufficient consequence, to send for his army and transfer the war from
Apulia to Etruria. The Tuscans, checked by the alarm thus occasioned,
desisted. To the ambassadors of Tarentum, who solicited a treaty of
peace securing to them their liberty and the enjoyment of their own
laws, the senate answered, that they might return when the consul
Fabius came to Rome. The Roman and plebeian games were this year
repeated each for one day. The curule aediles were, Lucius Cornelius
Caudinus and Servius Sulpicius Galba; the plebeian aediles, Caius
Servilius and Quintus Caecilius Metellus. It was asserted that
Servilius was not qualified to be plebeian tribune or aedile, because
it was satisfactorily established that his father, who, for ten years,
was supposed to have been killed by the Boii in the neighbourhood of
Mutina, when acting as triumvir for the distribution of lands, was
alive and in the hands of the enemy.

22. In the eleventh year of the Punic war, Marcus Marcellus, for the
fifth time, reckoning in the consulate in which he did not act in
consequence of an informality in his creation, and Titus Quinctius
Crispinus entered upon the office of consuls. To both the consuls the
province of Italy was decreed, with both the consular armies of the
former year; (the third was then at Venusia, being that which Marcus
Marcellus had commanded.) That out of the three armies the consuls
might, choose whichever two they liked, and that the third should
be delivered to him to whose lot the province of Tarentum and the
territory of Sallentum fell. The other provinces were thus distributed
among the praetors: Publius Licinius Varus had the city jurisdiction,
Publius Licinius Crassus, chief pontiff, the foreign, and wherever
the senate though proper. Sextus Julius Caesar had Sicily, and Quintus
Claudius Flamen, Tarentum. Quintus Fulvius Flaccus was to continue
in command for a year, and hold the province of Capua, which had been
held by Titus Quinctius, with one legion. Caius Hostilius Tubulus
was also continued in command, with orders to go into Etruria, in the
capacity