gions; and, two days
later, the result of low chicanery and indifferent lethargy took shape.

The trumpet had summoned the army of the city to the Field of Mars, and
century after century had entered the enclosure to cast its vote for
Varro--for Varro alone, until no one of the noble candidates, who
received the half-hearted support of their fellows, got even enough
pebbles to be proclaimed elected to the second consulship. To Varro
alone, cringing and insolent, was the oath administered; for Varro
alone was the prayer put up; for Varro was the declaration twice made,
according to the laws of the Republic, and into Varro's hands was
placed the presidency over the assembly that was to elect his colleague.

Then followed an exhibition of plebeian cunning. There were among the
supporters of the consul those who realized what he himself could not:
his military incompetence and the terrible necessity that, at such a
juncture, there should be at least one soldier-consul. Varro had won
on his merits as self-announced, on the strength of his own arraignment
of his adversaries' shortcomings. He stood forth the incarnation of
party and class hatred; and now the victors, half dazed by the very
completeness of their triumph, paused in mid career to look for a
soldier with whom the army might be entrusted. That he must be a
noble, was self-evident. Even the rabble, now that its first outburst
had passed, was not so mad as to attribute military skill to any of its
wordy leaders. The butcher's colleague must be a patrician, but he
must be such a patrician as would cast reproach upon his class, while
he supplied the one quality requisite to the plebeian situation. To
whose political acumen first occurred the name of Lucius Aemilius
Paullus, no one seemed to know; but, once suggested, there was none to
deny its entire appropriateness. Paullus was a veteran of several
wars, an experienced commander, a brave soldier; and there his merits
ended. He had been brought to trial for misappropriation of the
plunder taken in the Illyrian campaign, and, as many thought, acquitted
by means as scandalous as the crime itself, while his less influential
colleague suffered for both. Harsh and rude, no high-born Roman was
less popular; and his exaggeration of class insolence bade fair to
offer him as an illustration, ready to the tongue of every demagogue,
of what the people must always expect from patrician rule.

So, one by one, the five