Ab urbe condita

But it was not easy to find people to be sent to what was practically a permanent outpost in a dangerously hostile country, instead of having fields allotted to them for cultivation.

The attention of the senate was diverted from these matters to the growing seriousness of the outlook in Etruria. There were frequent despatches from Appius warning them not to neglect the movement that was going on in that part of the world;

four nations were in arms together, the Etruscans, the Samnites, the Umbrians, and the Gauls, and they were compelled to form two separate camps, for one place would not hold so great a multitude.

The date of the elections was approaching, and Volumnius was recalled to Rome to conduct them, and also to advise on the general policy. Before calling upon the centuries to vote he summoned the people to an Assembly. Here he dwelt at some length upon the serious nature of the war in Etruria.

Even, he said, when he and his colleague were conducting a joint campaign, the war was on too large a scale for any single general with his one army to cope with. Since then he understood that the Umbrians and an enormous force of Gauls had swollen the ranks of their enemies.

The electors must bear in mind that two consuls were being elected on that day to act against four nations. The choice of the Roman people would, he felt certain, fall on the one man who was unquestionably the foremost of all their generals. Had he not felt sure of this he was prepared to nominate him at once as Dictator.

After this speech no one felt the slightest doubt that Q. Fabius would be unanimously elected. The “prerogative” centuries and all those of the first class were voting for him and Volumnius, when he again addressed the electors very much

in the terms he had employed two years before, and as on the former occasion when he yielded to the universal wish, so now he again requested that P. Decius might be his colleague.

He would be a support for his old age to lean upon, they had been together as censors, and twice as consuls, and he had learnt by experience that nothing went further to protect the State than harmony between colleagues. He felt that he could hardly at his time of life get accustomed to a new comrade in office, he could so much more easily share all his counsels with one whose character and disposition he knew.