not assault it. But, during the silence of the
following night, the consul marched away, and having sent a messenger
before him to Publius Licinius, the proconsul, to bring up his
legions, united his forces with his. Thus two generals and two armies
returned to Hannibal. Nor did either party delay to fight, as the
forces of the consul were doubled, and the Carthaginian was inspirited
by recent victory. Sempronius led his legions into the front line;
those of Licinius were placed in reserve. The consul, in the beginning
of the battle, vowed a temple to Fortuna Primigenia if he routed
the enemy that day, and he obtained the object of that vow. The
Carthaginians were routed and put to flight; above four thousand armed
men were slain, a little under three hundred taken alive, with forty
horses and eleven military standards. Hannibal, dispirited by this
adverse battle, led his troops away to Croton. At the same time, in
another part of Italy, Etruria, almost the whole of which had
espoused the interest of Mago, and had conceived hopes of effecting
a revolution through his means, was kept in subjection by the consul
Marcus Cornelius, not so much by the force of his arms as the terror
of his judicial proceedings. In the trials he had instituted there,
in conformity with the decree of the senate, he had shown the utmost
impartiality; and many of the Tuscan nobles, who had either themselves
gone, or had sent others to Mago respecting the revolt of their
states, at first standing their trials, were condemned; but afterwards
others, who, from a consciousness of guilt, had gone into voluntary
exile, were condemned in their absence, and by thus withdrawing left
their effects only, which were liable to confiscation, as a pledge for
their punishment.

37. While the consuls were thus engaged in different quarters, in the
mean time, at Rome, the censors, Marcus Livius and Caius Claudius,
called over the senate roll. Quintus Fabius was again chosen chief of
the senate; seven were stigmatized, of whom there was not one who had
sat in the curule chair. They inquired into the business relating to
the repair of public edifices with diligence and the most scrupulous
exactness. They set by contract the making of a road out of the ox
market to the temple of Venus, with public seats on each side of it,
and a temple to be built in the palatium for the great mother. They
established also a new tax out of the price of salt. Salt, both at
Rome, and