a man second to no one
in Rome for courage and virtue, named as his successors when consul
Scipio Nasica and Caius Marcius, and when they were actually in
possession of their provinces and armies he happened to consult a book
of sacred ritual, and found in it an old custom which he did not know
before. It was to this effect. When a consul has hired a house or tent
outside the city to watch the flight of birds, if he be obliged before
any certain omen appears, to return to the city for what cause soever,
he must give up the place which he hired and take another, and make
his observation over again from the beginning. This, it seems,
Tiberius did not know, and it was after using the same place twice
that he named these men consuls. Afterwards, having discovered his
error, he laid the matter before the Senate; and that body did not
despise this apparently slight irregularity, but sent despatches to
the men, who at once left their provinces, returned to Rome, and
resigned their office. Now this happened in later times; but in the
very times of which we write two men of the best family were deprived
of the priesthood: Cornelius Cethegus, because he handled the entrails
improperly at a sacrifice, and Quintus Sulpicius, because when he was
sacrificing, the crested hat which he wore as flamen, fell off his
head. And because, when Minucius the dictator was appointing Caius
Flaminius his master of the knights, the mouse which is called the
coffin-mouse was heard to squeak, they turned them out of their
office, and elected others. But, though so elaborately careful in
trifles, they never admitted any superstitious observance, and neither
altered nor added anything to their ancestral ritual.

VI. When Flaminius and his colleague had resigned their offices,
Marcellus was designated consul by the interreges.[14] On entering
upon his office he nominated Cnaeus Cornelius as his colleague. It was
said that the Gauls were offering terms of reconciliation, and that
the Senate wished for peace with them, but that Marcellus raised the
spirit of the people and excited them to continue the war. But still a
peace was concluded; and it seems to have been the Gaesatae who renewed
the war, by crossing the Alps and stirring up the Insubrians. Thirty
thousand in number, they joined that tribe, which was many times
larger, and in high spirits at once attacked Acerrae, a city beyond the
river Po. From that place Britomartus with ten thousand Gaesata