6.
On coming to Rome the dictator sent Gaius Sempronius Blaesus, his lieutenant, whom he had had at Capua, into Etruria as his province, to be with
[2??]
the army, taking the place of the
[3??]
praetor Gaius Calpurnius, whom he had summoned by letter to take command of Capua and his own army.
[4]
As for himself, he proclaimed the elections for the earliest possible date.
[5]
But owing to the conflict which arose between the tribunes and the
[6??]
dictator the election could not be completed.
[7]
The Galeria century of the younger men, which obtained by lot the right to vote first,1 had voted for Quintus Fulvius and Quintus Fabius as consuls;
[8]
and the centuries called in the legal order would have inclined in the same direction, if the tribunes of the plebs, Gaius and Lucius Arrenius, had not intervened.
[9]
They repeated that to prolong a magistracy was not consistent with the common
[10??]
interest, and also that it was a much more dangerous precedent for the man who was
[11??]
conducting the election to be himself elected.
[12]
[p. 225]Accordingly, they said, if the dictator admitted his own2 name, they would veto the election;
[13]
if other men than himself were considered, they would not delay the election.
[14]
The dictator defended the procedure in the election by the authority of the senate, by the decree of the commons, by precedents.
[15]
For, he said, in the consulship of Gnaeus Servilius, when Gaius Flaminius, the other
[16??]
consul, had fallen at Trasumennus, by authority of the fathers it was proposed to the commons, and the commons had ordained that, so long as the
[17??]
war remained in Italy, the people should have the right to re-elect as consuls the men they pleased and as often as they
[18??]
pleased from the number of those who had been consuls.3
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