History of Rome

​After the letters of the consul and the praetor were read, they decreed that the praetor Marcus Claudius, who was in command of the fleet stationed at Ostia, should be sent to the army at Canusium, and that a letter should be written to the consul that, when he had handed over the army to the praetor, he should come to Rome at the earliest possible moment, so far as it could be done consistently with the public interest.

​They were also terrified, in addition to such great disasters, both by other portents and because in that year two Vestal Virgins, Opimia and Floronia, had been convicted of unchastity, of whom one had been buried alive, according to custom, near the Colline Gate, and the other had laid violent hands upon herself.

​Lucius Cantilius, a pontifical scribe—one of those whom they now call the lesser pontiffs—who had committed unchastity with Floronia, had been scourged with rods in the Comitium by the Pontifex Maximus so severely that he expired under the blows.

​When this sacrilege, amid so many disasters, as is usually the case, had been turned into a portent, the decemvirs were ordered to consult the books, ​and Quintus Fabius Pictor was sent to the oracle at Delphi to inquire by what prayers and supplications they might appease the gods, and what end there would be to such great disasters.

​Meanwhile, according to the books of fate, several extraordinary sacrifices were performed, among which a Gallic man and woman and a Greek man and woman were buried alive under the ground in the cattle market, in a place enclosed by stone, which had already been stained beforehand by human victims, a rite by no means Roman.

​When the gods had been sufficiently appeased, as they believed, Marcus Claudius Marcellus sent fifteen hundred soldiers, whom he had enrolled for the fleet, from Ostia to Rome to serve as a garrison for the city;

​he himself, after sending the marine legion—this was the third legion—ahead to Teanum Sidicinum with the military tribunes, and handing over the fleet to his colleague Publius Furius Philus, hastened after a few days by forced marches to Canusium.

​Thereupon Marcus Junius, who was named dictator on the authority of the senators, and Tiberius Sempronius, the master of the horse, having proclaimed a levy, enrolled young men from the age of seventeen and some still wearing the praetexta. From these, four legions and a thousand cavalry were formed.

​They also sent to the allies and the Latin name to receive soldiers according to the treaty. They ordered arms, weapons, and other equipment to be prepared, and took down from the temples and porticoes the ancient spoils of enemies.

​And the scarcity of free persons and necessity gave rise to a new form of levy: they armed eight thousand strong young men from the slaves, purchased at public expense, after first asking each one individually whether he was willing to serve.

​This kind of soldier was more pleasing, although there was an opportunity to ransom the prisoners at a lower price.