History of Rome

​On the day when the consuls entered upon their office, the senate was held on the Capitol, ​and it was decreed first of all that the consuls should cast lots or agree between themselves as to which of them should hold the assembly for the election of censors before he set out to the army.

​Then the command was prolonged for all who were with the armies, and they were ordered to remain in their provinces: Tiberius Gracchus at Luceria, where he was with the army of volunteer slaves, Gaius Terentius Varro in the Picene territory, and Marcus Pomponius in the Gallic territory. ​And that, as propraetors, the praetors of the previous year, Quintus Mucius should hold Sardinia, and Marcus Valerius, stationed at Brundisium and intent on guarding the coast against all movements of Philip, king of the Macedonians, should command;

​to Publius Cornelius Lentulus, the praetor, Sicily was decreed as his province, and to Titus Otacilius, the same fleet which he had held against the Carthaginians the previous year.

​Many prodigies were reported in that year; and the more simple and religious men believed them, the more were reported: that at Lanuvium, inside the temple of Juno Sospita, crows had made a nest;

​that in Apulia a green palm tree had caught fire; that at Mantua a pool, formed by the overflowing of the river Mincius, had appeared bloody; and that at Cales it had rained chalk, and at Rome in the cattle market it had rained blood;

​and that in the Insteian street, a spring under the earth had flowed with such a violence of water that it rolled away and carried off, like the onset of a torrent, the jars and casks which were in that place;

​that the public hall on the Capitol, the temple of Vulcan in the Field, the citadel in the Sabine country and a public road, and the wall and a gate at Gabii had been struck by lightning.

​Already other wonders had been made common talk: that the spear of Mars at Praeneste had moved forward of its own accord; that an ox in Sicily had spoken; that an infant in its mother’s womb among the Marrucini had cried out “io triumphe!”; that at Spoletium a woman had turned into a man; and that at Hadria an altar had been seen in the sky, and forms of men in white garments around it.

​Nay, even in Rome, in the city itself, after a swarm of bees had been seen in the forum, certain persons affirming that they saw armed legions on the Janiculum roused the state to arms, ​although those who were on the Janiculum denied that anyone had appeared there except the usual tillers of that hill.

​These prodigies were expiated with full-grown victims according to the response of the haruspices, and a supplication was decreed to all the gods who had lectisternia at Rome.