THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

III. From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter V - The War under Hannibal to the Battle of Cannae

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Page 28

His political opponents, with the former praetor Gaius Terentius Varro at their head, laid hold of the quarrel--for the understanding of which we must not forget that the dictator was practically nominated by the senate, and the office was regarded as the palladium of the conservative party--and, in concert with the discontented soldiers and the possessors of the plundered estates, they carried an unconstitutional and absurd resolution of the people conferring the dictatorship, which was destined to obviate the evils of a divided command in times of danger, on Marcus Minucius,(4) who had hitherto been the lieutenant of Quintus Fabius, in the same way as on Fabius himself.

4. The inscription of the gift devoted by the new dictator on account of his victory at Gerunium to Hercules Victor-- -Hercolei sacrom M. Minuci(us) C. f. dictator vovit- --was found in the year 1862 at Rome, near S. Lorenzo.

Thus the Roman army, after its hazardous division into two separate corps had just been appropriately obviated, was once more divided; and not only so, but the two sections were placed under leaders who notoriously followed quite opposite plans of war.

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