This, from being a voluntary compact among the soldiers themselves, was converted into the legal compulsion of an oath by the tribunes.

Before the standards were moved from the city, the harangues of Varro were frequent and furious, protesting that the war had been invited into Italy by the nobles, and that it would continue fixed in the bowels of the state if it employed any more such generals as Fabius; that he would bring the war to conclusion on the very day he got sight of the enemy.

His colleague Paulus made but one speech, on the day before they set out from the city, which was more true than gratifying to the people, in which nothing was said severely against Varro, except this only.

"That he wondered how any general, before he knew any thing of his own army, or that of the enemy, the situation of the places, or the nature of the country, even now while in the city, and with the gown on, could tell what he must do when in arms, and could even foretell the day on which he would fight standard to standard with the enemy.

That, for his own part, he would not, before the time arrived, prematurely anticipate those measures which circumstances imposed on men, rather than men on circumstances.