Hereupon a supplication of three days' continuance was decreed, and that the praetor should offer sacrifice to such of the gods as his judgment should direct, with forty victims of the larger kinds.

About the same time, Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, who, two years before, had gone into Farther Spain, in the office of praetor, entered the city in ovation.
He carried in the procession a hundred and thirty thousand silver denarii,[1] and besides the coin, twelve thousand pounds' weight of silver, and a hundred and twenty-seven pounds' weight of gold.
[Footnote 1: 4097l.16s.

4d.] 22.

The consul Manius Acilius sent on, from Thermopylae, a message to the Aetolians in Heraclea, admonishing them, "then at least, after the experience which they had of the emptiness of the king's professions, to return to their senses; and, by surrendering Heraclea, to endeavour to procure from the senate a pardon for their past madness, or error: that other Grecian states also had, during the present war, revolted from the Romans, to whom they were under the highest obligations; but that, inasmuch as, after the flight of the king, in reliance upon whom they had departed from their duty, they had not added obstinacy to their misbehaviour, they were re-admitted into friendship.

In like manner, although the Aetolians had not followed in the steps of the king, but had invited him, and had been principals in the war, not auxiliaries; nevertheless, if they could bring themselves to repentance they might still insure their safety." As their answer to these suggestions showed nothing like a pacific disposition, and it was evident that the business must be determined by force of arms, and that, notwithstanding the defeat of the king, the war of Aetolia was as far from a conclusion as ever, Acilius removed his camp from Thermopylae to Heraclea; and on the same day rode on horseback entirely round the walls, in order to acquaint himself with the localities of the city.