This was deemed an indignity by the patricians, that the dictatorship also was now become common, and with all their exertions they prevented any thing from either being decreed or prepared for the dictator, for the prosecution of that war.

With the more promptitude, on that account, did the people order things, as proposed by the dictator.

Having set out from the city, along both sides of the Tiber, and transporting his army on rafts whithersoever his intelligence of the enemy led him, he surprised many of them straggling about in scattered parties, laying waste the lands.

Moreover, he suddenly attacked their camp and took it; and eight thousand of the enemy being made prisoners, all the rest being either slain or driven out of the Roman territory, he triumphed by order of the people, without the sanction of the senate.

Because they neither wished that the consular elections should be held by a plebeian dictator or consul, and the other consul, Fabius, was detained by the war, matters came to an interregnum.