Nor yet did the dictatorship render that combination of the senators more effectual at the consular elections, than it had proved at that of the censors.
23.

Marcus Popillius Laenas was chosen consul on the part of the commons, Lucius Cornelius Scipio on that of the patricians.

Fortune even rendered the plebeian consul more distinguished; for when news was brought that a vast army of the Gauls had pitched their camp in the Latin territory, Scipio being attacked with a serious fit of illness, the Gallic war was intrusted out of course to Popillius.

He having raised an army with great energy, after he had ordered the younger citizens to assemble in arms outside the Capuan gate, and the quaestors to carry the standards from the treasury to the same place, having completed four legions, he gave the surplus of the men to the praetor Publius Valerius Publicola, recommending to the senate to raise another army, which might be a reserve to the state against the sudden contingencies of war.

He himself, after sufficiently preparing and arranging every thing, proceeds towards the enemy; and in order to ascertain their strength before he should hazard a decisive action, he commenced drawing an intrenchment on a hill, the nearest he could select to the camp of the Gauls.