as he was one of the body-guards, had the task assigned him of keeping back the crowd behind in the narrow way, upon some pretext, when the king approached the door.  All was done according to the arrangement.  Dinomenes having delayed the crowd, by pretending to lift up his foot and loosen a knot which was too tight, occasioned such an interval, that an attack being made upon the king, as he passed by unattended by his guards, he was pierced with several wounds before any assistance could be brought.  When the shout and tumult was heard, some weapons were discharged on Dinomenes, who now openly opposed them; he escaped from them, however, with only two wounds.  The body-guard, as soon as they saw the king prostrate, betook themselves to flight.  Of the assassins, some proceeded to the forum to the populace, who were rejoiced at the recovery of their liberty; others to Syracuse to anticipate the measures of Andranodorus and the rest of the royal party.  Affairs being in this uncertain state, Appius Claudius perceiving a war commencing in his neighbourhood, informed the senate by letter, that Sicily had become reconciled to the Carthaginians and Hannibal.  For his own part, in order to frustrate the designs of the Syracusans, he collected all his forces on the boundary of the province and the kingdom.  At the close of this year, Quintus Fabius, by the authority of the senate, fortified and garrisoned Puteoli, which, during the war, had begun to be frequented as an emporium.  Coming thence to Rome to hold the election, he appointed the first day for it which could be employed for that purpose, and, while on his march, passed by the city and descended into the Campus Martius.  On that day, the right of voting first having fallen by lot on the junior century of the Anien tribe, they appointed Titus Otacilius and Marcus Aemilius Regillus, consuls, when Quintus Fabius, having obtained silence, delivered the following speech: 

8.  “If we had either peace in Italy, or had war with such an enemy that the necessity to be careful was less urgent than it is, I should consider that man as wanting in respect for your liberty, who would at all impede that zealous desire which you bring with you into the Campus Martius, of conferring honours on whom you please.  But since during the present war, and with the enemy we have now to encounter, none of our generals have ever committed an error which has not been attended with most disastrous consequences to us, it behoves you to use the same circumspection in giving your suffrages for the creation of consuls, which you would exert were you going armed into the field of battle.  Every man ought thus to say to himself I am nominating a consul who is to cope with the general Hannibal.  In the present year, at Capua, when Jubellius Taurea, the most expert horseman of the Campanians, gave a challenge, Claudius Asellus, the most expert among the Roman horsemen, was pitted against him.  Against the Gaul who at a former period gave a challenge on the bridge of