1One of the consuls-elect, Flaminius, to whom the legions wintering at Placentia had fallen by lot, sent an edict and a letter to the consul, that this army should be present in camp at Ariminum on the Ides of March. 2His plan was to enter on his consulship in his province, since he remembered his old quarrels with the senators, which he had had as tribune of the plebs and afterwards as consul, first about his consulship, which was being annulled, and then about his triumph; 3he was hated by the senators also because of a new law which Quintus Claudius, tribune of the plebs, had carried against the senate, with Gaius Flaminius alone of the senators supporting it, that no senator, nor anyone whose father had been a senator, should own a seagoing ship of more than three hundred amphorae burden.
4That was considered enough for carrying produce from their estates; 4all money-making was thought unbecoming for senators. 4The measure, carried through amid the fiercest struggle, won Flaminius, its advocate, hatred among the nobility, favour among the plebs, and from that a second consulship. 5For these reasons, thinking they would detain him in the city by falsifying the auspices, by delaying the Latin Festival and by other hindrances to a consul, he pretended a journey and, still a private citizen, went off secretly to his province. 6When this became known, it stirred fresh anger besides among the senators, who were already hostile: Gaius Flaminius was now waging war not only with the senate but with the immortal gods.
7Formerly, made consul without due auspices, he had not obeyed gods and men when they recalled him from the very battle line; 7now, conscious of having scorned them, he had shunned both the Capitol and the solemn pronouncing of vows, so as not to visit the temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest on the day he entered office, not to see and consult the senate, hateful as he was to it and it to him alone, not to proclaim the Latin Festival and perform the solemn sacrifice to Jupiter Latiaris on the mount, not to go, after taking the auspices, to the Capitol to pronounce vows and from there, in his general's cloak, with his lictors, to his province.
9Like a camp-follower, without insignia, without lictors, he had set out secretly, by stealth, just as if he had left his native soil to go into exile; no doubt it suited the majesty of his command better that he should enter office at Ariminum rather than at Rome, and put on the bordered toga in a wayside inn rather than before his own household gods. 11They all voted that he should be recalled and brought back, and compelled to perform in person all his duties towards gods and men before he went to the army and the province. 12On that embassy, for it was decided to send envoys, Quintus Terentius and Marcus Antistius set out, but they moved him no more than the letter sent by the senate had moved him in his former consulship.
13A few days later he entered office, and as he was sacrificing, a calf, already struck, tore itself from the hands of the attendants and spattered many bystanders with blood; 13farther off, among those who did not know what the alarm was, there was even greater flight and running about. 14This was taken by most as an omen of great terror. 15Then, having taken over two legions from Sempronius, consul of the previous year, and two from Gaius Atilius the praetor, he began to lead the army into Etruria by the paths over the Apennines.