1During the same days a Carthaginian spy, who had escaped detection for two years, was caught at Rome and sent away with his hands cut off, and twenty-five slaves were crucified because they had conspired in the Campus Martius; 2the informer was given his freedom and twenty thousand asses of heavy bronze. 2Envoys were also sent to Philip, king of the Macedonians, to demand the surrender of Demetrius of Pharos, who, beaten in war, had fled to him, and others to the Ligurians to protest that they had aided the Carthaginian with their resources and auxiliaries, and at the same time to observe from close at hand what was being done among the Boii and the Insubres.
5Envoys were also sent to King Pinnes in Illyria to demand the tribute whose day of payment had passed, or, if he wished the day to be put off, to receive hostages. 6So true was it that, although a huge war was on their necks, no concern anywhere on earth, not even a distant one, escaped the Romans. 7It also became a matter of religious scruple that the temple of Concord, which the praetor Lucius Manlius had vowed in Gaul during a mutiny of the soldiers two years before, had not been contracted for up to that time. 8Accordingly Gaius Pupius and Kaeso Quinctius Flamininus, appointed as a board of two for the purpose by Marcus Aemilius, the urban praetor, let the contract for building the temple on the citadel.
9By the same praetor, in accordance with a decree of the senate, a letter was sent to the consuls, asking that, if they thought fit, one of them should come to Rome to hold the election of consuls; 9he would proclaim the election for whatever day they ordered. 10To this the consuls wrote back that they could not withdraw from the enemy without harm to the state; 10and that the election should therefore be held by an interrex rather than one consul be called away from the war. 11The senators thought it more proper that a dictator should be named by a consul for the purpose of holding the election.
11Lucius Veturius Philo was named, and he named Marcus Pomponius Matho master of the horse. 12Since they had been appointed with a flaw in the auspices and were ordered on the fourteenth day to resign their office, the matter reverted to an interregnum.