1The consuls' command was extended for a year. 1The interreges named by the senators were Gaius Claudius Cento, son of Appius, then Publius Cornelius Asina. 1In his interregnum the election was held amid a great struggle between the senators and the plebs. 2Gaius Terentius Varro, a man of their own kind, who had won over the plebs by attacking the leading men and by popular arts, and who shone with glory from another's unpopularity after shaking Quintus Fabius' power and dictatorial command, the common people were striving to drag into the consulship; the senators opposed him with all their might, lest men should grow used to making themselves their equals by attacking them.
3Quintus Baebius Herennius, a tribune of the plebs and a kinsman of Gaius Terentius, by accusing not only the senate but also the augurs of having prevented the dictator from completing the election, was winning favour for his candidate through the odium he stirred against them: Hannibal, he said, had been brought into Italy by men of noble birth who had been seeking war for many years; 4by these same men the war was being dragged out by deceit, when it could be brought to an end. 5It had become clear that the war could be fought out with four legions together, from the fact that Marcus Minucius had fought successfully in Fabius' absence; two legions had been thrown to the enemy for slaughter and then snatched from the very slaughter, so that the man was called father and patron who had prevented the Romans from conquering before he prevented them from being conquered.
7Then the consuls, by Fabius' methods, had dragged out the war when they could have finished it. 7This was a pact struck among all the nobles, and they would not have an end of the war before they had made a truly plebeian consul, that is, a new man; 8for the plebeian nobles had now been initiated into the same rites, and had begun to despise the plebs from the moment they ceased to be despised by the patricians. 9To whom was it not plain that the aim and object had been to bring about an interregnum, so that the election would be in the power of the patricians? 10This was what both consuls had sought by lingering with the army; 10this was what afterwards, because a dictator had been named against their will to hold the election, had been carried by force, when the dictator was made out to be flawed by the augurs.
10Well then, let them have their interregnum; 11but one consulship at least belonged to the Roman plebs; the people would keep it free and give it to a man who preferred to win quickly rather than to command for long.