1When the levy was complete, the consuls waited a few days while soldiers came from the allies and those of Latin status. 2Then, something which had never been done before, the soldiers were bound by an oath administered by the military tribunes; 3for until that day there had been nothing but the military oath to assemble at the consuls' command and not to leave without orders; and when they had assembled to be formed into decuries or centuries, of their own will the cavalry in their decuries and the infantry in their centuries swore among themselves that they would not leave for the sake of flight or fear, nor withdraw from the ranks except to take up or fit a weapon, and either to strike an enemy or to save a fellow citizen.
5This was transferred from a voluntary compact among themselves to the tribunes and a legal administering of the oath. 6Before the standards moved from the city, the speeches of the consul Varro were many and fierce, declaring that the war had been invited into Italy by the nobles and would remain in the vitals of the state if it had more generals like Fabius; he himself would finish it on the day he saw the enemy. 7His colleague Paulus made a single speech, on the day before he set out from the city, more true than pleasing to the people, in which nothing harsh was said against Varro except only this, that he wondered how a general, before he knew either his own army or the enemy's, the lie of the land or the nature of the region, could already know now, while still in his toga in the city, what he would have to do when in arms, and could even foretell the day on which he would fight a pitched battle with the enemy: he himself would not lay down beforehand, before the time, unripe plans, plans which circumstances give to men rather than men to circumstances; 11he hoped that what was done cautiously and with deliberation would turn out successfully enough; 12rashness, besides being foolish, had also been unlucky up to that point.
13It was evident that of his own accord he would put safe courses before hasty ones, and, so that he might persist in this the more steadfastly, Quintus Fabius Maximus is said to have addressed him thus as he set out: