1The consul's reply to this was far from cheerful, as he admitted that what Fabius said was true rather than easy to do. 2The master of the horse had been intolerable to a dictator: what strength and authority would a consul have against a mutinous and rash colleague? 3In his former consulship he had escaped the popular blaze half-burnt; 3he hoped that all would turn out well; 3but if any misfortune befell, he would expose his life to the weapons of the enemy rather than to the votes of angry citizens. 4They record that after this conversation Paulus set out escorted by the leading senators; 4the plebeian consul was escorted by his own plebs, a more conspicuous crowd, though men of rank were lacking.
5When they came to the camp, the new and the old armies were mixed together and two camps made, so that the new, smaller one was nearer Hannibal, while the old held the greater part and all the main strength of the forces; of the consuls of the previous year they sent Marcus Atilius, who pleaded his age, to Rome, and put Geminus Servilius in charge of a Roman legion and two thousand allied infantry and cavalry in the smaller camp. 7Hannibal, although he saw that the enemy's forces had been increased by half, was nevertheless wonderfully glad at the consuls' arrival. 8For not only was nothing left of the supplies plundered from day to day, but there was not even anything left from which to plunder, since all the grain on every side, once the countryside became insufficiently safe, had been carried into fortified cities, so that scarcely ten days' grain remained, as was discovered later, and the Spaniards, because of the shortage, had prepared to desert, if the ripening of the season had been waited for.