1When the letters of the consul and the praetor had been read out, they decreed that the praetor Marcus Claudius, who commanded the fleet lying at Ostia, should be sent to the army at Canusium, and that the consul should be written to, telling him that when he had handed over the army to the praetor, he should come to Rome at the earliest opportunity, as far as could be done consistently with the public interest. 2They were alarmed, besides such great disasters, both by other prodigies and because two Vestals that year, Opimia and Floronia, had been convicted of unchastity, and one had been put to death underground, as is the custom, near the Colline Gate, while the other had taken her own life.
3Lucius Cantilius, a clerk of the pontiffs (of those now called the lesser pontiffs), who had committed the offence with Floronia, had been beaten with rods by the chief pontiff in the comitium so severely that he died under the blows. 4Since this wickedness, as happens amid so many disasters, had been turned into a prodigy, the decemvirs were ordered to consult the books, and Quintus Fabius Pictor was sent to the oracle at Delphi to ask by what prayers and offerings they could appease the gods, and what end there would be to such great disasters. 6Meanwhile, on the authority of the books of fate, some extraordinary sacrifices were performed; 6among them a Gallic man and a Gallic woman, a Greek man and a Greek woman were buried alive in the Cattle Market, in a place walled round with stone, already stained before with human victims, a rite not at all Roman.
7When the gods had been appeased sufficiently, as they thought, Marcus Claudius Marcellus sends from Ostia to Rome fifteen hundred soldiers whom he had enrolled for the fleet, to serve as a garrison for the city; 8he himself, having sent ahead the marine legion (this was the third legion) with the military tribunes to Teanum Sidicinum, and having handed over the fleet to his colleague Publius Furius Philus, a few days later hurried to Canusium by forced marches. 9Then Marcus Junius, named dictator on the authority of the senate, and Tiberius Sempronius, master of horse, proclaimed a levy and enrolled the younger men from seventeen years upward and some who still wore the boy's toga.
9Four legions and a thousand horsemen were formed from these. 10They also send to the allies and the Latin name to receive soldiers according to the treaty schedule. 10They order arms, missiles and other equipment to be prepared, and take down from temples and colonnades old spoils taken from the enemy. 11The shortage of free men and necessity also gave rise to a new form of levy: they armed at public expense eight thousand sturdy young men from among the slaves, bought by the state, first asking each one individually whether he wished to serve. 12This kind of soldier was preferred, although there was the opportunity of ransoming the captives at a lower price.