28. The consul, Caius Popilius, came home to Rome when the year had almost expired, much later than had been directed by the vote of the senate; to whom it had seemed advantageous to the republic, that magistrates should be elected as soon as possible, when so important a war was impending. Therefore the consul did not receive a favourable hearing from the senate, when he spoke in the temple of Bellona of his acts among the Ligurians. There were frequent interruptions and questions, why he had not restored to liberty the Ligurians, who had been oppressed by his brother? The election was held on the day appointed by proclamation, the twelfth before the calends of March. The consuls chosen were, Publius Licinius Crassus and Caius Cassius Longinus. Next day were elected prætors, Caius Sulpicius Galba, Lucius Furius Philus, Lucius Canuleius Dives, Caius Lucretius Gallus, Caius Caninius Rebilus, and Lucius Villius Annalis. The provinces decreed to these prætors were, the two civil jurisdictions in Rome, Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia; and one of them was kept disengaged, that he might be employed wherever the senate should direct. The senate ordered the consuls elect, that, on whatever day they would enter on their office, having sacrificed victims of the larger kind, they should pray to the gods that the war, which the Roman people intended to engage in, might prove fortunate in the issue. On the same day the senate passed an order, that the consul, Caius Popilius, should vow games, of ten days’ continuance, to Jupiter supremely good and great, with offerings in all the temples, if the commonwealth should remain for ten years in its present state. Pursuant to this vote, the consul made a vow in the Capitol, that the games should be celebrated, and the offerings made, at such expense as the senate should direct, when not less than a hundred and fifty persons were present. That vow was expressed in terms dictated by Lepidus, the chief pontiff. There died this year, of the public priests, Lucius Æmilius Papus, decemvir of religious rites, and Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, a pontiff who had been censor the year before. The latter died in a shocking manner: he had received an account, that, of his two sons who were in the army in Illyria, one was dead, and the other labouring under a heavy and dangerous malady: his grief and fears, together, overwhelmed his reason, and his servants, on going into his chamber in the morning, found him hanging by a rope. There was a general opinion, that, since his censorship, his understanding had not been sound; and the report was popular, that the resentment of Juno Lacinia, for the spoil committed on her temple, had caused the derangement of his intellects. Marcus Valerius Messala was substituted decemvir in the place of Æmilius; and Cneius Domitius Ænobarbus, though a mere youth, was chosen into the priesthood as pontiff in the room of Fulvius.