11.
The rites which concerned peace with the gods being now completed, the consuls laid before the senate the condition of the state and the conduct of the war, and what forces there were and where severally stationed.
[
2]
It was voted to carry on the war with eighteen legions;
1 that each consul should take two; that with two legions in each case Gaul and Sicily and Sardinia should be held;
[
3]
that with two legions Quintus Fabius, a praetor, should be in charge of Apulia, and that with two legions of slave-volunteers Tiberius Gracchus should be in command in the region of Luceria;
[
4]
that one legion each should be left for Gaius Terentius, the proconsul, in the Picene district and for Marcus Valerius for service with the fleet near Brundisium; that two should form the garrison of the city.
[
5]
To make up this number of legions six new legions had to be enrolled.
[p. 211]The consuls were ordered to enroll them as soon as
2 possible, and to furnish a fleet, so that, including the ships at anchor defending the coast of Calabria, the fleet should amount that year to a hundred and fifty warships.
[
6]
After conducting the levy and launching a hundred new ships, Quintus Fabius held an election for the choosing of censors. Marcus Atilius Regulus and Publius Furius Philus were elected.
[7]
As the rumour that there was a war in Sicily spread more widely, Titus Otacilius was ordered to set sail thither with his fleet. Owing to the lack of sailors3 the consuls in accordance with a decree of the senate issued an edict that a man who in the censorship of Lucius Aemilius and Gaius Flaminius4 had been rated —either he or his father —at from 50,000 to 100,000 asses, or if his property had since increased to that amount, should furnish one sailor provided with six months' pay;
[8]
that one who had more than 100,000 and up to 300,000 should furnish three sailors and a year's pay; he who had over 300,000 and up to a million asses, five sailors; he who had over a million, seven; that senators should furnish eight sailors and a year's pay.
[9]
The sailors furnished in accordance with this edict went on board armed and equipped by their masters, and with cooked rations for thirty days. It was the first time that a Roman fleet was manned with crews secured at private expense.
