On the first day of its meeting the senate ordered the dictator to celebrate the great games which Marcus Aemilius, the city praetor, had celebrated in the consulship of Caius Flaminius and Cneius Servilius, and had vowed to be repeated after five years.

The dictator then both performed the games and vowed them for the following lustrum.

But as the two consular armies without commanders were so near the enemy, disregarding every thing else, one especial care engrossed the fathers and the people, that of creating the consuls as soon as possible; and that they might create those in preference whose valour was least in danger from Carthaginian treachery; since, through the whole period of the war, the precipitate and hot tempers of their generals had been detrimental, and this very year the consuls had fallen into a snare for which they were not prepared, in consequence of their excessive eagerness to engage the enemy, but the immortal gods, in pity to the Roman name, had spared the unoffending armies, and doomed the consuls to expiate their temerity with their own lives.
34.

On the fathers' looking round to see whom they should appoint as consuls, Caius Claudius Nero appeared pre-eminently.

They then looked out for a colleague for him, and although they considered him a man of the highest talents, they also were of opinion that he was of a more forward and vehement disposition than the circumstances of the war, or the enemy, Hannibal, required, they resolved that it would be right to qualify the impetuosity of his temper by uniting with him a cool and prudent colleague.