This proceeding the patricians with difficulty brooked, and the tribune was severely reprehended in the senate; where each severally urged the consul to call a new assembly, for passing the proposal; to rebuke the backwardness of the people; and to prove to them how much loss and disgrace the delay of this war would occasion.
7.

The consul, having assembled the people in the field of Mars, before he dismissed the centuries to the vote, required their attention, and addressed them thus: "Citizens, you seem to me not to understand that the question before you is not whether you choose to have peace or war: for Philip, having already commenced hostilities with a formidable force, both on land and sea, allows you not that option.

The question is, Whether you must transport your legions to Macedonia, or admit the enemy into Italy?
How important the difference is, if you never experienced it before, you certainly did in the late Punic war.

For who entertains a doubt, but if, when the Saguntines were besieged, and implored our protection, we had assisted them with vigour, as our fathers did the Mamertines, we should have averted the whole weight of the war upon Spain; which, by our dilatory proceedings, we suffered to our extreme loss to fall upon Italy?
Nor does it admit a doubt, that we confined this same Philip in Macedonia, (after he had entered into an engagement with Hannibal by ambassadors and letters, to cross over into Italy,) by sending Laevinus with a fleet to make war aggressively upon him.

And what we did at that time, when we had Hannibal to contend with in Italy, do we hesitate to do now, after Hannibal has been expelled Italy, and the Carthaginians subdued?
Suppose that we allow the king to experience the same inactivity on our part, while he is taking Athens, as we suffered Hannibal to experience while he was taking Saguntum: it will not be in the fifth month, as Hannibal came from Saguntum, but on the fifth day after he sets sail from Corinth, that he will arrive in Italy.