This proposal was unanimously carried without any discussion. After the crowd was cleared out of the Forum by the magistrates and the senators had gone in various directions to allay the agitation, a despatch at last arrived from C. Terentius Varro. He wrote that L. .lEmilius was killed and his army cut to pieces; he himself was at Canusium collecting the wreckage that remained from this awful disaster; there were as many as 10,000 soldiers, irregular, unorganised; the Carthaginian was still at Cannae, bargaining about the prisoners' ransom and the rest of the plunder in a spirit very unlike that of a great and victorious general. The next thing ,vas the publication of the names of those killed, and the City was thrown into such universal mourning that the annual celebration of the festival of Ceres was suspended, because it is forbidden to those in mourning to take part in it, and there was not a single matron who was not a mourner during those days. In order that the same cause might not prevent other sacred observances from being duly honoured, the period of mourning was limited by a senatorial decree to thirty days. When the agitation ,vas quieted and the senate resumed its session, a fresh despatch was received, this tilne from Sicily. T. Otacilius, the propraetor, announced that Hiero's kingdom was being devastated by a Carthaginian fleet, and when he was preparing to render him the assistance he asked for, he received news that another fully equipped fleet was riding at anchor off the lEgates, and when they heard that he was occupied with the defence of the Syracusan shore they would at once attack Lilybaeum and the rest of the Roman province. If, therefore, the senate wished to retain the king as their ally and keep their hold on Sicily, they ITIUst fit out a fleet.