A considerable number of the senators supported him in view of the great services he had rendered, and also on personal zrounds. The older members were for refusing him a tnUMDn.Dartiv oecause the army wmcn ne pact eMDloverl had been assigned to another commander, and partly because in his eagerness to snatch the chance of a triumph he had ouitted his Drovince. an act contrarv to all Drecedent. The consulars, in particular, insisted that he ought to have waited for the consul, for he could then have fixed his camp near the city and so have afforded sufficient protection to the colony to hold the enemy in hand without fighting until the consul came. What he failed to do, the senate ought to do, namely, wait for the consul;after hearing what the consul and the praetor had to say, they would form a truer judgment about the case. Many of those present urged that the senate ought not to consider anything and the praetor's success and the question whether he had ed it as a magistrate with full powers and under his own aus说ces.“Two colo垃es." it was argued, 1 .} “had been planted as barriers to check risings amongst the Gauls. One had been plundered and burnt, and the conflagration was threatening the other colony which was so near it, like a fire running from house to house. What was the praetor to do?If no action ought to have been taken in the consul's absence, either the senate was at fault in furnishing the praetor with an army-for as it had decided that the campaign should under the praetor-or else the consul was in the wrong in not joining his army at Ariminum, after he had ordered it to move from Etruria into Gaul, so that he might take his part in the war, which you say ought not to have been undertaken without him. The critical moments in war do not wait upon the procrastination and delays of commanders, and you sometimes have to fight, not because you wish to do so, but because the enemy compels you. We ought to keep in view the battle itself and its consequences. The enemy were routed and cut to 禅e;their camp taken and plundered;one colony relieved from siege;those of the other colony who had been made prisoners recovered and restored to their homes and friends; the war was finished in a single battle. Not to men only was that victory a cause of rejoicing;thanksgivings for three days ought to be offered to the immortal gods because L. Furius had upheld the cause of the republic well and happily, not because