Book 9
7.8
The booths round the Forum were shut up; all public business in the Forum ceased spontaneously before the proclamation closing it was made; the senators laid aside their purple striped tunics and gold rings; the gloom amongst the citizens was almost greater than that in the army.
7.9
Their indignation was not confined to the generals or the officers who had made the convention, even the innocent soldiers were the objects of resentment, they said they would not admit them into the City.
7.10
But this angry temper was dispelled by the arrival of the troops; their wretched appearance awoke commiseration amongst the most resentful.
7.11
They did not enter the City like men returning in safety after being given up for lost, but in the guise and with the expression of prisoners. They came late in the evening and crept to their homes, where they kept themselves so close that for some days not one of them would show himself in public or in the Forum.
7.12
The Consuls shut themselves up in privacy and refused to discharge any official functions with the exception of one which was wrung from them by a decree of the senate,
7.13
namely, the nomination of a Dictator to conduct the elections. They nominated Q. Fabius Ambustus, with P. Aelius Paetus as Master of the Horse.
