It was necessary to take up the war in earnest, and although in the meantime the able praetor Quintus Minucius had mastered the first danger, the senate resolved in 559 to send the consul Marcus Cato in person to Spain.

It was not till after a victory gained by the praetor Lucius Aemilius Paullus in 565,(4) and a second still more considerable gained by the brave praetor Gaius Calpurnius beyond the Tagus over the Lusitanians in 569, that quiet for some time prevailed.

The cost of these new festal amusements was defrayed by the magistrates entrusted with the providing of the respective festivals from their own means: thus the curule aediles had, over and above the old national festival, those of the Mother of the Gods and of Flora; the plebeian aediles had the plebeian festival and that of Ceres, and the urban praetor the Apollinarian games.

A warlike praetor went even so far as to propose to the people a declaration of war against Rhodes.