Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
But, as may well be conceived,
even the servile majority shrank from granting what the future dictator
himself seemed to shrink from openly asking. When the unparalleled
agitation regarding the elections for the consulship of 701
led to the most scandalous scenes, so that the elections
were postponed a full year beyond the fixed time and only took place
after a seven months' interregnum in July 701, Pompeius found
in this state of things the desired occasion for indicating
now distinctly to the senate that the dictatorship was the only means
of cutting, if not of loosing the knot; but the decisive
word of command was not even yet spoken.
Perhaps it would have
still remained for long unuttered, had not the most audacious
partisan of the republican opposition Titus Annius Milo
stepped into the field at the consular elections for 702
as a candidate in opposition to the candidates of the regents,
Quintus Metellus Scipio and Publius Plautius Hypsaeus, both men
closely connected with Pompeius personally and thoroughly devoted to him.