Book 5

1.1. The royal constitution of the Romans, having lasted, after the founding of Rome, two hundred and forty-four years in number, and having, under the last king, become a tyranny, was, for these causes and by these men, dissolved, in the sixty-eighth Olympiad then current, the one in which Ischomachus the Crotoniate won the foot-race, while at Athens

1.2. Isagoras held the annual office. An aristocracy having come into being, the first to take over the royal authority as consuls — for the four months still remaining in that year — were Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, whom the Romans in their own tongue call, as I said, foredeliberators. These, having taken on many others as colleagues when those from the camp came into the city after the truce they had made with the Ardeates, a few days after the expulsion of the tyrant, summoned the people into an assembly; and, having made many speeches concerning concord, they ratified again another decree confirming what those in the city had earlier voted, laying perpetual exile upon the Tarquinii.

1.3. And after this, having performed purifications of the city and cut victims, they themselves first standing over the severed parts swore, and persuaded the other citizens to swear, neither to bring back from exile King Tarquinius nor his sons nor those who should be sprung from them, and no longer to set up any man as king of the city of the Romans, nor to permit those who should wish to set one up. These oaths they swore concerning themselves and their children and the race after them.

1.4. And since the kings were thought to have been the authors of many great benefits to the commonwealth, wishing to preserve the name of the office for as long a time as the city should last, they ordered the priests and augurs to appoint the most suitable of the elder men, who should hold the leadership of nothing else save the rites concerning the gods, being released from every military and political service, and called King of the Sacred Rites. And the first King of the Sacred Rites appointed was Manius Papirius, a man of the patricians and a lover of quiet.

2.1. When they had established these things, fearing, as it seems to me, lest there should arise among the many an opinion about the new constitution that was not true — namely, that two kings had become masters of the city instead of one, since each of the consuls had the twelve axes, as the kings had — they resolved both to take away the fear of the citizens and to lessen the envy of the authority, by arranging that the twelve axes should precede the one of the consuls, while the other should have only twelve attendants bearing rods — and, as some record, clubs also — and that the reception of the axes should be by rotation, each holding them in alternation for a month.

2.2. Having established this measure, and not a few others like it, they made the plebeian and humble multitude zealous for the maintenance of the new order. For the laws concerning contracts written by Tullius, which seemed humane and democratic, all of which Tarquinius had abolished, they renewed; and the sacrifices, both those in the city and those in the fields, which the plebeians and tribesmen used to perform in common, coming together, they again ordered to be performed as they had been performed under Tullius; and they gave them back the right to assemble concerning the greatest matters and to cast a vote and to do the other things which they had done according to their former customs.

2.3. To the many, then, what was done by them was to their liking, having come from a long servitude to an unhoped-for freedom; yet some were nevertheless found among them who longed for the evils of tyranny, through folly or through greed — men not obscure — who conspired for the betrayal of the city, agreeing to bring back Tarquinius and to kill the consuls. Who their leaders were, and through what unhoped-for chance they were detected, though they seemed to have escaped the notice of all men, I will tell, taking up briefly the things that happened before.

3.1. Tarquinius, when he had been driven from the kingship, spent some little time in the city of Gabii, both receiving those who flocked to him from the city — to whom tyranny was a more welcome thing than freedom — and holding fast to the hopes of the Latins, as one who should be restored to power through them. But when the cities did not give heed to him nor wish to carry on a war on his behalf against the city of the Romans, despairing of the aid from them, he took refuge in the Tyrrhenian city of Tarquinii, from which his line on the mother's side was sprung.

3.2. Having persuaded the magistrates of the Tarquinienses with gifts, and through them being brought before the assembly, he both renewed the kinship which belonged to him with the city and recounted the benefits which his grandfather had bestowed on all the cities in Tyrrhenia, and reminded them of the treaties which they had made with him; and upon all these things he lamented the fortune that had seized him, that, having fallen from great prosperity, in a single day a wanderer and in want of necessities, with three sons, he had been compelled to take refuge with those who had once been subject to him.

3.3. Having gone over these things thus, with much lamentation and tears, he persuaded the people first to send ambassadors to Rome bearing words of reconciliation on his behalf, as though the powerful men there were cooperating with him and would help in his return. When ambassadors had been appointed, whom he himself chose, having instructed the men what they ought to say and do, and having given them letters from the exiles with him containing entreaties to their own relations and friends, he sent them, bringing also some gold.

4.1. These men, coming to Rome, said before the senate that Tarquinius thought fit, on receiving safe-conduct, to come with a few persons first to the council, as is just; then, if he should obtain the concession from the senate, then to come also to the assembly to submit an account of all that he had done from the time he received the rule, and to use as judges, if anyone should accuse him,

4.2. all the Romans. And having defended himself and persuaded all that he had done nothing worthy of exile, if they should give him back the kingship again, he would rule on whatever just terms the citizens should ordain; but if they should choose to be ruled by kings no longer, as before, but to establish some other constitution, then, remaining in the city which was his fatherland and having his own household, he would conduct his life as a citizen among all on equal terms, and be released from exile and wandering.

4.3. Having gone over these things, they begged the senate — most of all for the sake of the justice established among all men, that no one be deprived of a hearing and a trial — to grant the man his defence, of which they themselves should be the judges; but if they were not willing to grant him this favour, then for the sake of the city that entreated on his behalf to be moderate, giving it a gift from which they themselves, suffering no harm, would be thought to confer a great honour on the one receiving it; and, being men, to think nothing beyond human nature and not to keep their angers immortal in mortal bodies, but even, against their inclination, to endure doing some equitable thing for the sake of those who entreat — considering that it is the work of prudent men to make their enmities yield to their friendships, but of foolish men and barbarians to destroy their friends along with their enemies.

5.1. When they had said such things, Brutus, rising, said: "Concerning the entrance of the Tarquinii into this city, men of Tyrrhenia, cease to say anything further. For a vote has already been passed against them ordaining perpetual exile, and we have all sworn by the gods neither ourselves to bring back the tyrants nor to permit those who would bring them back. But if you need anything else of the moderate things which we are not forbidden by laws or oaths to do, say it." After this the ambassadors, coming forward, say:

5.2. "Beyond our expectation has the first matter turned out for us; for, sending an embassy on behalf of a suppliant man who thinks fit to submit an account to you, and asking the common justice of all men as a private favour, we have not been able to obtain it. But since this is your decision, concerning the entrance of the Tarquinii we no longer importune you, but we summon you to another just thing, concerning which our fatherland has given us its instructions, and there is neither law nor oath to prevent your doing it: to give back to the king the property which his grandfather formerly possessed, holding none of yours either by force or by stealth, but having received it by inheritance from his father and brought it over to you. For it suffices him, having recovered his own, to live somewhere else in blessedness, troubling you in nothing."

5.3. Such things the ambassadors having said, they withdrew. Of the consuls, Brutus counselled to keep the property — both for the sake of vengeance, in return for the many great wrongs the tyrants had done the commonwealth, and for the sake of advantage, that it might not become for them a resource for the war — teaching that the Tarquinii would not be content with recovering their estates nor endure to live a private life, but would bring against the Romans a war of foreign nations and would try by force to return to power.

5.4. But Collatinus advised the opposite, saying that the property of the tyrants did the city no wrong, but their persons; and he thought they ought to guard against both — that they should not get an evil reputation among all men, as having driven out the Tarquinii from the rule on account of their wealth, and that they should not give them a just pretext for war, as men deprived of their own. He declared it unclear whether, on recovering their property, they would still attempt to make war on them about their return, but the other thing plain — that they would not think fit to keep the peace if robbed of their estates.

6.1. These things the consuls saying, and many speaking on both sides, the senate, at a loss what to do and considering it for many days, since Brutus seemed to say the more advantageous things, but Collatinus to advise the more just, finally resolved to make the people the judge of both the advantageous and the just.

6.2. Much being said by each of the consuls, the curiae, taking up the vote — thirty in number — gave so small an inclination to the one side that by one vote those wishing to give back the property became more than those bidding to keep it. The Tyrrhenians, receiving these answers from the consuls and praising the city much, because it had chosen the just before the advantageous, sent word to Tarquinius to send men to receive the property, while they themselves remained in the city, on the pretext of gathering the movables and disposing of what could not be carried off and conveyed away; but, as the truth was, stirring up and contriving the affairs of the city, as the tyrant had charged them.

6.3. For they both delivered the letters from the exiles to their friends and received from them others to the exiles; and coming into conversation with many and making trial of their disposition, whomever they found easy to capture through weakness of judgment or want of livelihood or longing for the greeds of the tyranny, holding out to them good hopes and giving them money, they tried to

6.4. corrupt. And there were bound, as is natural in a great and populous city, to appear some who would choose the worse constitution before the better — not only of the obscure but also of the distinguished, among whom were two Junii, Titus and Tiberius, sons of Brutus who was then consul, just beginning to grow a beard, and with them two Vitellii, Marcus and Manius, brothers of the wife of Brutus, capable of managing public affairs, and two sons of the sister of Collatinus, the other consul, Lucius and Marcus Aquillius, of the same age as the sons of Brutus, at whose house the gatherings for the most part took place, their father being no longer living, and the plans concerning the return of the tyrants were concerted.

7.1. From many other things it has seemed to me that the affairs of the Romans advanced to so great a prosperity by the providence of the gods, and not least from what happened at that time. For so great a folly and god-stricken madness seized those wretched men that they endured to write letters to the tyrant in their own hand, declaring to him both the number of those sharing in the conspiracy and the time at which they meant to make the attack upon the consuls, being persuaded by the letters that had come to them from the tyrant that he wished to foreknow whom of the Romans it befitted him to treat well

7.2. when he had got the rule. Of these letters the consuls became masters by some such chance as this. At the house of the Aquillii, who were sprung from the sister of Collatinus, the chief men in the conspiracy were lodged, having been invited as for sacred rites and a sacrifice; and after the feast, ordering the servants to leave the banquet and to depart from before the doors of the men's hall, they conferred with one another about the restoration of the tyrants and committed their resolutions to letters in their own hand, which the Aquillii had to receive and give to the ambassadors from Tyrrhenia,

7.3. and those to Tarquinius. At this time one of the servants, a cup-bearer from the city of Caenina, a captive, Vindicius by name, suspecting that the men were planning evil, remained alone outside by the doors at the withdrawal of the servants, and both overheard their words and saw the letters being written by all, putting his eye to some chink of the door through which he could see.

7.4. Going out while it was still deep night, as though sent by his masters on some errand, he hesitated to go to the consuls, fearing lest, wishing to conceal the matter on account of their goodwill toward their kinsmen, they should make away with the one who had informed of the conspiracy; but going to Publius Valerius, who was among the first four of those who had overthrown the tyranny, and receiving from him by a clasp of the hand and by oaths the pledge of his own safety, he becomes the informer both of what he heard and

7.5. of what he saw. And he, when he learned it, making no delay, comes to the house of the Aquillii with a large band of clients and friends about dawn, and passing within the doors, as though present on some other errand, while the youths were still in the house, becomes master without hindrance of the letters and, seizing the young men, brings them before the consuls.

8.1. The deeds done after this by Brutus, one of the consuls — great and marvellous, on which the Romans most pride themselves — though I have them to tell, I fear lest I shall seem to the Greeks to be telling things harsh and incredible, since all men are wont to judge what is told of others from their own feelings and to make the credible incredible in their own case; nevertheless I will tell them.

8.2. For as soon as day came, sitting upon the platform and examining the letters of those in the conspiracy, when he found those written by his sons, recognizing each by the seals and, after loosing the seals, by the handwriting, he first ordered both to be read by the secretary into the hearing of all present; then he bade his sons say anything they wished.

8.3. When neither of them dared to turn to a shameless denial, but, having condemned themselves, both wept, after a short pause he rose, and proclaiming silence, while all awaited what end he would bring forth, he said he condemned his children to death. At this all cried out, not thinking fit that such a man should be punished by the death of his children, and they wished to grant the lives of the youths to their father.

8.4. But he, enduring neither their voices nor their lamentations, ordered the attendants to lead away the young men, who wailed and entreated and called upon him by the dearest names. Marvellous indeed even this seemed to all, that the man yielded nothing either to the entreaties of the citizens or to the laments of his children; but far more marvellous than this was his inexorability about their punishment.

8.5. For neither did he permit his sons, led away, to die elsewhere out of the sight of all, nor did he himself withdraw from the Forum until they should be punished, turning away from the terrible spectacle, nor did he let them fulfil the doom voted against them without contumely; but, observing all the customs and usages concerning punishments, all that malefactors are appointed to suffer, in the Forum, all looking on, after their bodies had been outraged with blows, he himself being present at all that was done, then permitted their necks to be struck off by the axes.

8.6. But beyond all the astonishing and marvellous things in the man was the fixedness and unyielding of his countenance; for, of all the others who were present at the calamity weeping, he alone was seen neither to bewail the doom of his children nor to lament for himself the desolation that would seize his house, nor to yield anything soft, but, tearless and groanless and fixed of countenance, he bore the misfortune stout of heart. So strong was he in mind and so firm in maintaining his decisions and master of the passions that disturb the reason.

9.1. Having killed his sons, he at once summoned the nephews of his colleague, the Aquillii, at whose house the gatherings of those conspiring against the city had taken place; and ordering the secretary to read their letters, so that all present might hear, he said he was granting them a defence. When the young men had been brought forward to the platform, whether at the suggestion of one of their friends or themselves taking counsel, they fall at the knees of their uncle, as though they should be saved through him.

9.2. When Brutus ordered the lictors to drag them away and lead them to death, if they were unwilling to make a defence, Collatinus, telling the attendants to wait a little until he should speak with his colleague, taking the man aside, made many entreaties on behalf of the youths: partly defending them, that they had fallen into this madness through the folly of youth and wicked companionships of friends; partly entreating him to grant to him the lives of his kinsmen,

9.3. asking this one gift and saying he would trouble him about nothing else; partly teaching that there was danger that the whole city would be thrown into confusion, if they should attempt to punish with death all who seemed in any way to have cooperated with the exiles concerning the return — for they were many, and some of houses not obscure. When he did not persuade him, at last he asked him to ordain against them not death but a moderate punishment, saying it was absurd that the tyrants should be punished with exile, but the friends of the tyrants with death. When the man spoke against even the leniency of the punishment, and was unwilling to postpone the trials of those under accusation to other times — for this was the colleague's last entreaty — but threatened and swore he would kill all that same day, Collatinus, distressed that he was obtaining none of the things he asked, said: "Well then, since you are perverse and bitter, I take the youths from you by the same authority of which you too are master." And Brutus, embittered, said: "Not while I live, Collatinus, shall you be able to rescue the betrayers of the fatherland; but you too shall pay the penalty which befits, and that before long."

10.1. Having said this and set a guard over the youths, he summoned the people into an assembly. When the Forum was filled with a crowd — for what had befallen his children had become notorious through the whole city — coming forward and stationing beside him the most honoured of those in the senate,

10.2. he spoke as follows: "I would have wished, men of citizens, that this Collatinus, my colleague, should think the same as I in all things, and not in word only but in deed should hate the tyrants and make war on them; but since he has become plain to me as thinking the opposite, and is kin to the Tarquinii not only in nature but also in purpose, working reconciliations with them and, instead of the common advantage, looking to his own profit, both I myself am prepared to prevent him from doing what he has in mind, which is wicked, and have summoned you for this. I will tell you first into what dangers the affairs of the city have come, then how each of us has dealt with them.

10.3. Certain of the citizens, gathering at the house of the Aquillii, who were sprung from the sister of Collatinus — among whom were both my sons and the brothers of my wife and certain others with them, not obscure — made agreements with one another and swore, having killed me, to bring back Tarquinius to power; and writing letters about these things in their own hand and sealing them with their own seals, they meant to send them to the exiles.

10.4. These things have become plain to us by the goodwill of some god, informed by this man — he is a slave of the Aquillii, at whose house, being lodged the past night, they wrote the letters; and we have become masters of the letters themselves. Titus, then, and Tiberius, my sons, I have punished; and nothing has been dissolved through my leniency, neither law nor oath. But Collatinus takes the Aquillii from me and says he will not allow those who have planned the same things as my sons to meet the same fate as they.

10.5. But if these shall undergo no punishment, neither shall it be possible for me to punish the brothers of my wife nor the other betrayers of the fatherland. For what just thing shall I have to say to them, if I let these go? Of what, then, do you set these things down as evidence — of goodwill toward the city or of reconciliation with the tyrants, and of the confirmation of the oaths which, beginning with us, you all swore, or of their confounding and perjury?

10.6. And if it had escaped our notice, he would have been liable to the curses and would have paid the penalty to the gods whom he perjured; but since he has become manifest, it befits him to be punished by us — he who a few days before persuaded you to give back the property to the tyrants, that the city might not have it to use against its enemies for the war, but the enemies against the city; and now thinks fit that those who conspired for the return of the tyrants should be released from punishment — plainly granting them to those tyrants as a favour, that, if indeed they return, whether by treachery or by war, alleging these favours he may, as a friend, obtain from them all that he chooses.

10.7. Then shall I, who did not spare my own children, spare you, Collatinus — you who have your body with us, but your soul with the enemies, and save the betrayers of the fatherland, but will kill me who contend on her behalf? Whence? Far from it. But, that you may work no more such things, I take away your office and bid you remove to another city; and to you, citizens, I will give a vote, summoning the centuries at once, that they may decide whether these things should be valid; and know well that you will have one of two — either Collatinus as consul or Brutus."

11.1. While he was saying such things, Collatinus, crying out and grievously protesting, calling him at every point a plotter and a betrayer of his friends, partly defending himself against the calumnies against him, partly entreating on behalf of his nephews, and not permitting a vote to be given to the citizens against himself, made the people the harsher and stirred up terrible tumults at all that was said.

11.2. The citizens being enraged against him and enduring neither defence nor admitting entreaty, but bidding the votes to be given to them, his father-in-law Spurius Lucretius, a man honoured by the people, taking the matter with caution, lest he be cast out of office and country with contumely, asking leave to speak from both consuls and obtaining this authority first, as the Roman historians say — it not yet being then a custom among the Romans for a private man to harangue in the assembly — made a common entreaty of both consuls: counselling Collatinus not to contend in anger nor to hold the office against the will of the citizens, which he had received from their will, but, if it seemed good to those who gave it to take it back, to lay it down willingly and not to clear himself of the calumnies against him by words but by deeds, and to remove his dwelling somewhere else, taking all his own, until the commonwealth should be secure, since this seemed to the people to be advantageous — considering that, at other wrongs that are done, all men are wont to be angry, but at treachery even when only suspected, they think it more prudent and, even when frightened for nothing, to guard against it rather than,

11.3. through contempt, to permit themselves to be overthrown; and persuading Brutus not, with shame and contumely, to cast out of the fatherland his colleague, with whom he had taken the best counsels for the city, but, if he should endure to lay down his office and yield up the fatherland willingly, to permit him to remove his whole property at leisure, and to add some gift from the public treasury, that he might have, as a consolation of his misfortune, the favour of the people.

12.1. When the man counselled these things to both, and the citizens praised the speech, Collatinus, much bewailing himself, that through pity for his kinsmen he should be compelled to leave his fatherland though doing no wrong, lays down the office.

12.2. And Brutus, praising him as having deliberated the best and most advantageous things both for himself and for the city, exhorted him to bear no grudge either against himself or against the fatherland; but, having taken up another dwelling, to consider the fatherland he was leaving as still his own, sharing with the enemies neither in deed nor in word against it; and, on the whole, regarding his removal as a sojourn abroad, not a banishment or exile, to have his body among those who received him, but his soul among those who escorted him forth. Having suggested these things to the man, he persuaded the people to give him a gift of twenty talents, and himself adds five talents from his own means.

12.3. Tarquinius Collatinus, then, falling upon such a fortune, went off to Lavinium, the mother-city of the Latin race, in which he died an old man. But Brutus, not thinking fit to rule alone, nor that he should come into suspicion with the citizens that, led on by a longing for monarchy, he had driven his fellow-consul out of the fatherland, summoning the people to the plain where it was their custom to appoint both the kings and the other magistrates, chooses as his colleague Publius Valerius, a descendant, as I said before, of the Sabine Valerius, a man worthy to be praised and admired for many other practices, but most of all for the self-sufficiency of his life. For a kind of self-taught philosophy was in him, which he displayed in many affairs, concerning which I shall speak a little later.

13.1. After this, now using one mind concerning all things, they at once put to death all those who had conspired for the return of the exiles, and honoured the slave who had informed of the conspiracy with freedom and a grant of citizenship and much money. Then, having established three most excellent and most advantageous measures for the commonwealth, they brought about concord among all in the city and diminished the factions of the enemies.

13.2. The measures of the men were these. First, choosing the best of the plebeians, they made them patricians and filled up from them the senate to three hundred. Then, bringing the property of the tyrants into the common stock for all the citizens, they set it forth, permitting each to take and keep whatever he should get from it; and the land which they had possessed they distributed among those who had no allotment, taking out one plain only, which lies between the city and the river. This the men of former times had voted to be sacred to Mars, a meadow for horses and a most suitable training-ground for young men practising exercises in arms; and that it had earlier too been sacred to this god, but Tarquinius, appropriating it, had sown it, I think the strongest proof to be what was done by the consuls at that time concerning the crops in it.

13.3. For though they permitted the people to drive and carry off all the property of the tyrants, the grain that was in this plain at the time — that lying on the stalks, that on the threshing-floors, and that already worked up — they permitted no one to carry off, but, as accursed and not fit to be brought into a house, they voted that it be cast into the river.

13.4. And there is now a conspicuous memorial of the deed of that time, a fair-sized island sacred to Asclepius, washed all round by the river, which they say arose from the heap of stalks rotting and from the river continually adding silt to it. And to those Romans who had fled with the tyrant they gave the right of return to the city, on safe-conduct and amnesty for every offence, fixing a time of twenty days; but if they should not return within this appointed term, they fixed as punishment for them perpetual exile and

13.5. confiscation of the possessions they had. These measures of the men made those who had profited from the property of the tyrants in any thing whatever endure every danger so as not to be deprived again of the gains they had got; and those who, through fear of the lawlessnesses they had committed under the tyranny, lest they be compelled to undergo trial, had assessed exile against themselves, being released from their fear, to think no longer the thoughts of the tyrants but those of the city.

14.1. Having accomplished these things and made ready for the war, for a time they kept the forces under the city in the plains, arrayed under standards and commanders and practising for the war, learning that the exiles were gathering an army against them from all the cities in Tyrrhenia, and that two cities were openly helping them concerning the return, the Tarquinienses and the Veientes, both with considerable forces, and that from the others were certain volunteers, some procured by friends, some mercenaries. But when they learned that the enemy had already gone forth, they resolved to meet them, and, before those crossed the river, themselves taking their forces across, advanced and encamped near the Tyrrhenians in a meadow called Naevian, beside a grove

14.2. sacred to the hero Horatius. Their forces happened to be most nearly equal in number, and both went to the contest with like eagerness. First, then, there was a brief cavalry battle as soon as they came in sight of one another, before the foot encamped, in which, having made trial of one another and neither conquering nor being worsted, each withdrew to their own camps. Then the heavy-armed and the horse on either side came together, arrayed in the same manner as one another, making the phalanx of the foot the centre and stationing the horse on both wings.

14.3. The right wing of the Romans was led by Valerius the chosen consul, holding the position opposite the Veientes; the left by Brutus, where the force of the Tarquinienses was; and the sons of King Tarquinius adorned it as commanders.

15.1. When they were about to come to blows, one of the sons of Tarquinius, Arruns by name, mightiest in strength and most brilliant in spirit of the brothers, coming forward from the array of the Tyrrhenians and driving his horse near the Romans, whence all would understand both his form and his voice, hurled insulting words against the leader of the Romans, Brutus, calling him a savage beast and defiled with the blood of his children, and reproaching him at once with unmanliness and cowardice, and at the end challenged him to the contest on behalf of all, to meet him alone in combat.

15.2. And he, not thinking fit to endure the reproaches, drove his horse from the array, disregarding even the friends who would turn him back, hastening to the death decreed by his doom. Both being borne with like fury and taking thought not of what they would suffer but of what they wished to do, they dash their horses together, driving from opposite sides, and both deal each other inescapable blows with their spears through shields and breastplates, the one plunging his point into the flanks, the other into the loins; and their horses, locking their breasts together by the impetus of the charge, rear up on their hind feet and, throwing back their riders, shake them off.

15.3. Thus fallen, they lay shedding much blood through their wounds and gasping out their lives; but the other forces, when they saw their leaders fallen together, push forward with shout and din, and there arises the greatest contest of all, of foot

15.4. and horse, and fortune was alike about both sides. For the Romans holding the right wing, on which the other consul Valerius was stationed, conquered the Veientes and, pursuing them as far as the camp, filled the plain with corpses; and the Tyrrhenians holding the position of the right wing, whom Titus and Sextus the sons of King Tarquinius led, routed the Romans on the left wing, and coming near their camp did not refrain from the attempt, whether they could take the rampart by assault; but, receiving many blows when those within withstood them, they turned away. The guards of it were the so-called triarii, old men and experienced in many wars, whom they use as their last resource, when every hope has been despaired of, in the contests about the greatest matters.

16.1. It being now near the setting of the sun, each side returned to their own camps, not so much rejoicing at the victory as grieved at the multitude of the slain, and, if there should be need of another battle for them, deeming those of them who survived — being for the most part wounded — not sufficient to take up the contest.

16.2. There was greater discouragement among the Romans and despair of their affairs because of the death of the leader; and the reckoning came to many that it were better for them to leave the camp before day should come. While they were planning and conferring with one another about such things, about the first watch, from the grove beside which they had encamped, a voice was heard, audible to both forces, so that all of them heard it, whether of the hero who possessed the precinct or of the one called Faunus.

16.3. For to this divinity the Romans ascribe the panics and whatever apparitions, taking forms now of one kind, now of another, come into the sight of men bringing terrors, or whatever divine voices disturb the hearing — these they say are the work of this god. And the divine voice exhorted the Romans to be of good cheer, as having conquered, declaring that the dead of the enemy were more by one. By this voice, they say, Valerius, being uplifted, while it was still deep night thrust against the camp of the Tyrrhenians and, killing many of them and casting out the rest, became master of the camp.

17.1. Such was the end the battle took. On the next day the Romans, having stripped the corpses of the enemy and buried their own, departed. And the body of Brutus the noblest of the knights carried to Rome with much praise and many tears, adorned with crowns for valour.

17.2. There met them both the senate, which had voted to honour the leader with the bringing-home of a triumph, and the whole people, receiving the army with mixing-bowls and tables. When they came into the city, the consul, having held a procession, as was the custom of the kings whenever they celebrated trophy-bearing processions and sacrifices, and having dedicated the spoils to the gods, gave up that day to holiness and, setting forth a banquet, received the most distinguished of the citizens; but on the next day, taking dark raiment and setting forth the body of Brutus in the Forum, adorned upon a conspicuous couch, he summoned the people into an assembly, and coming forward to the platform delivered the funeral oration over

17.3. him. Whether, then, Valerius first established this custom among the Romans or received it laid down by the kings, I cannot say for certain; but that it is an ancient discovery of the Romans that, at the burials of distinguished men, praises of their virtue be spoken, and that the Greeks did not first establish it, I know, having learned it from the common history which the most ancient of the poets and the most learned of the historians have handed down.

17.4. For they have recorded that funeral games, gymnastic and equestrian, were held over famous men by their kindred, as by Achilles over Patroclus and, still earlier, by Heracles over Pelops; but they do not write that praises were spoken over them, except for the Athenian tragedians, who, flattering their city, made this too a fable about those buried by Theseus. For late indeed did the Athenians add the funeral panegyric to their custom, whether they began from those who died for their country at Artemisium and about Salamis and at Plataea, or from the deeds at Marathon. And even the deeds of Marathon are later than the burial of Brutus, if indeed the praises began first to be spoken over the dead from those, by sixteen years.

17.5. But if one, leaving aside the inquiry who they were that first established the funeral praises, should wish to examine the custom itself in itself, with which of the two it stands better, he will find it laid down so much more wisely among these than among those, inasmuch as the Athenians seem to have established the funeral orations to be spoken over those buried from the wars, from the single virtue concerning death, thinking they ought to examine the good men even if in other respects one became base;

17.6. but the Romans appointed this honour to be for all distinguished men, whether having received the command of wars or the leadership of political affairs they have displayed prudent counsels and noble deeds — not only for those who died in war, but also for those who came to whatever end of life, thinking that the good ought to be praised from their whole virtue of life, not from the single glory concerning death.

18.1. Junius Brutus, then, who cast out the kingship and was first appointed consul — though he came late to distinction and flourished but a brief time in it, appearing the mightiest of all the Romans — met such an end, leaving offspring neither male nor female, as those who have most exactly examined Roman affairs write, bringing many other proofs of this, but above all that which is hard to gainsay, that he was of the patrician race, while those who say they are of that house, the Junii and the Bruti, were all plebeians and sought the offices which it is lawful for plebeians to seek, aedileships and tribuneships, but the consulship no one of them, in which the patricians had a share.

18.2. Late indeed did they too obtain this office, when it was conceded to the plebeians also to take it. But concerning these matters I leave it to those to whom it is a care and matters to know the truth, to examine.

19.1. After the death of Brutus his fellow-consul Valerius becomes suspect to the plebeians, as one establishing a kingship: first, because he alone held the office, when he ought at once to have chosen a colleague, as Brutus did when he cast out Collatinus; then, because he built his house in an envied place, having chosen a hill overlooking the Forum, fairly lofty and steep, which the Romans call

19.2. Velia. Learning from his friends that these things grieved the people, he appointed a day for elections and chooses as consul Spurius Lucretius, who, having held the office not many days, dies. In his place he appoints Marcus Horatius, and removes his house down from the hill, that it might be possible for the Romans, as he himself said in the assembly, to pelt him from above from the height with stones, if they should catch him doing any wrong.

19.3. And wishing the plebeians to receive a firm pledge concerning their freedom, he took the axes from the rods, and established for the consuls after him a custom, which has lasted even to my own age, that whenever they are outside the city they use the axes, but within they are adorned with the rods alone.

19.4. And he made most humane laws, having succour for the plebeians: one in which he expressly forbade any to be a magistrate of the Romans who should not receive the office from the people, setting death as penalty if any should act contrary to this, and making the one who killed any of these immune; another in which it is written, If any magistrate of the Romans wishes to put any man to death or to scourge or to fine him in money, it shall be lawful for the private man to appeal from the magistrate to the judgment of the people, and in the meantime to suffer nothing from the magistrate, until the people shall vote concerning him.

19.5. From these measures he becomes honoured among the plebeians, and they give him the surname Publicola; this in the Greek tongue means "caring for the people." Such, then, were the things accomplished by the consuls in that year.

20.1. In the following year Valerius himself is again appointed consul, the second time, and with him Lucretius, under whom nothing else worthy of record was done, but assessments of property were made and the arrangement of the war-contributions, as Tullius the king had enacted, which had been remitted throughout all the time of the rule of Tarquinius, but were then first renewed by these men; from which there were found about a hundred and thirty thousand Romans of military age. And an army of the Romans was sent to a place called Signurium, to hold the fort as a garrison, situated facing the cities of the Latins and the Hernicans, whence they expected the war.

21.1. Publius Valerius, surnamed Publicola, being appointed to the same office a third time, and with him Marcus Horatius Pulvillus a second time, the king of the Clusians among the Tyrrhenians, Lars by name, surnamed Porsina, when the Tarquinii took refuge with him, having promised them one of two things — either to reconcile them to the citizens, with their return and recovery of the rule, or, recovering the property of which they had been deprived, to give it back — since, having sent ambassadors to Rome in the past year bringing appeals mingled with threats, he had obtained for the men neither reconciliation and return, the senate alleging the curses and the oaths that had been made against them, nor recovered for them their property, those who had divided and allotted it not thinking fit to give it back —

21.2. saying that he was being outraged by the Romans and suffering terrible things, because he had obtained from them neither of his demands, a man self-willed and corrupted in judgment by both wealth and money and the greatness of his rule, supposed he had fair resources for overthrowing the rule of the Romans, wishing this even earlier, and proclaimed war against them.

21.3. There joined with him in the war, wishing to display every zeal, Octavius Mamilius the son-in-law of Tarquinius, setting out from the city of Tusculum, bringing the Camerini and the Antemnates, who shared in the Latin race, all already openly revolted from the Romans; and from the other men of his nation, who were unwilling to make war openly upon a city under treaty and possessing great strength, for unnecessary pretexts, he had persuaded many volunteers privately by personal favour.

22.1. Learning these things, the consuls of the Romans first ordered the farmers to remove from the fields their property and cattle and slaves into the nearby mountains, having built forts on the strong places sufficient to save those who took refuge in them; then they strengthened with more secure constructions and guards the hill called the Janiculum — this is a high mountain near Rome, lying across the Tiber river — making it of the utmost importance that the well-placed place should not become for the enemy a fortress against the city; and there they laid up the supplies for the war. And within the wall they ordered things on a more democratic basis, taking many humane measures toward the poor, that they might not change to the side of the tyrants, persuaded by their private gains to betray the commonwealth.

22.2. For they voted that they should be free of all the public taxes which they used to pay when the city was under kings, and made them exempt from the contributions spent on military matters and the wars, deeming it a great gain for the commonwealth if it should have only their persons to fight in front for the fatherland; and having the force long since trained and prepared, they encamped in the plain before the city.

22.3. King Porsina, leading his army, takes the Janiculum at the first assault, having terrified those guarding it, and sets a garrison of Tyrrhenians in it; and marching against the city, as though he should reduce this too without effort, when he came near the bridge and beheld the Romans posted before the river, he prepared for battle as if to sweep them away by numbers, and led on his force with much contempt.

22.4. The command of the left wing was held by the sons of Tarquinius, Sextus and Titus, leading both the exiles of the Romans themselves and from the city of Gabii a not small band of the flower of foreigners and mercenaries; the right by Mamilius the son-in-law of Tarquinius, on which the Latins who had revolted from the Romans were arrayed; and King Porsina was stationed at the centre of the phalanx.

22.5. Of the Romans the right wing was held by Spurius Larcius and Titus Herminius, opposite the Tarquinii; the left by Marcus Valerius, brother of one of the consuls, Publicola, and Titus Lucretius, who had been consul the previous year, to engage Mamilius and the Latins; and the centres of the wings both consuls held.

23.1. When they came to blows, both fought nobly and held out a long time, the Romans being superior to their adversaries in experience and endurance, but the Tyrrhenians and Latins greatly surpassing the Romans in number. Many having fallen on both sides, fear comes upon the Romans, first upon those holding the left wing, when they beheld their leaders Valerius and Lucretius carried wounded from the battle; then upon those stationed on the right wing, now conquering the force with the Tarquinii, the same feeling seizes them,

23.2. seeing the rout of the others. All fleeing into the city and being crowded together through a single bridge, there is a great rush of the enemy upon them; and the city very nearly was taken by storm, being unwalled on the parts beside the river, if the pursuers had fallen into it together with the fugitives. But those who checked the rush of the enemy and saved the whole army were three men: Spurius Larcius and Titus Herminius, who held the right wing, from among the older men; and Publius Horatius, called Cocles from the defect about his face — having had one of his eyes struck out in battle — from among the younger, fairest of men in form and

23.3. noblest in soul. This man was the nephew of Marcus Horatius, one of the consuls, and traced his line from one of the triplet Horatii, Marcus, who conquered the Alban triplets, when the cities, having come to war about the leadership, agreed not to risk all with their whole forces, but with three men from each, as I have shown in the preceding Books.

23.4. These men alone, taking the bridge behind them, kept the enemy from crossing for a long time, and remained at the same post, pelted by many with all kinds of missiles and struck at close quarters with swords, until the whole army had crossed the river.

24.1. When they thought their own were in safety, two of them, Herminius and Larcius, their shields being now destroyed by the continual blows, withdrew step by step. But Horatius alone, though both the consuls and the other citizens called him back from the city and made it of the utmost importance that such a man be saved for the fatherland and his parents, was not persuaded, but remained where he had first stood, ordering those with Herminius to tell the consuls, as though by his bidding, to cut off the bridge from the city in haste — there was one in those times, made of wood, fastened without iron by the planks themselves, which the Romans keep such even to my time — and to charge the men, when the greater part of the bridge had been loosed and a small portion was left, to tell him by some signs or by a louder voice; the rest, he said, would be his own care.

24.2. Having given these orders to the two, he takes his stand upon the very bridge, and, of those coming against him, striking some with his sword, overturning others with his shield, he checked all who rushed upon the bridge; for the pursuers no longer dared to come to close quarters with him, as with a madman and one set on death; and at the same time it was not easy to approach him, since on left and right he had the river as a defence, and in front a heap of arms and corpses. But standing afar off in a body, they pelted him with spears and javelins and stones that fill the hand, and those who had not these, with the swords and

24.3. shields of the dead. And he defended himself, using their own arms against them, and was bound, as is natural in pelting a crowd, ever to hit some mark. Already covered with missiles and having a multitude of wounds in many parts of his body, and one blow of a spear which, borne through one of his buttocks above the head of the thigh, distressed him with pains and impaired his footing, when he heard those behind shout that the greater part of the bridge was loosed, he leaps with his arms into the river, and swimming across the stream very hardly — for the current, split about the props of the planks, was swift and made great eddies — he swam out to the land, having lost none of his arms in the swimming.

25.1. This deed wrought for him immortal glory. For at once the Romans, crowning him, carried him into the city, hymning him as one of the heroes; and the whole household crowd poured out, longing, while he yet survived, to behold his last appearance; for he seemed likely, from his wounds, before long to perish.

25.2. And when he escaped death, the people set up a bronze statue of him in armour in the best part of the Forum, and gave him as much land from the public domain as he himself could plough round in a single day with a yoke of oxen; and besides the things given publicly, each man and woman, per head — at a time when a terrible scarcity of the necessary provisions held them all — granted him the food of a single day, the persons in all being more than thirty

25.3. ten-thousands. Horatius, then, having displayed such valour at that time, became enviable, if any other Roman, but useless for the remaining affairs of the city through the maiming of his footing; and on account of this misfortune he obtained neither the consulship nor any other military command.

25.4. This man, then, having displayed a marvellous deed in that contest, is worthy, if any other of those who have been famed for valour, to be praised by the Romans; and besides him, Gaius Mucius, whose surname was Cordus, a man of distinguished fathers, who himself undertook a great enterprise, concerning whom I shall speak a little later, having first related in what calamities the city then was.

26.1. For after that battle the king of the Tyrrhenians, encamping on the nearby mountain, whence he had cast out the Roman garrison, was master of all the land beyond the Tiber river. And the sons of Tarquinius and his son-in-law Mamilius, having ferried their forces across on rafts and boats to the other side of the river that faces Rome, pitch their camp in a strong place; whence, setting out, they both ravaged the land of the Romans and razed their farmsteads and set upon the cattle that came out from the strongholds to pasture.

26.2. All the open country being held by the enemy, and provisions being brought into the city neither by land nor, save scantily, down the river, a swift scarcity of the necessaries arose, the things prepared, not being many, being consumed by many tens of thousands.

26.3. And after this many of the servants, leaving their masters, deserted daily, and of the common multitude the most wicked went over to the Tyrrhenians. Seeing these things, the consuls resolved to ask of the Latins, those still respecting their kinship and thought to remain in the friendship, to send them allies quickly, and to send ambassadors to Campanian Cyme and the cities in the Pomptine plain to ask them to permit the export of corn to them.

26.4. The Latins, then, put off the aid, as though it were not lawful for them to make war either on the Tarquinii or on the Romans, since they had jointly made with both the oaths of friendship; but from the Pomptine plain Larcius and Herminius, the ambassadors sent for the conveyance of the corn, having filled many boats with all kinds of food from the sea, conveyed it up the river on a moonless night, escaping the notice of the enemy.

26.5. But this supply too being swiftly consumed and the same want holding the people, the Tyrrhenian, learning from the deserters that those within were worn down by famine, sent a herald to them bidding them receive Tarquinius, if they wished to be released from war and famine.

27.1. The Romans not enduring his commands, but choosing to suffer all terrible things, Mucius, perceiving that one of two things would befall them — either, forced by want of necessities, not to remain long in their resolutions, or, keeping their decisions firm, to perish by the most piteous death — having asked the consuls to gather the senate for him, as one about to bring before it some great and necessary matter, when it had assembled, spoke as follows: "Fathers, intending to dare an enterprise by which the city shall be released from its present evils, in the deed itself I am very confident and think I shall easily accomplish it; but concerning my own life, whether it will survive the deed, I have not many hopes — rather, if I must tell the truth, none.

27.2. Being about, then, to cast myself into so great a danger, I do not think fit to escape the notice of all, having ventured great things, if it should befall me to fail in the attempt, but for noble deeds to obtain great praises, from which, in place of my mortal body, immortal glory shall be mine.

27.3. To tell the people what I intend to do is not safe, lest someone, compassing his own private gains, carry it out to the enemy, when it ought to be kept by them as some inviolable mystery; but to you, whom I have trusted to keep it firmly, I disclose it first and alone; and from you the other citizens shall learn it at the fitting time.

27.4. My enterprise is this. Taking the guise of a deserter, I mean to go to the camp of the Tyrrhenians. If, then, being disbelieved by them, I die, you the rest will be fewer by one citizen only; but if it be granted me to pass within the camp, I undertake to kill for you the king of the enemy. And, Porsina being dead, the war will be dissolved; and I, if I suffer whatever the divine power shall please, having you as witnesses and testifiers of these things to the people, go away, making the better fortune of the fatherland the guide of my journey."

28.1. Being praised by those in the council and having received favourable auspices for the deed, he crosses the river. And coming to the camp of the Tyrrhenians, he enters, having deceived those guarding the gates as one of their own nation, having no weapon visible and speaking in the Tyrrhenian tongue, which he had learned thoroughly while still a child, being taught it by a nurse Tyrrhenian by

28.2. race. When he came to the Forum and the general's quarters, he sees a man surpassing in size and strength of body, clad in purple raiment, sitting upon the general's platform, and around him many armed men standing. Failing in his guess, as never having beheld the king of the Tyrrhenians, he supposed this man to be Porsina; but he was, as it turned out, the secretary of the king, and was sitting on the platform counting the soldiers and assigning them their pay.

28.3. Going, then, to this secretary through the crowd that stood about, and mounting, as one unarmed, hindered by no one, to the platform, he draws the dagger which he had hidden within his cloak and strikes the man on the head. The secretary being dead by a single blow, seized at once by those about the platform, he is led to the king, who had already learned of the slaying of the secretary.

28.4. And he, when he saw him, said: "O most polluted of all men, and about to pay before long the penalty you deserve, say who you are and whence you have come and on what aid relying you attempted so great a deed; and whether it was set before you to kill my secretary only or me also; and what associates you have in the plot, or accomplices? Conceal none of the truth, that you be not compelled to tell it under torture."

29.1. And Mucius, signifying the man that fears neither by change of colour nor by gloom of face, nor suffering anything else of what those about to die are wont to suffer, says to him: "I am a Roman, and not of common birth; and wishing to free my fatherland from the war, I came to your camp as one of the deserters, wishing to kill you, not ignorant that, whether succeeding or failing of my hope, death lay before me, but choosing to give my own life to her that bore me and to leave, in place of my mortal body, immortal glory. But cheated of my hope, instead of you I have slain the secretary, whom I had no need of, misled by the purple and the chair and the other symbols of authority.

29.2. Death, then, which I myself condemned myself to when I was about to set out on the deed, I do not deprecate; but tortures and the other outrages, if you spare me them, giving you pledges before the gods, I promise to declare to you a great matter that pertains to your safety."

29.3. This he said, intending to out-general the man; and he, being beside himself, and at the same time divining dangers from many men that were not true, gives him the pledge by oaths. After this Mucius, having devised a most novel manner of deceit, which had its disproof in the unseen, says to him: "O king, three hundred Roman men of the same age, all of the patrician race, having come together, resolved to kill you, and took the pledge by oaths from

29.4. one another. It seemed good to us, deliberating what should be the manner of the plot, neither all to go at once to the deed, but one by one, nor for one to tell another when and how and where and with what resources he would set upon you, that escaping notice might be the easier for us. Having resolved on this, we cast lots, and I was allotted first to begin the attempt. Foreknowing, then, that many good men will have the same intent as I, through desire of glory, of whom, as one may conjecture, one will use a better fortune than mine, consider what sufficient guard against all there shall be for you."

30.1. When the king heard this, he ordered the spearmen to lead the man away and bind him and guard him carefully; and he himself, taking the most trustworthy of his friends and seating his son Arruns beside him, considered with them what he should do to ward off their plots.

30.2. Each of the others, naming simple safeguards, seemed to think nothing of what was needful; but his son declared last an opinion older than his years, thinking fit that he should consider not by what guards using he should suffer no harm, but by doing what he should not need a guard. When all marvelled at his thought and wished to learn how this could come about, "If," he said, "you should make the men friends instead of enemies, deeming your own life more precious than the return of the exiles with Tarquinius."

30.3. And the king said the youth spoke the best things, but the matter was worthy of deliberation, how the reconciliations with them should become seemly; saying it was a great disgrace if, having conquered them in battle and holding them shut up within their walls, he should depart having accomplished none of the things he had promised the Tarquinii, as if defeated by the conquered and having fled from those who did not even venture to come out from the gates; and declaring there would be one only fair dissolution of the enmity — if from the enemy some should come to him to confer about friendship.

31.1. These things, then, he said at that time to his son and those present; but a few days later he himself was compelled to be the first to begin words of reconciliation, for some such cause as this. The soldiers being scattered about the country and carrying off the supplies being brought into the city, and doing this continually, the consuls of the Romans, having lain in wait for them in a favourable place, destroy a great number and take captive still more than they slew. At this the Tyrrhenians, being angry, conferred with one another in knots, holding the king and the other commanders in blame for the prolongation of the war, and longing to depart to their own homes.

31.2. Thinking, then, that the reconciliation would appear welcome to all, he sends as ambassadors the most intimate of his own friends. Some, then, say that Mucius too was sent along with these, having given the king the pledge by oaths that he would come back again; but others say that this man was kept under guard in the camp as a hostage until the reconciliation should be made; and perhaps this is the

31.3. truer. The instructions which the king gave the ambassadors were these: concerning the return of the Tarquinii to make no word, but to ask that their property be given back to them — most of all the whole of what Tarquinius the elder left and what they themselves, having acquired it justly, held; but if not, of as much as was possible, the values of fields and houses and cattle and the crops they had taken from the earth, in whichever way it should seem to them advantageous, whether the present holders and reapers of them should pay, or the public treasury should discharge it.

31.4. These things on their behalf; but for himself, on dissolving the enmity, to ask the so-called Seven Pagi — this was the land of the Tyrrhenians of old, but the Romans held it, having taken it in war from those who had it — and, that the Romans might remain firm friends to the Tyrrhenians, to ask of them children from the most distinguished houses to be hostages on behalf of the city.

32.1. The embassy having come to Rome, the senate voted, persuaded by Publicola, one of the consuls, to concede everything that the Tyrrhenian asked, thinking that the plebeian and needy multitude was worn down by the scarcity of provisions and would gladly receive the dissolution of the war, on whatever just terms it should come about.

32.2. But the people voted the other parts of the preliminary decree to be valid, but did not endure the giving back of the property; rather they resolved the opposite, to give back nothing to the tyrants either from private or from public funds, but to send ambassadors concerning these things to King Porsina, who should ask him to receive the hostages and the land, but, concerning the property, becoming himself the judge between the Tarquinii and the Romans, when he should hear both, to decide what was just, led aside neither by favour

32.3. nor by enmity. The Tyrrhenians departed bearing these answers to the king, and with them the ambassadors appointed by the people, leading from the chief houses twenty children, who had to be hostages on behalf of the fatherland, the consuls first giving up their children: Marcus Horatius his son, Publius Valerius his daughter of marriageable age.

32.4. When these came to the camp, the king both rejoiced and, praising the Romans much, makes a truce with them for a certain fixed number of days and himself undertakes to judge the suit. The Tarquinii were grieved, having fallen from the greater hopes they had in the king, thinking they should be restored to power by him, but were compelled to be content with the present and to accept what was given. When there had come, within the appointed time, from the city those who should plead the suit, and from the senate the eldest men, the king, seating himself on the platform with his friends and ordering his son to share in the judgment, gave them leave to speak.

33.1. While the pleading was still going on, someone came announcing the flight of the maidens given as hostages. For having begged of their guards to permit them, coming to the river, to bathe, when they obtained the permission, telling the men to withdraw a little from the river, until they should bathe and recover their garments, that they might not see them naked, and the men having done this too, at the exhortation of Cloelia, who first began, swimming across the river they went off into the city.

33.2. Thereupon Tarquinius was vehement, charging the Romans with perjury and faithlessness, and inciting the king, as one being deceived by crafty men, to give them no heed. But when the consul defended himself and said the deed was of the maidens themselves, without the bidding of their fathers, and said he would furnish before long the proof that nothing had been done by them out of design, the king, persuaded, permitted him, going, to bring the maidens, as he promised.

33.3. Valerius, then, went to fetch the maidens; but Tarquinius and his son-in-law, disregarding what was just, plotted an impious deed, sending an ambush of horse onto the road, both to seize the maidens being brought and to take the consul and the others coming to the camp, that they might hold these persons as pledges in return for the property which the Romans took from Tarquinius, and would no longer await the end of the suit.

33.4. But the divine power did not permit the plot to go for them according to their mind. For while those who were to set upon the comers were going forth from the Latin camp, the consul of the Romans, forestalling them, was leading the girls; and being already at the very gates of the Tyrrhenian camp, he is overtaken by those who pursued from the other camp. There, the encounter taking place, a swift perception came to the Tyrrhenians, and in haste the son of the king, bringing a squadron of horse, came to the aid, and from the foot those posted before the camp ran together.

34.1. Indignant at these things, Porsina summoned the Tyrrhenians into an assembly and, having related how, the Romans having entrusted to him to judge the suit concerning the things charged against them by Tarquinius, before the suit was completed, those justly driven out by the Romans attempted, during a truce, to outrage sacred persons of ambassadors and hostages — whence the Tyrrhenians acquit the Romans of the charges, but break off their guest-friendship with Tarquinius and Mamilius; and he proclaimed that they should depart from the camp that same day.

34.2. The Tarquinii, then, having been at first in good hopes, that either they should again tyrannize over the city with the Tyrrhenians aiding them, or recover their property, failing of both through their lawlessness against the ambassadors and the hostages, departed from the

34.3. camp with shame and hatred. And the king of the Tyrrhenians, ordering the hostages of the Romans to be brought forward to the platform, gives them back to the consul, saying that he deemed the faith of the city better than any hostage-keeping. And one maiden of the hostages, by whom the rest were persuaded to swim across the river, he praised as having a spirit greater than her sex and her age, and, deeming the city blessed because it reared not only good men but maidens like men, he presents the girl with a war-horse

34.4. adorned with splendid trappings. After the assembly, having made the oaths concerning peace and friendship with the ambassadors of the Romans and entertained them, he gives them, as gifts to carry to the city, all the captives without ransom, who were very many, and the place in which he had encamped, fitted out not as a camp in a foreign land for a short time, but sufficiently as a city, with both private and public buildings — it not being the custom of the Tyrrhenians, whenever they broke camp from an enemy's land, to leave the structures standing, but to burn them — granting the city no small gift in respect of money. And the sale which the quaestors made after the king's

34.5. departure made this plain. The war, then, that arose for the Romans against the Tarquinii and Lars Porsina, king of the Clusians, having brought the city into great dangers, met such an end.

35.1. The senate of the Romans, meeting after the departure of the Tyrrhenians, voted to send Porsina an ivory throne and a sceptre and a golden crown and a triumphal robe, with which the kings were adorned; and to Mucius, who had chosen to die for his fatherland and was thought to have been the chief cause of the dissolution of the war, to give land from the public domain across the Tiber river, in the same manner as to Horatius who earlier fought before the bridge — as much as he could enclose with a plough in a single day. This place, down to our times,

35.2. is called the Mucian Meadows. These things to the men; and to Cloelia the maiden they gave the setting-up of a bronze statue, which the fathers of the maidens dedicated on the Sacred Way that leads to the Forum. This we no longer found standing, but it was said to have vanished, a conflagration having occurred about the nearby

35.3. houses. In this year the temple of Capitoline Jupiter was wrought to completion, concerning which I have shown the particulars in the preceding Book. Its consecration and the inscription Marcus Horatius, one of the consuls, obtained, having forestalled the arrival of his colleague. Valerius happened at that time to have gone forth beforehand with a force for the defence of the country; for, the people having but lately left the strongholds and gathered into the fields, Mamilius, sending brigand-bands, was greatly harming the farmers. These things were done in the third consulship.

36.1. Those who held office in the fourth year, the consuls Spurius Larcius and Titus Herminius, passed their office without war. Under them Arruns, the son of Porsina the king of the Tyrrhenians, who had now for the second year been besieging the city of the Aricini, died.

36.2. For immediately upon the making of the truce with the Romans, having received from his father the half portion of the army, he campaigned against the Aricini, procuring a private rule for himself, and very nearly took the city; but, aid coming to the Aricini from Antium and Tusculum and Campanian Cyme, having arrayed his lesser force against the greater, he routed the rest and drove them as far as the city, but, defeated by the Cumaeans, whom Aristodemus surnamed the Soft led, he dies; and the army of the Tyrrhenians, after

36.3. his death, no longer holding out, turns to flight. Many of them, then, were destroyed pursued by the Cumaeans; and others, more, scattering through the country, took refuge in the fields of the Romans not far off, having lost their arms and being, through wounds, unable to go further. These the Romans, conveying them from the fields into the city in wagons and carts and the other beasts of burden — some half-dead — and bringing them into their own houses, restored with food and tending and the other humane attentions full of much sympathy; so that many of them, won over by these favours, no longer had a longing for their return home,

36.4. but wished to remain with their benefactors. To these the senate gave a place of the city, where they were to build dwellings, the valley between the Palatine and the Capitol, extending most about four stadia, which even to my time is called by the Romans, in the local dialect, the Tyrrhenian Quarter — the passage that leads from the Forum to the great circus. In return for which they obtained from their king a gift not of the least worth, but one at which they most rejoiced, the land beyond the river, which they had given up when they dissolved the war; and they paid sacrifices to the gods from much money, which they had vowed to perform when they should again become masters of the Seven Pagi.

37.1. In the fifth year after the expulsion of the king — it was the sixty-ninth Olympiad, the one in which Ischomachus the Crotoniate won the foot-race for the second time, Acestorides being archon at Athens — the consuls of the Romans were Marcus Valerius, brother of Valerius Publicola, and

37.2. Publius Postumius, surnamed Tubertus. Under them another war received the Romans from those dwelling nearest, which began from brigand-bands but advanced into many great contests, yet finally came to seemly reconciliations in the fourth consulship after these men, having been waged all the time between. For certain of the Sabines, condemning the weakness of the city after the Tyrrhenian disaster, as one that would no longer recover its ancient dignity, set upon those who went out into the country, having established brigand-bands from the strongholds, and did much harm to the farmers.

37.3. Concerning which the Romans, having sent an embassy before resorting to arms, asked for satisfaction and demanded that for the future no wrong be done to those who tilled the earth. But receiving arrogant answers, they proclaimed war against them. And the first sally is of one of the consuls, Valerius, with horsemen and the most vigorous of the light-armed, a sudden one upon those plundering the country, and great was the slaughter of those caught in the foragings, who were many, as is natural with men undisciplined and not foreseeing the onset.

37.4. Then, the Sabines having sent against them a great army arrayed under a commander experienced in war, there is another sally of the Romans against them with all their forces, both consuls leading. Postumius, then, encamped near Rome in hilly places, fearing lest some sudden onset upon it should come from the exiles; but Valerius near the enemy beside the river Anio, which from the city of Tibur pours out in volume down a high crag, and is borne through the plain of the Sabines and the Romans, bounding the territory of each; and it joins its stream with the Tiber river, fair to behold and sweet to drink.

38.1. On the other side of the river lay the camp of the Sabines, itself too not far distant from the stream, on a hill gently sloping, not very strong. At the outset, then, each side held the other in caution and shrank from beginning battle by crossing the river; but in time afterward, not by reasoning and forethought of advantage, but inflamed by anger and rivalry, they join battle.

38.2. For fetching water and leading their horses to drink, they entered far into the river; and it flowed shallow at that time, not yet swollen with the winter waters, so that, having it a little above the knee, they crossed. A certain encounter taking place first between a few and not many, some ran out aiding their own from either camp; then others again to defend those being overpowered from the other side; and now the Romans pushed the Sabines back from the stream, now the Sabines drove the Romans from the river.

38.3. Many slaughters and wounds occurring and rivalry falling upon all, as is wont to happen about skirmishes that fall out from chance, a like eagerness came to the commanders of the camps to cross the river.

38.4. And the consul of the Romans was first, and, having taken his army across while the Sabines were still arming and getting into array, was at close quarters. Yet not even those delayed to give battle, uplifted by much contempt, because they were to contend neither against both consuls nor against the whole force of the Romans; and dashing together they fought, displaying every boldness and eagerness.

39.1. A fierce contest taking place, and the right wing of the Romans, where the consul was, advancing upon the adversaries and pressing further, but the left now worn down and being pushed by the enemy toward the river, the consul holding the other camp of the Romans, learning what was happening, led out his army.

39.2. He himself, then, bringing up the phalanx of the foot, followed at a foot pace; but of the older men he sends in haste Spurius Larcius, who had been consul the past year, leading the horse. He, driving his horses at full rein, both crosses the river easily, no one hindering, and, riding past the right wing of the enemy, dashes upon the cavalry of the Sabines in flank; and there arises a great contest of both bodies of horse fighting at close quarters for a long time.

39.3. Meanwhile Postumius also, leading the foot, came near them; and dashing upon the foot, both kills many fighting and pushes the rest out of array. And had not night come on, all the Sabines, surrounded by the Romans, who were now superior in cavalry, would have perished utterly. But as it was, the darkness saved those who escaped from the battle, being unarmed and not many, and brought them safe to their homes. And the consuls took their camp without a contest, abandoned by those within as soon as they beheld the rout of their own; from which, taking much booty, which they permitted the soldiers to drive and carry off,

39.4. they led the forces homeward. Then for the first time the city, recovering itself from the Tyrrhenian disaster, was restored to its original spirit, and took courage again, as before, to lay claim to the leadership of its neighbours; and it votes in common to both consuls the bringing-home of a triumph, and privately to one of the men, Valerius, the gift of a place for a dwelling on the best part of the Palatine, and that the expenses for the building should be furnished from the public treasury. Of this house, beside which the bronze bull stands, the folding doors alone of the public and private houses in Rome open outward.

40.1. From these men the consular office is received by Publius Valerius, called Publicola, chosen to rule a fourth time, and Titus Lucretius a second time, colleague to Valerius. Under them all the Sabines, having held a common assembly of their cities, voted to make war on the Romans, as though the treaties had been dissolved for them when King Tarquinius fell from rule, with whom they had made the oaths;

40.2. persuaded by Sextus, one of the sons of Tarquinius, who, privately courting and importuning the powerful men of each city, stirred them all in common to war and won over two cities, Fidenae and Cameria, having revolted them from the Romans and persuaded them to ally with those. In return for which they choose him general with full power and entrust him to enrol forces from every city, as having been worsted in the former battle through weakness of force and folly of general.

40.3. They, then, were about these things; but a certain fortune, wishing to equal the benefits of the Romans to their hurts, in place of the allies that had forsaken them, added another unhoped-for aid from among the enemy, of this sort. A certain man of the Sabine nation, dwelling in the city of Regillum, of noble birth and powerful in wealth, Titus Claudius, deserts to them, bringing both a great kindred and many friends and clients who removed their hearths along with them, not fewer than five thousand able to bear arms. The necessity that seized him to remove his dwelling to Rome is said to have been of this sort.

40.4. The men in power in the most distinguished cities, being estranged from the man on account of his rivalry in public matters, brought him to trial, charging him with treason, because he was not eager to carry on the war against the Romans, but even in the assembly alone spoke against those who thought the treaties dissolved, and would not let his own citizens consider valid what the others had resolved. Dreading this trial —

40.5. for it had to be judged by the other cities — taking up his property and his friends, he joins himself to the Romans, and afforded no small weight to their affairs and was thought to have been the chief cause of the successful issue of this war; in return for which the senate and the people both enrolled him among the patricians and gave him leave to take as much of the city as he wished for the building of houses, and added to him land from the public domain between Fidenae and Picetia, that he might have it to distribute allotments to all about him; from whom there came in time a tribe called Claudian, and even to my time it has continued to keep the same name.

41.1. When all had been made ready by both, first the Sabines led out their forces and make two camps, one in the open not far from Fidenae, the other in Fidenae itself, both for the guarding of those within and for a refuge of those encamped outside, should any disaster befall them. Then the consuls of the Romans, learning the march of the Sabines against them, themselves too, leading all in their prime, encamp apart from one another, Valerius near the open camp of the Sabines, Lucretius

41.2. a little way off on a hill, whence the other camp was visible. The supposition of the Romans, then, was to engage the enemy at once, as in an open contest the war would have a swift decision; but the general of the Sabines, dreading to engage in the open against the boldness and endurance of men ready to undergo all dangers, resolved to attack them by night.

41.3. And having prepared the things that would be fit for the filling of a ditch and the scaling of a rampart, when all was ready for the contest, after the first sleep, rousing the best part of his army, he meant to lead it against the Romans' rampart; and to those encamped in Fidenae he gave orders, when they should perceive their own going forth, to come out themselves also from the city light-equipped; then he ordered them, lying in ambush in suitable places, if any reinforcements should come to those with Valerius from the other army, to rise and, getting in the rear, to advance upon them with shout and much din.

41.4. Sextus, then, having so deliberated and told the captains, since to them too it was agreeable, awaited the moment; but a certain deserter, coming into the camp of the Romans, declares his intention to the consul, and not long after some of the horse came bringing captives of the Sabines, whom they had seized as they went out for wood. These, examined apart from one another as to what their general was preparing to do, say that he was constructing ladders and gangways; but where and when he meant to use them, they said they did not know.

41.5. Learning this, Valerius sends the lieutenant Larcius to the other camp, both to announce the intention of the enemy to Lucretius who held that camp, and to suggest in what manner one ought to set upon the enemy; and he himself, calling the tribunes and captains and telling them all he had heard from the deserter and the captives, and exhorting them to be good men, deeming that they had got an occasion worthy of prayer, in which they should take fair vengeance on their enemies, and suggesting what each ought to do and giving the watchword, dismissed them to their posts.

42.1. It was not yet midnight, and the leader of the Sabines, rousing the best part of his army, led it against the camp, having ordered all to be silent and to make no clash of arms, that the enemy might not know they were coming before they should be at the rampart. When the foremost marchers came near the camp and saw neither the gleam of lamps nor heard the voices of watchmen, condemning much folly in the Romans as having left the watches deserted and being asleep within the camp, they filled the ditches with brushwood at many points and crossed, nothing standing in their way.

42.2. But the Romans were sitting between the ditches and the palisades by cohorts, unseen through the darkness, and slew those who crossed, when they came to close quarters. For a while, then, the destruction of the foremost escaped the notice of those coming after; but when light came as the moon rose, those approaching the ditch, seeing both heaps of their own dead beside it and strong bands of the enemy advancing, throwing away their

42.3. arms turned to flight. And the Romans, raising a great shout — and this was the signal to those at the other camp — all run out upon them in a body. And Lucretius, when he heard the cry, sending the horse forward to search out whether any ambush of the enemy lay concealed, followed a little after, bringing the most vigorous of the foot.

42.4. And at the same time both the horse, falling in with those lying in ambush from Fidenae, turn them to flight, and the foot pursued, slaying those who had come against their camp, keeping neither arms nor order. In these battles there died of the Sabines and their allies about thirteen thousand five hundred, and four thousand two hundred were taken captive; and the camp was taken that same day.

43.1. And Fidenae, besieged not many days, at the part where it seemed most hard to take and was guarded by few, at this was taken. Yet it did not undergo enslavement or razing, and there was no great slaughter of men after the capture; for it seemed to the consuls a sufficient penalty for a kindred city that had erred, the plunder of property and slaves and the destruction of those who had perished in the battle; but, so that the captured should not readily again resort to arms, there would be a moderate guard, customary to the Romans —

43.2. the punishment of those responsible for the revolt. So, summoning the captured of the Fidenates into the Forum and accusing much their folly and saying that all were worthy to perish to a man, since they neither acknowledged the benefits with gratitude nor were chastened by the evils, having outraged the most distinguished with rods, before all looking on, they put them to death; but the rest they permitted to dwell as they had dwelt before, settling among them guards, as many as the senate judged, and, taking away a portion of the land, gave it to the guards. Having accomplished these things, they led the force out of the enemy's country and brought home the triumph voted by the senate. These things were done in the consulship of these men.

44.1. Publius Postumius, called Tubertus, being chosen to rule a second time, and Agrippa Menenius, called Lanatus, a third invasion of the Sabines occurs with a larger army, before the Romans perceived their sally, and a march as far as the wall of Rome; in which there was great slaughter of the Romans, not only of the farmers, upon whom, expecting nothing, the terror suddenly fell, before each had taken refuge in the nearby strongholds, but also

44.2. of those then spending time in the city. For one of the consuls, Postumius, deeming the outrage of the enemy not to be endured, went out in haste to the aid, leading those he chanced upon, more rashly than prudently. Seeing whom, the Sabines coming against them with much contempt, undisciplined and torn apart from one another, wishing to increase still more their contempt of them, withdrew more quickly than at a walk, as if fleeing backward, until they came to deep thickets, where the rest of their army lay in wait; then, turning back, they advanced upon the pursuers, and those from the thicket, raising a great shout, rush upon them.

44.3. Against undisciplined men, disordered and broken in wind by the running, many coming on in order both cast down those who advanced and, cutting off the roads leading into the city, shut up the rest who turned to flight into a deserted mountain ridge. And laying down their arms near them — for night was now coming on — they kept watch all through the night, that they might not escape them unseen.

44.4. When the calamity was announced at Rome there was much confusion and running to the walls and fear of all lest by night the enemy, uplifted by their success, should come into the city, and pity of the lost and compassion for the survivors, as men who would presently be swept away through want of necessities, unless some swift aid should come to them.

44.5. That night, then, with evil souls, they passed sleepless; but on the next day the other consul, Menenius, having armed all in their prime, led them to the aid of those on the mountain, keeping order and array. Seeing them coming, the Sabines no longer remained, but, rousing their own army, led it from the mountain, thinking the present good fortune sufficed them; and, tarrying no long time, they departed to their own with great boasting, leading off abundant booty of cattle and slaves and goods.

45.1. The Romans, indignant at the calamity and holding one of the consuls, Postumius, in blame, resolved to campaign with all their forces in haste against the land of the Sabines, both eager to repair the disgraceful and unhoped-for defeat, and aggrieved at the embassy that had lately come from the enemy, full of much insolence and self-will.

45.2. For, as though already conquering and about, without effort, to take Rome if they would not do what was commanded, they bade them give the Tarquinii their return and yield to them the leadership and establish a constitution and laws which the conquerors should ordain. And they, having answered the ambassadors to report to their commonwealth that the Romans bid the Sabines lay down their arms and hand over their cities and be subject again, as they were before, and, having done these things, then to come to entreat concerning the wrongs and hurts they had done them in the former invasions, if they wished to obtain peace and friendship; but if they would not do what was commanded, to expect the war coming upon their cities before long.

45.3. Having been thus commanded and having commanded one another, when they had made ready all things fit for the contest, they led out their forces: the Sabines bringing the best youth of every city, adorned with splendid arms, and the Romans taking up all the force, both that in the city and that in the strongholds, deeming those past military age and the household crowd sufficient to guard both the city and the strongholds in the country.

45.4. And coming together, both pitch their camps a little distant from one another, not far from the city of Eretum, which belongs to the Sabine nation.

46.1. When both perceived the affairs of the enemy, conjecturing from the size of the camps and hearing from captives, to the Sabines there came courage and contempt of the smallness of the enemy, but to the Romans fear at the multitude of their adversaries; yet they took courage and conceived no small hopes of victory, both from other signs that were sent them by the gods and especially from a last apparition, when they were about to draw up for battle, of this sort.

46.2. From the javelins fixed beside the tents — these are missiles of the Romans, which, coming to close quarters, they hurl, pieces of wood long and filling the hand, of not less than three feet, having iron points projecting in a straight line from one of the ends, equal with the iron to moderate javelins — from these javelins, then, about the tips of the points flames were kindled, and throughout the whole camp there was the gleam, as from

46.3. torches, and it held for much of the night. From this apparition they concluded — as the prodigy-interpreters declared and as it was not hard for all men to conjecture — that the divine power signified to them a swift and brilliant victory, since indeed everything yields to fire and there is nothing that is not destroyed by fire. And because it was kindled from their defensive arms, with much courage they came forth from the camp and, dashing upon the Sabines, fought though far fewer against many times their number, having their confidence in their courage; and their experience, joined with their love of toil, much present with them, led them to despise every danger.

46.4. First, then, Postumius, holding the left wing, eager to undo the former defeat, pushes out the right wing of the enemy, taking no forethought of his own life in comparison with conquering, but like madmen and men set on death casting himself into the midst of the enemy; then those with Menenius too, holding the other wing, now worn down and being pushed from their position, when they learned that those of Postumius were conquering those against them, taking courage advance to the counterattack; and there occurs, both wings of the Sabines giving way, a complete rout.

46.5. For not even those stationed in the middle of the phalanx, the wings being stripped bare, any longer remained, but, forced by the Roman cavalry charging by squadrons, were thrust back. All having turned to flight, the Romans, following them to their camps and falling in along with them, take both their ramparts. That the army of the enemy was not utterly destroyed, both the night was the cause and that the calamity befell them in their own land; for the fugitives were the more easily saved to their own through experience of the places.

47.1. On the next day the consuls, having burned their own dead and gathered the spoils — for some were taken even from the living who threw away their arms in the flight — leading captive men, whom they took not a few, and money, apart from what the soldiers plundered; and these being sold publicly, all recovered the contributions made man by man with which they had equipped the soldiers; and they departed

47.2. homeward, having won a most brilliant victory. And both were adorned with triumphs by the senate, Menenius with the greater and more honoured, riding upon a chariot-car of royal form, Postumius with the lesser and inferior, which they call ovation, having altered the name, which is Greek, into the obscure. For at first it was called euastes, from what occurred, as I myself conjecture and find recorded in many local writings.

47.3. Then for the first time, as Licinius records, the senate having devised this triumph. It differs from the other, first, in that he who brings home the ovation triumph enters on foot, going before the army, but not on a chariot like the former; then, in that he is not clad in the embroidered and gold-bordered robe with which the other is adorned, nor has the golden crown, but is clad in a white toga with a purple border, the native garment of the consuls and praetors, and has set upon him a crown of laurel; and he is diminished also in the carrying of the sceptre compared with the other,

47.4. but in all else has the same. The cause to the man Postumius of the lesser honour — though he had become the most brilliant of all in the battle — was the former disaster in the inroad, which was great and accompanied with disgrace, from which he lost many of his force and himself very nearly, with the survivors from the rout, became captive.

48.1. Under the office of these men Publius Valerius, surnamed Publicola, falling sick, died, deemed the mightiest of the Romans then in every virtue. The other deeds of the man, then, for which he is worthy to be admired and to obtain remembrance, I need not tell; for at the beginning of this Book the most of them have been told; but that which is the most marvellous of all the man's praises and has not yet obtained mention, this I think I ought not to pass by, deeming that this, most of all, befits those who write histories — not only to relate the warlike deeds of distinguished commanders, nor only if they have displayed some noble and salutary measure which they devised for the cities, but also to set forth their lives, whether they continued moderate and temperate and abiding in their ancestral practices.

48.2. That man, then, having helped to overthrow the kings among the first four patricians and confiscated their possessions, having become master of the consular authority four times, having conquered two very great wars and brought home triumphs from both, the first from the Tyrrhenian nation, the second from the Sabines, having got such resources for money-making as no one would have decried as shameful and unjust, was not captured by the love of money that enslaves all men and compels them to act unseemly; but on the small and ancestral property he continued, living a temperate and self-sufficient life, superior to every desire, and reared his children on the little money worthy of his race, and made plain to all that the rich man is not he who possesses much, but he who needs little.

48.3. An exact and indisputable proof of the man's self-sufficiency, which he displayed throughout all the time of his life, was the want that appeared after his death. For he did not leave in his possessions even what sufficed for the carrying-out and burial of his body, such as it befits so great a man to obtain; but his kinsmen were about to carry him forth from the city somehow meanly and as one of the common sort, and to burn and bury him. The senate, however, learning how their affairs stood with them in poverty, voted that the expenses for the burial be furnished from the public funds, and assigned a place where he was burned and buried, near the Forum, by Velia — to him alone of the distinguished men down to my time in the city; and it is, as it were, a holy place, set apart for those of that race to be buried in — a good thing better than all wealth and all kingship, if one measures happiness not by reproachful pleasures but by the noble.

48.4. Valerius Publicola, then, who chose to acquire nothing beyond the expense for necessities, was adorned by the city with splendid burials, as one of the wealthy kings; and all the women of the Romans, having agreed together, mourned him for the space of a year by laying aside gold and purple, in the same manner as Junius Brutus, as it is their custom to mourn at the necessary funerals of their kinsmen.

49.1. After that year the consuls appointed were Spurius Cassius, surnamed Vecellinus, and Opiter Verginius Tricostus. Under them the war against the Sabines was brought to an end by one of the consuls, Spurius, a strong battle having taken place not far from the city of the Curites; from which there died about ten thousand three hundred of the Sabines, and a little short of four thousand were taken captive.

49.2. Struck by this last calamity, the Sabines sent ambassadors to the consul to confer about friendship. Cassius putting them off to the senate, they came to Rome and, with much entreaty, hardly find reconciliation and the dissolution of the war, giving the army corn as much as Cassius commanded, and a fixed sum of silver per man, and ten thousand plethra of planted land.

49.3. Spurius Cassius, then, brought home a triumph from this war; but the other consul, Verginius, campaigned against the city of the Cameriaeans, which had revolted from the alliance of the Romans in this war, leading the half of the other army; and telling no one whither he meant to go, and accomplishing the road by night, that he might set upon those within unprepared and not foreknowing his

49.4. onset — which indeed came to pass. For coming near the wall he escaped the notice of all just as the day was breaking, and before encamping he brought up rams and ladders and used every kind of siege. The Cameriaeans being struck by the suddenness of his arrival, and some thinking fit to open the gates and receive the consul, others to defend themselves with all their force and not let the enemy within, while the confusion and dissension among them prevailed, having broken open the gates and seized with ladders the lowest of the defences, he took the city by storm. That day, then, and the following night he permitted his own to carry and

49.5. drive off the property; but on the next, ordering the captives to be gathered into one place, all who had counselled the revolt he put to death, and the rest of the crowd he sold, and razed the city.

50.1. In the seventieth Olympiad, the one in which Niceas the Locrian from Opus won the foot-race, Smyrus being archon at Athens, Postumus Cominius and Titus Larcius take over the consular office; under whom the cities of the Latins revolted from the friendship of the Romans, Octavius Mamilius, the son-in-law of Tarquinius, having persuaded the most distinguished men of each city — some by promises of gifts, others by entreaties — to help the exiles concerning their

50.2. return. And there is a common assembly of those gathering at Ferentinum, save the one city of the Romans alone; for to her alone they did not give notice to be present, as they were wont; in which the cities had to cast a vote about the war and to appoint generals and

50.3. to deliberate concerning the other preparations. There happened at this time to have been sent by the Romans as ambassador Marcus Valerius, a man of consular rank, to the neighbouring cities, to ask them to make no innovation; for some of them were plundering the fields on their borders, sent out by the powerful men, and were doing much harm to the farmers of the Romans. When he learned that the common assembly of the cities was being held to have all cast the vote about the war, coming to the meeting and asking leave to speak from the presidents, he said that he had been sent by the city as ambassador to the cities sending out the brigand-bands, to ask them, having found out those guilty of the wrongs, to give them up to undergo punishment according to the law which they had ordained in the treaties when they made the friendship, and for the future to ask them to keep guard, that no common offence should arise which would set at variance both their friendship and their kinship.

50.4. But seeing that all the cities had come together for the war against the Romans, and concluding this from many other things, but most of all because to the Romans alone they had not given notice to be present at the assembly, it being written in the treaties that all the cities of the Latin race should be present at the common assemblies when the presidents gave them notice, he said he marvelled what they had suffered or what they had to charge against the city, that the councillors did not summon to the meeting that one alone, which first of all ought to be present and first to be asked its opinion, holding the leadership of the nation, which it obtained from them willingly in return for many great benefits.

51.1. After him the Aricini, asking leave to speak, accused the Romans, because they had brought the Tyrrhenian war upon them, being kinsmen, and had brought it about, so far as in them lay, that all the cities of the Latins should be robbed of their freedom by the Tyrrhenians; and Tarquinius the king, renewing the treaties he had made with the commonwealth of the cities about friendship and alliance, asked the cities to fulfil the oaths and to restore him to power; and the exiles of the Cameriaeans and Fidenates, the former bewailing the capture and exile of their fatherland, the latter the enslavement and razing, exhorted them to the war.

51.2. Last of all the son-in-law of Tarquinius, Mamilius, most powerful in those times among the Latins, rising, delivered a long harangue against the city. Valerius defending himself against all and seeming to prevail in the just arguments, having spent that day on the accusations and defences, they laid no end upon the council; but on the next the presidents no longer brought the ambassadors of the Romans before the meeting, but, giving leave to speak to Tarquinius and Mamilius and the Aricini and the others who wished to accuse the city, when they had heard all, they vote that the treaties have been dissolved by the Romans, and gave to the ambassadors with Valerius the answer that, those men having dissolved the kinship by their wrongs, they would deliberate at leisure in what manner they ought to take vengeance on them.

51.3. While these things were being done, a conspiracy arose against the city of many slaves who agreed to seize the citadels and to set the city on fire at many places. An information having been given by those privy to it, the gates were at once shut by the consuls, and all the strongholds of the city were occupied by the horse; and at once some seized from their houses, others brought up from the fields — as many as the informers declared to have shared in the conspiracy — outraged with scourges and tortures, were all crucified. These things were done under these consuls.

52.1. Servilius Sulpicius Camerinus and Manius Tullius Longus having taken over the office, certain of the Fidenates, having sent for soldiers from the Tarquinii, seize the citadel, and, of those not of the same purpose destroying some and driving out others, they revolt the city again from the Romans; and a Roman embassy having come, they set out to treat the men as enemies, but, prevented by the elders, they cast them out of the city,

52.2. thinking fit neither to give an account nor to receive one. The senate of the Romans, learning these things, was not yet eager to carry the war against the commonwealth of the Latins, learning that the things voted by the councillors were not to the mind of all, but that in each city the plebeians held back from the war, and that those thinking fit that the treaties should remain were more than those saying they were dissolved; but against those in Fidenae they voted to send one of the consuls, Manius Tullius, leading a great army; who, when he had ravaged their land with much freedom, none defending it, encamping near the wall, kept watch that neither provisions should be brought in to those within nor arms nor any other aid.

52.3. The Fidenates, then, were shut within their walls and sent embassies to the cities of the Latins begging for swift alliance. And the presidents of the Latins, having held an assembly of the cities, and giving leave to speak again to the Tarquinii and to those come from the besieged, called the councillors to declare their opinion in what manner they ought to make war on the Romans, beginning from the eldest and most distinguished.

52.4. Many speeches being made, and first concerning the war itself, whether it ought to be ratified, the more turbulent of the councillors thought fit to restore the king to power and counselled to aid the Fidenates, wishing to be in military commands and to lay hold of great affairs, and most of all those who longed for dynastic power and tyranny in their own fatherlands, which they were persuaded the Tarquinii would help them to establish if they should recover the rule of the Romans. But the wealthiest and most equitable thought fit that the cities should remain in the treaties and not rashly resort to arms; and these were the most persuasive to the multitude.

52.5. Being thrust aside by those counselling to keep the peace, those who urged the war on persuade the assembly to do at least this in the end, to send ambassadors to Rome who should at once exhort and counsel the city to receive the Tarquinii and the other exiles on safe-conduct and amnesty, and, having cut victims concerning these things, to be adorned with its ancestral constitution and to withdraw the army from the city of the Fidenates, on the ground that they themselves would not overlook kinsmen and friends robbed of their fatherland; but if they would endure to do neither of these things, then they would deliberate concerning the war;

52.6. not being ignorant that the Romans would endure neither of these things, but wishing to take seemly pretexts for the enmity, and thinking to win over in the meantime, by attentions and favours, those who opposed them. Having voted these things and fixed a year's time for the Romans to deliberate and for themselves to prepare, and having appointed as ambassadors those whom Tarquinius wished, they dissolved the meeting.

53.1. The Latins having dispersed by cities, those with Mamilius and Tarquinius, seeing that the many had fallen back from their zeal, gave up the hopes from abroad as not very secure; and, changing their counsels, they contrived to stir up from Rome itself a civil and unguarded war, introducing faction of the poor against the well-to-do.

53.2. And already the great part of the plebeian body was being stirred and sick, and most of all the needy and those constrained by debts no longer to think the best things for the commonwealth; for the lenders were not moderate in their authority, but led off the bodies of debtors into bonds and used them as bought slaves.

53.3. Learning this, Tarquinius sent into the city, along with the ambassadors of the Latins, certain unsuspected men bringing gold, who, coming into conversation with the poor and the boldest, and partly already giving them money, partly promising it if the kings should return, corrupted very many of the citizens; and there arises a conspiracy against the aristocracy, not only of free men who were poor, but also of wicked slaves led on by hopes of freedom, who, on account of their fellow-slaves punished in the past year, being hostilely and treacherously disposed toward their masters, and distrusted by them and held in suspicion as men who would themselves one day set upon them if they got the occasion, gladly hearkened to those who summoned them to the attack.

53.4. The reckoning of their conspiracy was of this sort. The leaders of the enterprise had to watch for a moonless night and seize the citadels and the strong places of the city; and the servants, when they should perceive those holding the well-placed places — and this was to be made plain to them by a shout — were to kill their masters as they slept, and, having accomplished these things, to plunder the houses of the well-to-do and open the gates to the tyrants.

54.1. But the divine providence which at every season saves the city and remains even to my times disclosed their counsels, an information having come to one of the consuls, Sulpicius, which two brothers, Tarquinii, Publius and Marcus, from the city of Laurentum, the chief men of those who shared in the conspiracy, made, forced by a divine necessity.

54.2. For there stood over them, when they slept, fearful visions of dreams threatening great punishments, if they should not cease and stand off from the attempt; and they seemed to be pursued by certain divinities and struck and to have their eyes dug out and at the last to suffer many other cruel things; by which, full of fear and shaken with trembling, they were roused, and could not even sleep for these terrors.

54.3. At the outset, then, by certain averting and expiatory sacrifices they tried to entreat the divinities that beset them; but when they accomplished nothing, they turned to divination, keeping the intent of the enterprise secret, and thinking fit to learn this only, whether it was now the time to do what they wished. The diviner answering that they were walking a wicked and destructive road, and that, if they should not change their counsels, they would perish in the most shameful manner, fearing lest others should forestall them in bringing the secrets to light, they themselves become informers to the one of the consuls who was in the city.

54.4. And the consul, praising them and promising to do them much good, if they should display deeds like their words, kept these men within with himself, telling no one; and the ambassadors of the Latins, having for a time put off and drawn out his answer, then bringing into the senate-house the things resolved by the councillors,

54.5. answers them: "Men, friends and kinsmen, report on your departure to the commonwealth of the Latins, that the people of the Romans neither earlier granted to the Tarquinienses, when they asked it, the return of the tyrants, nor afterward to all the Tyrrhenians whom King Porsina led, when they begged for the same things and brought upon us a war heaviest of all wars, did it bend, but endured to see its land mown down and its farmsteads burned, becoming shut within its walls for the sake of freedom and of not being commanded to do anything it did not wish; and at you, O Latins, it has marvelled, if, knowing these things, you have come none the less commanding us to receive the tyrants and to raise the siege of Fidenae, and threatening war if we do not obey. Cease, then, to put forward cold and incredible pretexts of enmity; and if for these reasons you mean to dissolve the kinship and to ratify the war, delay no longer."

55.1. Having answered these things to the ambassadors and sent them forth from the city, after this he tells the senate concerning the secret conspiracy what he had learned from the informers; and receiving from them full authority to search out those sharing in the secret counsels and to punish those found, he did not take the self-willed and tyrannical road, as another might have done, shut up in so great a necessity; but he turned to the reasonable and safe one, in keeping with the form of the constitution then established.

55.2. For neither did he wish the citizens to be seized from their houses and led to death, dragged from wives and children and fathers — considering what the pity would be of the kinsmen of each at the tearing away of their nearest, and fearing lest some, driven to despair, should take the rush to arms, and the necessity of acting lawlessly should proceed through kindred blood; nor did he think he ought to seat law-courts for them, reckoning that all would deny it and that there would be no firm or indisputable proof for the judges, apart from the information, trusting which they would condemn the citizens to death;

55.3. but he devised a certain novel manner of deceit against the revolutionaries, through which, first, the leaders of the secret counsels would themselves, no one compelling them, come to one place; then they would be convicted by indisputable proofs, so that no defence at all should be left them; and besides this, gathered not into a deserted place nor convicted before few witnesses, but in the Forum, all looking on, becoming manifest, they would suffer what befitted, and no confusion would arise throughout the city nor uprisings of others, such as are wont to happen about the punishments of revolutionaries, and that too in perilous times.

56.1. Another, then, might have supposed it sufficient to tell the main point itself, that, having seized those sharing in the secret counsels, he put them to death, as though the affairs needed but a brief declaration; but I, deeming the manner too of the seizure of the men worthy of history, resolved not to pass it by, considering that for those who read histories it is not sufficient, for profit, to hear the end alone of what was done, but each demands also to learn the causes of things and the manners of the deeds and the intentions of those who did them and the things from the divine power that concurred, and to be ignorant of none of the things that naturally attend affairs; and seeing the learning of these things to be very necessary for statesmen, that they may have examples to use for the things that befall.

56.2. The manner of the seizure of the conspirators, which the consul devised, was this. Choosing the most vigorous of those sharing in the council of the senate, he ordered them, when they should receive the watchword, together with their most trustworthy friends and kinsmen, to seize the strong places of the city, in which each chanced to have his dwelling; and to the horse he gave notice to wait in the most suitable of the houses about the Forum, having swords, and to do whatever he should command them.

56.3. And that nothing might be innovated in the seizure of the citizens by their kinsmen or by any of the other citizens, nor that there should be kindred slaughters through this confusion, sending letters to the consul appointed over the siege of the Fidenates, he ordered him, at the beginning of night, leading the best part of the army, to come to the city and, near the wall in a hilly place, to lay down arms.

57.1. Having prepared these things, he told the informers of the deed to tell ... the leaders of the conspirators to come into the Forum about midnight, bringing those of their companions whom they most trusted, as about to receive there their post and place and watchword, and to hear what each ought to do. These things came to pass; and when all the chief men of the companions had been gathered into the Forum, by signals unknown to those men, at once both the citadels became full of those who had taken up arms on behalf of the city and the things about the Forum were guarded round about by the horse, and not one exit was left for those who wished to depart.

57.2. And at the same time the other consul, Manius, having risen from Fidenae, was present in the plain, leading his force. As soon as day shone forth, the consuls, having heavy-armed men about them, came forward to the platform; and ordering the heralds to proclaim through all the lanes that the people should come to an assembly, when all the crowd of the city had run together, they both make plain to them the conspiracy that had been formed for the return of the tyrant and bring up the informers.

57.3. And after this, granting a defence, if any should dispute against the information, when no one attempted to turn to denial, withdrawing from the Forum into the senate-house, they asked the opinions of the councillors concerning them, and, having written down their resolutions, came again to the assembly and read the preliminary decree. It was of this sort: that to the Tarquinii who had informed of the attempt citizenship be given and ten thousand drachmae of silver to each and twenty plethra of public land; but that those who had shared in the conspiracy, having been seized, should die, if the people too should so resolve.

57.4. The assembled crowd having made valid the resolutions of the senate, ordering those gathered for the assembly to withdraw from the Forum, they then called the attendants having swords, who, standing round all those liable to the charges in the place where they had been shut up, slew them. Having dispatched these, they no longer admitted any information against any of those who had planned the same things, but released from the charges all who had escaped the punishment by hand, that all that was disturbing might be removed from the city.

57.5. Those who formed the conspiracy, then, were destroyed in this manner. And the senate, having voted that all the citizens be purified, because they had been compelled to declare opinions about a civil bloodshed — as not lawful for them to be present at sacred rites and to begin sacrifices before they had expiated the pollution and dissolved the calamity by the customary purifications — when all that was holy had been done by those who interpret divine matters according to the local custom, voted that thank-offerings and games be performed after this, and set apart three days as sacred for these. And Manius Tullius, one of the consuls, having fallen from the sacred chariot in the holy games named after the city, in the procession, in the very hippodrome, and having died on the third day after this procession, Sulpicius alone held the office for the remaining time, which was brief.

58.1. The consuls appointed for the coming year were Publius Veturius Geminus and Publius Aebutius Elva. Of these, Aebutius was set over the city affairs, which seemed to need no small guarding, lest some other innovation be made by the poor; but Veturius, taking the half of the army, ravaged the land of the Fidenates, none hindering, and, sitting down before the city, made continuous assaults. Not being able to take the wall by siege, he palisaded and ditched the surroundings, as one about to reduce

58.2. the people by famine. But to the Fidenates, now hard pressed, there came aid from the Latins, which Sextus Tarquinius had sent, and corn and arms and the other things fit for war. Trusting in these, they took courage to come forth from the city, a not small force, and make a camp in the open. The circumvallation, then, was no longer useful to the Romans, but it seemed there must be a contest; and a battle takes place near the city, for a while evenly balanced; then, by the endurance of the Romans, which through their much training was their advantage, the Fidenates, being forced, though more in number, were put to flight by fewer.

58.3. But there was no great slaughter of them, the withdrawal into the city not being far off, and those on the walls beating back the pursuers. After this deed the allies, dispersing, departed, having helped those within in nothing; and the city was again in the same calamities and was distressed by the want of necessities.

58.4. About the same time Sextus Tarquinius, leading an army of Latins, campaigned against Signia, which was held by the Romans, as one about to take the fort by assault. The men within fighting back nobly, he had prepared, as one about to compel the people by famine to leave the place, and spent much time there accomplishing nothing worthy of note; but failing of this hope too, supplies and aid coming to the garrison from the consuls, raising the siege he led off his forces.

59.1. In the following year the Romans appoint as consuls Titus Larcius Flavus and Quintus Cloelius Siculus. Of these, Cloelius was set to manage the city affairs, having the half of the army for the guarding of the revolutionaries, being thought equitable in nature and democratic; but Larcius, leading an army equipped for the war against the Fidenates and having prepared the things fit for a siege, set off.

59.2. To those toiling under the length of the war and lacking all the necessaries he was grievous, undermining the foundations of the walls and raising mounds and bringing up engines and standing off from the siege neither by day nor by night, and supposing that in a little time he would take the city by storm. For not even the cities of the Latins, in whom alone the Fidenates trusted when they took up the war, were sufficient to save them then.

59.3. For no single city was considerable enough to deliver them from the siege, and a force from the whole nation in common had not yet been assembled; but to them, often sending embassies, the presidents of the cities gave the same answers, that aid would come to them swiftly; but no deed like the promises came about, and the hopes of alliance proceeded only as far as words.

59.4. Not, however, had the Fidenates altogether despaired of the things from the Latins, but they held out on the hopes from there, enduring all terrible things. But above all the famine was an irresistible thing, and this wrought much destruction of men. When they had now given up under their evils, they sent ambassadors to the consul asking a truce for a fixed number of days, as though in this time about to deliberate concerning friendship with the Romans, on what just terms they should make it.

59.5. But the time was asked of them not for the sake of deliberation, but of the preparation of allies, as some deserters lately come revealed. For on the preceding night they had sent the most distinguished of the citizens and those most powerful in the cities of the Latins as ambassadors to the commonwealth, bearing suppliant boughs.

60.1. Having foreknown these things, Larcius ordered those asking the truce, when they had laid down their arms and opened the gates, then to confer with him; otherwise neither reconciliation nor truce nor any other humane or moderate thing would there be for them, he said, from the city of the Romans; and the ambassadors sent to the Latin nation he kept from passing any longer within the wall, having beset all the roads leading into the city with more careful guards, so that the besieged were compelled, despairing of the hopes of alliance, to take refuge in entreaties of the enemy. And coming together into an assembly they resolved to submit to the reconciliation

60.2. on whatever terms the conqueror should think fit. So democratic, then, were the characters of the leaders of that time, and most far removed from tyrannical self-will, which but a rare few of the leaders of our day, uplifted by the greatness of their authority, have been able to escape, that the consul, having taken over the city, did nothing of his own judgment, but, ordering the people to lay down their arms and leaving a guard upon the citadel, himself went off to Rome, and, gathering the council, gave it to them to consider

60.3. in what manner they ought to treat those who had surrendered themselves. At which the councillors, admiring the man for his honour toward them, judged that the most distinguished of the Fidenates and the authors of the revolt, whomever the consul should designate, be scourged with rods and have their heads cut off; but concerning the rest they put the authority in his hands to do all that he chose.

60.4. Larcius, having become master of all, put to death a few of the Fidenates accused by those of the opposite party, in the sight of all, and confiscated their property; but to all the rest he gave back both their city to hold and their goods, and cut off the half of their land, which the Roman guards left in the city to hold the citadel allotted. Having accomplished these things, he led the army homeward.

61.1. When the capture of Fidenae was announced to the Latins, every city was up and full of fear, and all were angry at those set over the commonwealth, as having betrayed their allies. An assembly being held at Ferentinum, those who persuaded them to take up arms made a great accusation of those who would dissuade from the war, and most of all Tarquinius and his son-in-law Mamilius and the leaders of the city of the Aricini.

61.2. Demagogued by these, all who shared in the Latin race in common take up the war against the Romans; and, that no city might either betray the commonwealth or dissolve the enmity beforehand without the resolve of all, they gave one another oaths, and voted that those who should not keep the agreements be outside the treaty and accursed and enemies of all.

61.3. Those who enrolled themselves in the treaties as councillors and swore the oaths were men from these cities: the Ardeates, Aricini, Boillani, Bubentani, Corni, Carventani, Circeienses, Coriolani, Corbintes, Cabani, Fortineii, Gabii, Laurentines, Lanuvians, Lavinians, Labicani, Nomentani, Norbani, Praenestines, Pedani, Corcotulani, Satricani, Scaptini, Setini, Tiburtines, Tusculans, Tolerini, Tellenii, Veliterni; from all these cities those in their prime should join the campaign, as many as the leaders Octavius Mamilius and Sextus Tarquinius should need — for these they appointed generals with full power.

61.4. And that they might seem to make seemly the pretexts of the war, they sent the most distinguished ambassadors from each city to Rome, who, standing before the senate, said that their city was accused by the city of the Aricini, because, when the Tyrrhenians were bringing war upon the Aricini, they not only afforded them safe passages through their own country, but also helped them with whatever they needed for the war, and, receiving those who fled from the rout, all wounded and unarmed, saved them — not ignorant that they were bringing a common war upon all their nation, and that, if they had taken the city of the Aricini into their power, there would have been nothing to prevent them from enslaving all the other cities also.

61.5. If, then, they should be willing to undergo trial before the Aricini, coming to the common court of the Latins, and to be content with what should be judged by all, they said they would need no war; but if, keeping their accustomed self-will, they should think fit to concede to their kinsmen nothing of the just and moderate things, they threatened that all the Latins would make war on them with all their might.

62.1. The ambassadors challenging these things, the senate, not thinking fit to undergo trial before the Aricini, concerning matters in which the accusers were to become judges, and supposing the enemy would not even be judges so far as this, but would add still heavier injunctions than these, voted to accept the war. For the sake of their valour, then, and their experience of contests, they supposed no calamity would seize the city; but they dreaded the multitude of the enemy; and sending embassies in many directions it called upon the neighbouring cities for alliance, the Latins sending counter-embassies to the same and accusing Rome much.

62.2. The Hernicans, then, having come together in common, answered both embassies with suspicious and unsound replies, saying they would ally with neither for the present, but would deliberate at leisure which of the two demanded the more just things, and would give the council a year's time.

62.3. The Rutuli undertook openly to send aid to the Latins; but to the Romans, if they should wish to dissolve the enmity, they said they would through themselves render the Latins more moderate and would arbitrate the settlement for them. The Volscians said they even marvelled at the shamelessness of the Romans, that, conscious that they had in other things wronged them and, at the last, held the best part of their country which they had taken from them, they nevertheless dared to call upon them, being enemies, for alliance; and they counselled them, giving back the country, then to ask just things from them as friends. The Tyrrhenians stood in the way of both, saying to the Romans that a truce had been made not long before, but that to the Tarquinii there was kinship and friendship for them.

62.4. These having so answered, the Romans, in no way humbled — which it would have been natural for those to suffer who take up a great war and have despaired of all the hopes of alliance — but trusting in their own forces alone, became far more eager for the contest, as men who through necessity would be brave amid the dangers, and, if they should fare according to their mind, having succeeded by their own valour, would share the glory with no one. So great was the spirit and boldness that remained with them from their many contests.

63.1. But preparing the things fit for the war and beginning to enrol the forces, they fell into much perplexity, all not furnishing the same eagerness for the work. For those wanting in livelihood, and most of all those unable to pay their debts to their creditors — being very many — did not obey when called to arms nor wished to share in any work with the patricians, unless they should vote them a release from debts; but some of them even said they would leave the city and exhorted one another not to love a city that gave them a share in no good thing.

63.2. For a while, then, the patricians tried to exhort and win them over; but when they became no more moderate to the exhortations, thus then, coming together into the senate-house, they considered what would be the more seemly dissolution of the disturbance that held the city. As many, then, as were equitable in nature and moderate in the assessments of their livelihoods, counselled to remit the debts to the poor and to buy political goodwill for a small price, as men about to gain great things from it, both privately and publicly.

64.1. The leader of this opinion was Marcus Valerius, son of Publius Valerius, one of those who overthrew the tyranny, the one called, for his goodwill toward the people, Publicola; teaching them that to those who contend for equal things equal ambitions are wont to be implanted toward the work, but to those who are to enjoy no good thing no noble thought comes; and saying that all the poor were exasperated and going about the Forum saying:

64.2. "And what more shall we have, if we conquer the enemies from without, if we are to become liable to the creditors for our debts, and, having established the leadership for the city, shall not be able to guard even the freedom of our own bodies?" He declared that not this danger alone would be brought upon them, if the people should be set at war with the senate — that it might leave the city in the dangers, which all who wish the commonwealth saved should dread — but also that other, more grievous than this, that, deceived by the humanities from the tyrants, it might take up arms against the patricians

64.3. and help to restore Tarquinius to power. While, then, it was still words and threats, and no wicked deed had been done by the people, he counselled to forestall by this aid and to win over the people beforehand to the cause — neither being the first to establish this measure nor about to incur any great disgrace through it, but able to point to many who endured even this and other things far more grievous, when it was possible to do nothing else; for necessities are stronger than human nature, and he thought fit that all consider the seemly only then, when they already have the safe.

65.1. Having reckoned up many examples from many cities, he last put forward the city of the Athenians, which then enjoyed the greatest name for wisdom, that not many years before, but in the time of their fathers, it had voted a remission of debts to the poor, Solon leading the way, and that no one reproached the city for this measure nor called him who introduced it a flatterer of the people and a wicked man, but all bore witness to those who were persuaded that they had much prudence, and

65.2. to him who persuaded great wisdom. But the Romans, for whom the danger was not concerning small differences but concerning their not being handed over again to a savage tyrant worse than any beast, who of men of sense would reproach, if by this humanity they should procure the poor to become allies instead of enemies to the city?

65.3. Having gone over the foreign examples, he last took in the argument from the deeds of their own country, reminding them of the necessities that had lately seized them, when, their land being held by the Tyrrhenians, becoming shut within their walls and reduced to much want of necessities, they did not hold the senseless reckonings of madmen and men set on death, but, yielding to the times that held them and taking necessity as the teacher of advantage, both endured to give King Porsina the most distinguished children as hostages — never before having endured this — and to be punished with a part of their land, giving up the Seven Pagi to the Tyrrhenians, and to use the enemy as judge concerning the things he charged against them, giving both provisions and arms and the other things which the Tyrrhenians needed for the

65.4. dissolution of the war. Using these examples, then, he declared it was not the part of the same prudence to gainsay the enemies in nothing of what they demanded, but to make war on their own citizens for a small difference — citizens who had fought noble and many wars for the leadership when the kings held the commonwealth, and furnished great eagerness toward the freeing of the city from the tyrants, and were about to furnish still more zeal for the remaining works if called upon, being in want of livelihood, yet ungrudgingly giving up their bodies and lives, which alone remained to them, to the dangers on her behalf. And he said at the end that even if they should attempt to say nothing of the sort, overcome by shame, nor to announce it, the patricians ought, taking the fitting reckoning concerning them, to bestow freely what they knew them to need, both in common and each one privately — considering that they were doing an arrogant thing in asking of them their bodies but not granting them the money, and in saying to all that they were making war for the common freedom, yet robbing those who helped to acquire it, having not wickedness to reproach them with, but want, which it befitted to pity rather than to hate.

66.1. While Valerius was saying such things and many praising the opinion, Appius Claudius Sabinus, called in the proper place, counselled the opposite, teaching that the faction would not be removed from the city if they should vote cancellations of debts, but would become still more wicked, transferred from the poor to the well-to-do.

66.2. For it was plain to all that those who were to be robbed of their money would bear it ill, being citizens and full citizens and having served all the campaigns that fell to them on behalf of the city, nor would they think fit that what their fathers left them, and they themselves, working hard and living temperately, acquired, should be confiscated to the most wicked and idle of the citizens. And it was the work of much folly, wishing to gratify the worse part of the body politic, to disregard the better, and, confiscating the property of others to the most unjust of the citizens, to rob those who justly acquired it.

66.3. And he thought fit that they consider that cities are destroyed not by the poor and those having no strength, compelled to do just things, but by the well-to-do and those able to manage public affairs, when they are outraged by the worse sort and do not obtain justice. And if those robbed of their contracts should not be at all indignant, but should bear the harms somehow gently and carelessly, not even so, he said, would it be well or safe for them to grant the poor such a gift, through which the common life would become without dealings and full of mutual hatred and lacking the necessary uses, without which it is not possible for cities to be inhabited — the farmers no longer sowing and planting the land, nor the merchants sailing the sea and exchanging the goods from across the water, nor the poor doing any other just work.

66.4. For toward all these things none of the well-to-do would give up his own money to those who needed a start; and from this prosperity would be begrudged, industry dissolved, and the licentious would have a better lot than the temperate, the unjust than the just, and those who appropriate the property of others than those who guard their own. And these are the things that make divisions in cities and unceasing mutual destructions and every other kind of evils, by which some cities that fared most prosperously were robbed of their freedom, and others, getting the worse lot, were utterly destroyed.

67.1. And above all he thought fit that they consider, establishing a new constitution, that no wicked custom should pass into it, saying it was a great necessity that, of whatever sort the common practices of cities are, such should the lives of private men become. And there was no custom worse for either cities or households than that each should ever live according to pleasure and that everything should be conceded to the weaker by the stronger, whether for favour or for necessity; for the desires of the foolish are not satisfied on obtaining what they need, but they at once reach after other greater things and advance to infinity; and most of all do the masses suffer this; for what each by himself is ashamed to do, or fears, restrained by the stronger, this, when they have become a body, they more readily do lawlessly, having added strength to their own resolves from those who wish the same things.

67.2. And he said the desires of senseless mobs, being insatiable and unlimited, ought to be checked at the beginning, while they are weak, not, when they have grown strong and great, to be put down. For all have a harder anger when robbed of what was conceded than when failing of what was hoped.

67.3. And he used many examples for this, going over the deeds of Greek cities, as many as, growing soft through certain ill-timed occasions and the beginnings of wicked practices, having let them pass, no longer had power to stop and abolish them; from which they were compelled to advance into shameful and irremediable calamities. And he said the commonwealth was like the individual man, the senate having something analogous to the soul of a man,

67.4. and the people to the body. If, then, they should let the senseless people rule over the senate, they would suffer the same things as those who subject the soul to the body and live not according to reason but according to the passions. But if they should accustom the people to be ruled and led by the senate, they would do the same as those who subject the body to the soul and lead their lives toward the best,

67.5. not toward the most pleasant. And he declared that no great harm would befall the city if the poor, indignant at not being granted the cancellation of debts, should be unwilling to take up arms on her behalf, saying that those who left nothing to themselves beyond their bodies were altogether few, who would furnish neither any wonderful benefit to the commonwealth by being present in the campaigns nor any harm by being absent; reminding them that those having the least assessment of livelihood took the last place in the wars, and that these held the position of an appendage to those arrayed in the phalanx, present for the terrifying of the enemy, as men bearing no weapon save slings, of which there is the least use in battles.

68.1. And he said that those who thought fit to pity the poverty of the citizens and counselled to aid those unable to pay their debts ought to examine what it was that had made them poor — men who had received allotments which their fathers left them, and had been much benefited from the campaigns, and, at the last, had taken the portion that fell to them from the confiscated property of the tyrants; then to consider as disgraces and harms to the city those whom they should see having lived for the belly and the basest pleasures and for these reasons having fallen out of their livelihoods, and to suppose it a great gain for the commonwealth if they should willingly be destroyed away from the city; but those whom they should perceive to have lost their livelihoods through bad fortune, these to benefit from their own

68.2. means. And he said that those who had lent to them would best both know this and do it, and would aid their fortunes — those very men, not compelled by others, but willingly, that to them the favour might remain a noble debt in place of the money. But to make the aid common to all, of which the wicked would share equally with the good, and to benefit some not from their own but from others' means, and to those whose money they took away not even to leave the favours for the benefactions, befitted least the virtue of the Romans.

68.3. And above all these and the other things, that it was a terrible thing and not to be endured for the Romans, who laid claim to the leadership which their fathers, having acquired it through many toils, left to their descendants, to do — not according to purpose nor persuaded nor in the fitting occasion — the best things and those advantageous to the commonwealth, but, as though the city had been captured or expected to suffer this, to act contrary to what seemed good to themselves, from which they would gain no benefit, or some quite small, but would risk suffering the uttermost of evils.

68.4. For it was far better for them to do what the Latins commanded, as being more moderate, and not even to come to a trial of war, than, having conceded to men in no way useful what they urged, to abolish the faith from the city, which their fathers ordained should be honoured with the building of a temple and yearly sacrifices, while they were about to take on an alliance of slingers for the war.

68.5. The sum of his opinion was this: those of the citizens willing to share in the fortune of the war on the same just terms as each of the others, to take up into the affairs; but those who thought fit to take up arms on behalf of the fatherland under agreements of whatever kind, as men who would help in nothing if they should get them, to let go their way. For if they should learn this, he said they would yield and would render themselves obedient to those who deliberated the best things concerning the commonwealth. For all that is senseless is ever wont, when one flatters it, to be high-minded, but when one frightens it, to be prudent.

69.1. These opinions, then, most differing from one another, were spoken; and certain others, holding the middle ground between these, were many. For some thought fit that only those possessing nothing should be released from their debts, making the money liable to the creditors, not the bodies; others counselled that the public treasury should discharge the contracts on behalf of those unable, that both the faith of the poor should be guarded by the public favour and those who had lent to them be in no way wronged. And it seemed good to some to rescue the bodies both of those already held for debts and of those about to be robbed of their freedom, exchanging for them with the creditors other bodies from the captives.

69.2. Some such things being said, the prevailing opinion was that no preliminary decree be made about them for the present; but when the wars should take the best end, then the consuls should propose the matter and give a vote to the councillors; and meanwhile there should be no exaction either of any contract or of any condemnation, and all the other disputes should be let go, and neither should the courts sit nor the magistrates decide concerning anything outside what pertained to the war.

69.3. This preliminary decree, brought before the people, somewhat diminished the political disturbance, yet did not remove all the faction from the city. For there were some of the labouring multitude to whom the hope from the senate did not seem sufficient aid, having nothing plain or firm; but they thought fit that it do one of two things, either give them the release from debts now, if it wished to have them as sharers in the dangers, or not cheat them by putting it off to other times; for the intentions of men are not alike when needing and when satisfied of whatever they need.

70.1. The commonwealth being in such a state, the senate, considering by what manner it might most bring it about that the plebeians should innovate nothing further, resolved to abolish the consular authority for the present, and to appoint some other magistracy master of war and peace and every other matter, with full power and unaccountable for whatever it should deliberate and do.

70.2. And the measure of time for the new office should be six months, and after the six months the consuls should rule again. The things that compelled it, in order to dissolve the tyrannic war, to endure a self-chosen tyranny were many others, but above all the law ratified by one of the consuls, Publius Valerius called Publicola, concerning which I said at the outset that it made void the opinions of the consuls — not to punish any of the Romans before trial, having permitted those led to punishment by them to appeal the decision to the people, and, until the multitude should cast a vote concerning them, to have safety in body and life; and bidding the one who should attempt to do anything contrary to these to die unavenged.

70.3. It reckoned, then, that, this law remaining valid, the poor, compelled by the magistracies, would render no service, despising, as was natural, the punishments which they were not about to undergo at once, but whenever the people should condemn them; but, it being abolished, all would by much necessity do what was commanded. And that the poor might not oppose, if anyone should openly abolish the law itself, it resolved to bring to power the tyrant-like office, which was to have all the laws under itself.

70.4. And it writes a preliminary decree, by which, having circumvented the poor and abolished the law that confirmed their freedom, it escaped notice. The preliminary decree was of this sort: that Larcius and Cloelius, the then consuls, lay down their authority, and if any other held any office or charge of any public matters; and that one man, whom the senate should choose beforehand and the people ratify, taking over the authority of all, should rule for not more than six months, having an authority stronger than the consuls.

70.5. Not knowing what power this had, the plebeians vote that the resolutions of the senate be valid; but the stronger office was a tyranny according to the laws; and the choice of the one who was to rule they conceded to those of the council to make, deliberating by themselves.

71.1. After this much inquiry and forethought fell upon the leaders of the senate concerning the one who should take over the leadership. For it seemed to them there was need of a man of action for affairs and one having much experience of warlike contests, and besides this, prudent and temperate and not at all to be led by the greatness of his authority into folly; and above all these and the other things which good generals ought to have, knowing how to rule firmly and about to give in nothing soft to the disobedient — which

71.2. they most needed at the present. And seeing all the things they thought fit present in one of the consuls, Titus Larcius — for Cloelius, being excellent in the civil functions, had not the energetic and warlike quality, nor the commanding and fearful, but was an equitable punisher of the disobedient — the senate held it a disgrace to take from the one the office which he had according to the laws, and to grant to the other the authority of both, which was becoming greater than the royal guise; and some fear too came over it, lest Cloelius, deeming grievous the rejection from the office, as one dishonoured by the senate, should then change the purpose of his life and, becoming patron of the people,

71.3. overturn all the commonwealth. All being ashamed to bring into the open what they happened to think, and doing this for a long while, the eldest and most honoured of the consulars declared an opinion by which, keeping both consuls in equal honour, he found from those very men the one more fit to rule; for he said it seemed to him, since the senate had judged and the people had ratified that the power of the office be given to one, but two things remained needing no small deliberation and care — who should be the one to take over the tyrant-like office and by what lawful authority appointed — that one of the then consuls, whether by the cession of his colleague or having drawn it by lot, should choose whomever of the Romans he supposed would manage the affairs of the city best and most advantageously. And of interreges they needed nothing at present, whom in the monarchies it was the custom to appoint as sole choosers of those about to rule, the city having its holy office.

72.1. All praising the opinion, after him another, rising, said: "To me, senate, it seems that this too should be added to the opinion: two best men managing the commonwealth at this time, than whom you could not find better, that one of them be appointed master of the proclamation, and the other be chosen by his colleague, they judging between themselves the more fit; that there may remain to them, along with the honour, equal joy also — to the one because he declared his colleague the best, to the other because he was judged best by his colleague; for each is sweet and noble. I know, then, that even if this part were not added to the opinion, it would have seemed good to the men themselves to do so; but it is better that this be even when you wish nothing else."

72.2. This too seemed to have been said according to the mind of all; and nothing more being added to the opinion, the decree is ratified. When the consuls took over the authority of judging which of them was the more fit to rule, they did a marvellous thing and beyond all human suppositions. For each declared not himself worthy of the leadership, but the other; and they wore out that whole day reckoning up one another's virtues and begging not to take the office themselves, so that those present in the council came into much perplexity.

72.3. The senate being dismissed, the kinsmen by birth of each, and the most honoured of the other senators, coming to Larcius, made many entreaties of the man until deep in the night, teaching him that the senate had placed all its hopes in him, and saying that his lack of zeal about the office was wicked for the commonwealth. But he was unyielding, and continued in turn entreating and beseeching each. On the next day, the council being assembled again, when he then too contended and, persuaded by all, did not stand off from his opinion, Cloelius, rising, both proclaims him, as the interreges were wont to do, and himself abjures the consulship.

73.1. This man was first appointed sole ruler in Rome, with full power over war and peace and every other matter. They give him the name dictator, whether on account of the authority of commanding what he wished and of ordaining the just and the noble things for the others as it should seem good to him — for the Romans call commands and the prescriptions of just and unjust things edicta — or, as some write, on account of the proclamation that then took place, since he was not about to hold the office having found it from the people according to the ancestral customs,

73.2. but appointed by one man. For they did not think they ought to give an envied and heavy name to any office governing a free city, both for the sake of the ruled, that they might not be disturbed at the hated appellations, and through forethought of those taking over the offices, lest they unawares either suffer something amiss from others or do themselves to their neighbours the things such dominions bring; since the greatness of the authority which the dictator has is least made plain by the name;

73.3. for the dictatorship is an elective tyranny. And it seems to me that the Romans took this measure too from the Greeks. For those called Aesymnetes among the Greeks of old, as Theophrastus relates in his work on kingship, were a kind of elective tyrants; and the cities chose them neither for a fixed time nor continuously, but according to the occasions, whenever it should seem advantageous, and for however long a time; just as the Mytilenaeans once chose Pittacus against the exiles with Alcaeus the poet.

74.1. The first came to this, taught the usefulness by experience. For at the outset every Greek city was ruled by kings, yet not as the barbarian nations despotically, but according to certain laws and ancestral customs; and the best king was the most just and most lawful and one departing in nothing from the ancestral ways.

74.2. And Homer makes this plain, calling the kings dispensers of justice and ministers of right. And for a long time the kingships continued, administered on certain fixed terms, like that of the Lacedaemonians; but some beginning to do amiss in their authority, and using laws little, but managing the most by their own judgments, the many, displeased with the whole matter, dissolved the royal constitutions, and, establishing laws and appointing magistracies, used these as guards of the cities.

74.3. But when neither the laws established by them were sufficient to confirm justice, nor those who received the offices and the charges of them to aid the laws, and the occasions, much innovating, compelled them to choose not the best of constitutions but those most fitting to the chances that seized them — not only in the unwished-for calamities, but also in the prosperities exceeding the measure, the political orders being corrupted by these, which needed a swift and self-judging correction — they were compelled to bring the royal and tyrannical authorities again into the open, covering them with more seemly names, the Thessalians calling them archoi, the Lacedaemonians harmostae, fearing to call them tyrants or kings, as not even being lawful for them, the authorities which they had dissolved, the gods having ordained by oaths and curses,

74.4. to confirm these again. To me, then, the Romans seem to have taken the example from the Greeks, as I said; but Licinius thinks the Romans took the dictator from the Albans, saying these were the first, after the death of Amulius and Numitor, the royal kindred having failed, to appoint annual magistrates having the same authority as the kings, and to call them dictators; but I did not think fit to inquire whence the city of the Romans took the name, but the example of the authority comprehended by the name. But concerning these matters it would perhaps be of no use to write more.

75.1. In what manner Larcius dealt with affairs, having been first appointed dictator, and what order he set about the office, I will try to set forth concisely, deeming these things most useful to those who shall read, which will furnish much abundance of noble and advantageous examples to lawgivers and statesmen and all others who wish to take part in public life and to manage the commonwealth. For I am not about to relate the constitutions and lives of an unenviable and humble city, nor the counsels and deeds of nameless and cast-off men, so that to anyone our zeal about small and base things might seem a crowd of trifling; but concerning the city that ordains for all the noble and just things, and concerning the leaders who established it in this dignity — things which a philosopher and statesman would be zealous not to be

75.2. ignorant of — I write. Immediately, then, upon taking over the authority, he appoints as master of the horse Spurius Cassius, who had been consul in the seventieth Olympiad. This custom was kept by the Romans down to the generation of my time, and no one to this day appointed dictator passed his office without a master of the horse. Then, wishing to show how great the power of the authority is, for the sake of terror rather than of use, he ordered the lictors to carry the axes together with the bundles of rods through the city — a custom local to the kings, but abandoned by the consuls ever since Valerius Publicola, the first to be consul, lessened the envy of the office, himself renewing it.

75.3. Having terrified by this and the other symbols of the royal leadership the disturbing and revolutionary, the best of the usages established by Servius Tullius the most democratic king he first ordered all the Romans to perform: to bring the assessments of their livelihoods by tribes, adding the names of their wives and children and the ages of themselves and their children.

75.4. All having assessed themselves in a short time through the greatness of the punishment — for those who disobeyed had to lose both property and citizenship — there were found Romans of military age more than a hundred and fifty thousand by seven hundred. After this, separating those of military age from the older men and distributing them into centuries, he divided foot and horse into four parts; of which he had one, the best, about himself, and of the remaining he ordered Cloelius his fellow-consul to take which he himself wished, the third Spurius Cassius the master of the horse, and the one that was left his brother Spurius Larcius — this was appointed to guard the city, remaining within the wall with the older men.

76.1. When all the things fit for the war were ready for him, he led the forces out into the open, and pitches three camps at the places where he most supposed the Latins would make their onset. Considering that it is the part of prudent generals not only to make their own affairs strong but also the enemy's weak, and most of all to dissolve wars without battle and toil, or, if not, with the least expense of the soldiery — deeming worst of all wars and having the most griefs those which some are compelled to take up against kinsmen and friends — he thought there ought to be for them more equitable rather than more just dissolutions.

76.2. Secretly sending to the most distinguished of the Latins certain unsuspected men, he tried to bring about friendship for the cities, and openly sending embassies both to the cities and to the commonwealth, he not with difficulty wrought it that all should no longer have the same impulse toward the war; and most of all he won them over and made them stand off from their leaders by such a benefaction as this.

76.3. For those who had taken over the supreme generalship of the Latins, Mamilius and Sextus, keeping their forces together in the city of Tusculum, were preparing as if to march upon Rome, but spent much time in delay, whether awaiting the cities that were behind, or because the sacred rites were not coming out favourably for them. At this time some, straying from the camp, plundered the country of the Romans.

76.4. Learning this, Larcius sends Cloelius against them, leading the bravest of the horse and the light-armed. He, appearing to them unexpected, kills a few fighting, and takes the rest captive. These Larcius, having recovered them from their wounds and tended them with the other humanities, sent off to Tusculum in a body without ransom, sending with them the most honoured of the Romans as ambassadors. These brought it about that the army of the Latins was dissolved and a year's truce was made for the cities.

77.1. Having accomplished these things, the man led his forces out of the open and, before fulfilling all the time of his authority, having appointed consuls, laid down the office, neither having killed any of the Romans nor driven any from the fatherland nor enclosed any in any other grievous calamity.

77.2. This emulation, beginning from that man, remained with all who took over the same authority down to the third generation before us. At any rate we have received from history no one who did not use it moderately and as a statesman, though the city was often compelled to abolish the lawful magistracies and to make all affairs subject to one man.

77.3. And if those who took over the dictatorship had been good patrons of the fatherland, in no way corrupted by the greatness of the office, only in the foreign wars, it would have been less marvellous; but as it is, even in the civil dissensions, many and great as they were, and at the dissolution of suspected kingships and tyrannies, and at the prevention of ten thousand other calamities, all who got so great an authority furnished themselves blameless and like the first who took the office; so that the same opinion came to all, that there is one aid for every incurable evil and one hope of final safety, whenever all the others are broken off through certain occasions — the office of the dictator. But in

77.4. the age of our fathers, when nearly four hundred years had passed from the dictatorship of Titus Larcius, the matter was brought into ill repute and appeared hateful to all men, Lucius Cornelius Sulla being the first and only to use it bitterly and cruelly; so that then for the first time the Romans perceived what for all the rest of the time they had not known, that the office of the dictator is a

77.5. tyranny. For he both composed a senate out of chance men, and contracted the power of the tribuneship to the least, and depopulated whole cities, and some kingdoms he abolished and others himself appointed, and did many other self-willed things, concerning which it would be a great task to speak; and apart from those who perished in the battles, he killed not fewer than forty thousand citizens who had surrendered themselves to him, some of whom he even

77.6. first tortured. Whether, then, he did all these things of necessity or to the advantage of the commonwealth, the present is not the occasion to examine; but that on account of these things he was hated and the name of the dictator appeared terrible, this was what I set out to show. And it naturally befalls not these dominions alone, but also the other affairs in the common life that are striven for and admired. For all things appear noble and advantageous to those who use them, when one uses them well, but shameful and unprofitable when they get wicked patrons. And of this nature is the cause, having added to all good things certain inborn banes. But concerning these matters there would be another occasion more fitting for the discussion. Those who took over the consular office in the following year were Aulus Sempronius Atratinus and Marcus Minucius, in the seventy-first Olympiad, the one in which Tisicrates the Crotoniate won the foot-race, Hipparchus being archon at Athens.