Book 9

1.1. In the year following these events a dispute arose between the people and the senate concerning the consuls who were to be designated; for the patricians thought fit to advance both men to the office from among the aristocrats, while the people wished them chosen from among those who favoured their own interests. After arguing the matter out, they at last prevailed upon one another that one consul should be chosen from each party; and Caeso Fabius was designated by the senate for the second time—the man who had brought Cassius to trial for aiming at tyranny—and Spurius Furius by the plebeians, in the seventy-fifth Olympiad, when Calliades was archon at Athens, at the time when Xerxes made his expedition against

1.2. Greece. They had but just taken up the office when ambassadors came from the Latins to the senate, asking that one of the consuls be sent to them with an army to halt the growing contempt of the Aequians; and word came that all Tyrrhenia was in motion and would not long delay before going to war. For the nation had assembled in a common council, and when the Veientes had earnestly entreated them to join in the war against the Romans, it at last decreed that any of the Tyrrhenians who wished might take part in the campaign; and the force which voluntarily joined the Veientes in the war proved a match for the enemy. Learning of this, the Roman magistrates resolved to enrol armies and to send out both consuls, the one to make war on the Aequians and to come to the aid of the Latins, the other to lead his forces against

1.3. Tyrrhenia. But to this Spurius Icilius, one of the tribunes, set himself in opposition; and gathering the people into assembly every day, he demanded of the senate the promises it had made concerning the allotment of land, and declared that he would suffer none of its decrees, whether touching war or the affairs of the city, to be carried out, unless they first appointed the ten men to mark out the public land and divide it among the people, as

1.4. they had promised. While the senate was at a loss and perplexed what to do, Appius Claudius proposed that they consider how to set the other tribunes at variance with this man, pointing out that one who blocks and obstructs the decrees of the senate, being sacrosanct and possessed of this power by law, cannot otherwise be stripped of his authority unless another of equal rank and equal power acts in opposition and prevents whatever the first

1.5. seeks to prevent. He advised the consuls who should successively take office to do this, and to take care that they should always have some of the tribunes friendly and well-disposed toward them; for there was, he said, but one way to dissolve the power of that office, namely, if the men quarrelled with one another.

2.1. When Appius had set forth this opinion, the consuls and the most influential of the others, judging that he advised rightly, by much court paid them won over four of the tribunes to the side of the senate.

2.2. These men for a time attempted by argument to persuade Icilius to abandon his measures concerning the land-allotment until the wars should be ended; but when he opposed them and swore that he would not, and dared to utter a more arrogant speech in the presence of the people—saying that he would sooner see the Tyrrhenians and the other enemies masters of the city than yield up the public land to those who held it—they, thinking they had got a fine pretext, in the face of such arrogance, for speaking and acting in opposition (since the people too did not gladly receive his speech), declared that they would prevent him, and openly did all that seemed good to the senate and the consuls.

2.3. Thus isolated, Icilius was master of nothing. After this the army was enrolled, and everything the war required was supplied with the utmost zeal, partly from the public funds, partly from private means; and the consuls, having quickly assigned the commands by lot, marched out, Spurius Furius against the cities of the Aequians, Caeso Fabius against the Tyrrhenians.

2.4. With Spurius all went according to his wish, the enemy not venturing to come to blows; and from the campaign he got much booty in goods and persons. For he overran nearly all the country the enemy held, plundering and carrying off, and bestowed all the spoils upon his soldiers.

2.5. And though even before this he seemed to be a friend of the people, by this command he courted the multitude still more. When the term of the campaign had passed, he led his army home whole and unscathed and left his country well supplied with money.

3.1. But Caeso Fabius, the other consul, who commanded as well as any man, was robbed of the praise due to his deeds through no fault of his own, but because the plebeians bore him no good will from the time when he had denounced the consul Cassius for aiming at tyranny and put him to death.

3.2. For neither in obeying what the general commanded when speed was needed, nor in seizing by force what required zeal and resolution, nor in appropriating, unbeknownst to the enemy, positions well suited for advantage, nor in any other action by which the general was to win honour and a good name, were they ready to do their part. Now the other ways in which they continually insulted their commander were less grievous to him and brought no great harm to the city; but what at last they did brought no small danger and much disgrace upon both.

3.3. For when a battle had been fought in the space between the hills on which both sides were encamped, with all the force of each, and the Romans had performed many fine exploits and forced the enemy to begin a flight, they neither followed the retreating foe, though the general urged them much, nor would they stay and storm the camp, but, leaving a fair work unfinished, they withdrew to their own camp.

3.4. And when certain men attempted to acclaim the consul imperator, they all together with a great shout reviled their commander in abusive language, charging that through his inexperience in generalship he had destroyed many brave men; and indulging in much other railing and resentment, they demanded that he break up the camp and lead them back to the city, on the ground that they would not be able, if the enemy attacked, to withstand a second battle.

3.5. And neither when their commander tried to teach them otherwise did they obey, nor when he lamented and entreated were they moved by his prayers, nor did they take heed of his threats and warnings whenever he resorted to these; but, growing savage at everything, they persisted in these resolves. So great was the anarchy and contempt for their commander that prevailed among them all, that about midnight they rose up, struck the tents, took up their arms, and carried off the wounded, no one having so ordered.

4.1. Learning of this, the general was forced to give the order of departure to all, fearing their lawlessness and audacity. And they, as if saving themselves from a rout, with great speed reached the city about dawn. The men on the walls, not knowing that it was a friendly army, put on their arms and called to one another, and the rest of the city, as at some great calamity, was filled with confusion and tumult; and the guards did not open the gates to them before broad day had come and the army was recognized as their own.

4.2. So that, in addition to the disgrace they had brought upon themselves by abandoning the camp, they had also run no slight risk in marching through the enemy's country in the dark and in disorder. Indeed, if the enemy had discovered this and followed them as they departed, nothing would have prevented the whole army from perishing. The cause of this irrational departure or flight was, as I said, the people's hatred of their commander and their envy of his honour, lest, adorned with the celebration of a triumph, he should become most illustrious.

4.3. On the following day the Tyrrhenians, learning of the Romans' departure, stripped their dead, carried off their wounded, and plundered the equipment left behind in the camp—much of it, prepared as for a long war—and, as masters of the field, after ravaging the nearest part of the enemy's country, led their army back.

5.1. The consuls designated after these, Gnaeus Manlius and Marcus Fabius, the latter chosen to rule for the second time, when the senate had passed a decree to lead an army against the city of the Veientes, as large a one as they could raise, set a day on which they intended to make the levy. When one of the tribunes, Tiberius Pontificius, opposed them in order to hinder the enrolment, and revoked the decree concerning the land-allotment, they, by paying court to some of his colleagues, as the consuls before them had done, set the office at variance with itself; and thereafter they carried out with full authority whatever seemed good to the senate.

5.2. The levy being made in a few days, they marched out against the enemy, each leading two legions of Romans enrolled from the city itself, and a force not smaller than this sent by the colonies and subject peoples. There came to them also from the Latin and Hernican nations an auxiliary force double the number summoned. They did not, however, use it all; but expressing much gratitude to them for their zeal, they dismissed half of the force that had been sent.

5.3. They also stationed before the city a third army of two legions of men in their prime, to guard the country in case some other hostile force should appear unexpectedly; and those above the military age who still had the strength to bear arms they left in the city to guard the citadel and the walls.

5.4. Having led their forces near the city of the Veientes, they encamped on two hills not far apart from each other. The enemy's force too had taken the field before the city, large and good; for the most powerful men from all Tyrrhenia had gathered, bringing their serfs, and the Tyrrhenian army was greater than the Roman by

5.5. no little. When the consuls saw the multitude of the enemy and the brilliance of their arms, great fear fell upon them, lest with their own divided force they should prove unable to overcome the united force of the enemy drawn up against them; and it seemed best to them, after fortifying their camps, to wear out the war by waiting, in case the enemy's audacity, lifted up by reckless contempt, should give them some opening for advantage. Continuous skirmishes thereafter took place and brief encounters of light-armed troops, but no great or splendid exploit.

6.1. The Tyrrhenians, vexed at the protraction of the war, reproached the Romans with cowardice, since they did not come out to battle, and thought highly of themselves, as though the Romans had yielded the open country to them. And they were lifted up still more to disdain of the opposing army and contempt of the consuls, believing that heaven too was fighting on their side.

6.2. For a thunderbolt fell upon the headquarters of one of the consuls, Gnaeus Manlius, tore apart the tent, overturned the hearth, and of his weapons of war defiled some, scorched others, and destroyed others utterly; it killed also his most splendid horse, which he used in battle, and some of his attendants.

6.3. When the soothsayers declared that the gods were portending the capture of the camp and the destruction of the most distinguished men, Manlius roused his force and led it away about midnight to the other camp and encamped together with his colleague.

6.4. The Tyrrhenians, then, learning of the general's removal and the reasons for it from some prisoners, were lifted up in spirit still more, as though the divine power were warring on the Romans, and had great hope of overcoming them; and their soothsayers, who were thought to have examined celestial matters more exactly than those elsewhere—whence come the strokes of thunderbolts, and what places receive them after their flashes are spent, and to which gods each is assigned, and of what goods or evils they are heralds—urged them to close with the enemy, interpreting the sign that had befallen the Romans in the following way.

6.5. Since the bolt had struck the consul's tent, in which was the headquarters, and had destroyed all of it down to the hearth, the divine power was portending to the whole army the abandonment of a camp taken by force and the destruction of its most distinguished men.

6.6. If, then, they said, those who held the spot where the bolt struck had remained there and not removed their standards to the other camp, the avenging divinity would have satisfied its wrath with the capture of one camp and the destruction of one army; but since, seeking to be wiser than the gods, they had removed to the other camp, leaving the place deserted—as though the god were foreshowing his calamities not to men but to places—the wrath that comes from the divinity will fall in common upon them all, both those who departed and those who received them.

6.7. And since, when divine necessity prophesied the capture of one of their camps by force, they did not await their fate but themselves gave it over to their foes, that camp which received the abandoned army in place of the one left behind shall be taken, overpowered by force.

7.1. When the Tyrrhenians heard this from the soothsayers, with a part of their army they seized the camp the Romans had deserted, to make it a fortress against the other; and the position was very strong and well placed to hinder those coming from Rome to the camp. Having contrived also the other things by which they meant to gain advantage over the enemy, they led their forces out into the plain.

7.2. While the Romans remained quiet, the boldest of the Tyrrhenians rode up and, standing near the camp, called them all women, and reviled their commanders, saying they resembled the most cowardly of animals; and they demanded one of two things: if they laid claim to valour in war, to come down into the plain and decide the contest in a single battle; but if they confessed themselves base, to hand over their arms to their betters, submit to punishment for what they had done, and no longer deem themselves worthy of any great thing.

7.3. This they did every day; and when they accomplished nothing, they resolved to wall the Romans in, so as to compel them by famine to surrender. The consuls overlooked what was being done for a long while—not from any want of manhood or softness, for both were stout-hearted and warlike, but because they suspected the soldiers' deliberate cowardice and lack of zeal, which persisted among the plebeians from the time they had broken into faction over the land-allotment; for it was still ringing in their ears and before their eyes what in the past year, out of malice toward the honour of their consul, they had done that was shameful and unworthy of the city, when they yielded the victory to the conquered and submitted to the false reproach of flight, that the man might not lead home his triumph of victory.

8.1. Wishing, therefore, to root out completely the spirit of faction from the army and to restore the whole multitude to its original harmony, and bringing to this single end all their counsel and forethought—since it was possible neither to make the rest more prudent by punishing some part, which was numerous and arrogant and had arms in its hands, nor to bring over by persuasive words those who did not even wish to be persuaded—they supposed there would be these two causes

8.2. of reconciliation: for those who had been allotted a more reasonable nature—for there was something of this too in the multitude—the shame at the enemy's reproaches; and for those hard to lead toward the honourable, that necessity which all human nature dreads. In order, then, that both these might come about, they allowed the enemy to shame them by reviling their inaction as unmanly, and by deeds of much insolence and contempt to compel to become brave those who would not be so of their own will. For when these things happened, they had great hope that all would come to the headquarters in indignation, shouting and demanding to be led against the enemy; which is just what occurred.

8.3. For when the enemy began to entrench and palisade the outlets of the camp, the Romans, vexed at the work, at first in small numbers and then in throngs running together to the consuls' tents, cried out and charged them with treachery, and said that if no one would lead them out, they themselves, with arms in hand, would march out against the enemy apart from them.

8.4. When this came from all alike, the generals, thinking the moment they had awaited was at hand, ordered the attendants to summon the multitude to an assembly; and Fabius came forward and spoke as follows.

9.1. Slow, soldiers and officers, is your indignation at the insults you suffer from the enemy; and the wish of each to close with the foe, appearing much later than it should, is untimely. For you ought to have done this earlier, when first you saw them coming down from their strongholds and wishing to begin battle. Then indeed the contest for supremacy would have been a fine one and worthy of the Roman spirit. Now it has become a thing of necessity, and even if it takes the best

9.2. issue, it is not equally fine. Yet you do well even now in wishing to retrieve your tardiness and to recover what was let slip; and there is much gratitude due to you for your impulse toward the best course, if indeed it springs from valour—for it is better to begin late to do one's duty than never. If, then, you all hold the same reckoning concerning your interests, and the same eagerness for the contest has seized you all—

9.3. But now we fear lest the plebeians' quarrels with the magistrates over the land-allotment become the cause of great harm to the commonwealth; and a suspicion has taken hold of us, that this clamour and indignation over going forth does not come from the same purpose in all, but that some of you are eager to leave the camp in order to take vengeance on the enemy,

9.4. and others to run away. The grounds on which we are led to suspect this are no oracles or guesses, but plain deeds, and these not old, but done in the past year, as you all know: when, against these very same enemies, a large and good army went forth, and the first battle took its best issue for us, and the consul then leading you, Caeso, this man's brother, might have both stormed the enemy's camp and won for his country a most brilliant victory, certain men, envying him glory because he was no friend of the people and did not continually pursue policies pleasing to the poor, on the first night after the battle struck their tents and, without orders, ran away from the camp, neither considering the danger that would overtake them as they departed in disorder and without a leader from a hostile land, and that by night, nor reckoning how great a disgrace would attend them, that they were yielding the supremacy to the enemy, so far as in them lay, and this when they

9.5. were the victors yielding to the conquered. Dreading these men, then, officers and centurions and soldiers—men who can neither command nor wish to be commanded, numerous and arrogant and with arms in their hands—we neither wished before to join battle, nor do we now take courage to undertake the struggle for the greatest stakes with such allies, lest they become hindrances and harm to those who furnish all that depends on themselves

9.6. with zeal. If, however, god is now turning even their minds to the better, and, casting off the faction by which the commonwealth is greatly and grievously harmed—or at least putting it off to the seasons of peace—they wish to retrieve their past reproaches by present valour, let nothing further hinder you from marching against the enemy, putting forward good hopes.

9.7. We have many other grounds for victory, but the greatest and most decisive are those which the enemy's folly affords us; for though they far exceed us in number of troops, and might by this alone have withstood our daring and experience, they have robbed themselves of their only advantage by squandering the greater part of their force on the garrisoning of forts.

9.8. Next, whereas they ought to act in everything with caution and prudent reckoning, considering what manner of men the danger will be against, they advance to the contest boldly and heedlessly, as though they were invincible and as though we stood in terror of them. At any rate their trenchings, their riding up to our very camp, and their many insults in word and deed signify this.

9.9. Considering these things, then, and remembering your former contests, many and fine, in which you conquered them, march with zeal to this contest also; and let each of you regard the spot in which he is stationed as his home and his allotment and his country; and let him who saves his comrade reckon that he is working his own safety, and let him who deserts his neighbour hold that he is betraying himself to the enemy. But most of all it becomes you to remember this: that while men stand and fight, few are lost, but while they give way and flee, very few are saved.

10.1. While he was still speaking words that drew them on to noble conduct, and pouring forth many tears amid his discourse, and calling by name each of the centurions and officers and other soldiers to whom he was privy as having performed some splendid exploit in battle, and promising to give many great kindnesses to those who should prove themselves bravest in the battle, in proportion to the greatness of their deeds—honours and riches and other aids—shouts arose from them all, exhorting him to take courage and demanding to be led to the contest.

10.2. When he had ceased, there came forward from the multitude a man, Marcus Flavoleius by name, a plebeian and a tiller of the soil, yet not one of the despised, but of those praised for valour and stout in war, and for both these reasons adorned with the most splendid office of one of the legions—the office whose holder the law bids the sixty centuries follow and obey his commands. These commanders the Romans in their native tongue call primipili.

10.3. This man—who, besides his other qualities, was tall and fair to look upon—standing where he would be visible to all, said: Since this, consuls, is what you fear, that our deeds may not match our words, I first, for myself, will offer you the surest guarantee of my promise from the highest pledge; and you too, fellow citizens and partners in the same fortune, as many as have resolved to make your deeds equal to your words,

10.4. would not err in doing the same as I. So saying, and raising his sword, he swore the oath native to the Romans and most binding, by his own good faith, that he would return to the city having conquered the enemy, and not otherwise. When Flavoleius had sworn this oath, much praise arose from them all; and at once both consuls did the same, and so did the tribunes and centurions holding the lesser commands,

10.5. and finally the multitude. When this had been done, great cheerfulness fell upon them all, and great affection for one another, and courage too and spirit; and going from the assembly, some put bits on their horses, others whetted swords and spears, others wiped clean the coverings of their arms; and in a little while the whole army was ready for the contest.

10.6. The consuls, having invoked the gods with prayers and sacrifices and supplications to be their guides in the sortie, led the army out of the camp in order and array. And the Tyrrhenians, seeing them coming down from their strongholds, marvelled, and marched out against them with all their force.

11.1. When both sides had come into the plain, and the trumpets had sounded the charge, they ran together with a shout; and horse closing with horse and foot with foot, they fought, and much slaughter arose on both sides. Now those holding the Roman right wing, which the other consul Manlius commanded, drove back the part opposed to them, and dismounting from their horses fought on foot. But those posted on the left wing were being encircled by the enemy's right.

11.2. For the Tyrrhenian phalanx at this point overlapped and was by no little larger than the other. The Roman army here was being broken through and was receiving many wounds. This wing was led by Quintus Fabius, a legate and propraetor, who had twice been consul; and for a long time he held out, receiving wounds of every kind, until, struck in the breast by a spear whose point reached his vitals, drained of blood, he fell.

11.3. When the other consul, Marcus Fabius—he was stationed in the centre of the phalanx—heard this, taking the best of the companies and calling to him his other brother Caeso Fabius, he rode along his own phalanx, and advancing far, when he had passed beyond the enemy's right wing, drove against those who were doing the encircling. Falling upon them, he made much slaughter of those at close quarters and put to flight those in front, and finding his brother still breathing, he took him up.

11.4. He, indeed, surviving no long time, died; and those avenging him were possessed by still greater and fiercer spirit against the foe; and taking no further thought for their own lives, with a few they fell upon the most densely massed of the enemy and filled heaps with their dead. At this point, then, the Tyrrhenian phalanx

11.5. gave way, and those who had earlier pushed back the enemy were beaten off by the conquered. But those holding the left wing, now hard pressed and beginning to flee, turned those opposite to them. For someone, hurling a javelin, struck Manlius through the knee to the back of his thigh and drove the spear in; and those around him took him up and carried him off to the camp, while the enemy, thinking the Roman commander dead, took heart, and being reinforced by the others, pressed upon the Romans, who had no leader.

11.6. The Fabii were forced again to leave the left wing and come to the aid of the right; and the Tyrrhenians, learning that they were approaching with a strong band, turned aside from further pursuit, and closing up their companies, fought in order, and lost many of their own, but killed many of the Romans too.

12.1. While these things were happening, the Tyrrhenians who had seized the camp abandoned by Manlius, when a signal was raised from the headquarters, advancing with great speed and zeal, hastened toward the other camp of the Romans, as one not guarded by a worthy force. And their opinion was true; for, except the triarii and a few others in their prime, the rest of the multitude in it consisted of traders and servants and craftsmen. And there arose, with many crowded into a small space, a sharp and severe battle—for the fight was at the gates—and many dead on both sides.

12.2. In this action the consul, coming to the rescue along with the cavalry, when his horse fell, struck down with him and unable to rise from the multitude of his wounds, died, and many other brave young men around him. After this disaster the camp was at once taken, and the prophecies were fulfilled for the

12.3. Tyrrhenians. If, then, they had husbanded their present good fortune and kept the camp under guard, they would have held the Romans' baggage and forced them to depart in disgrace; but as it was, turning to plunder what had been left behind, and the greater part recovering their strength, they let a fine quarry slip from their hands. For when the capture of the camp was reported to the other consul, he hastened up with the best of the horse and foot.

12.4. And the Tyrrhenians, learning that he was coming on, ringed the camp about, and a sharp battle arose between them, the one party wishing to recover their own, the other fearing lest they be utterly destroyed if the camp were taken. As more time passed, and the Tyrrhenians had many advantages—for their battle was from higher ground and against men worn out by a whole day's labour—Titus Siccius, the legate and propraetor, communicating his thought to the consul, ordered the recall to be sounded, and

12.5. all to gather into one and assault a single side of the camp, where the place was most assailable; but the parts at the gates he left alone, by a certain probable reckoning, which did not deceive him: that the Tyrrhenians, hoping to save themselves, would let go of the camp, but, falling into despair of this when they were encircled on all sides by the enemy and no exit remained, would find courage in necessity.

12.6. The assault being made at one spot, the Tyrrhenians no longer turned to defence, but opening the gates, escaped to their own camp.

13.1. When the consul had repelled the danger, he again came to the aid of those in the plain. This is said to have been the greatest battle of any before it for the Romans, in number of men, length of time, and the swift changes of fortune. Of the Romans from the city itself the choicest and best in their prime amounted to about twenty thousand foot, and of the cavalry attached to the four legions about twelve hundred; and of colonists and allies as many again.

13.2. The time of the contest was drawn out, beginning a little before noon and lasting till sunset. The turns of fortune long remained swaying this way and that with victories and defeats; a consul perished, and a legate who had twice been consul, and many other commanders and officers and centurions, more than ever before. Yet the mastery of the contest seemed to belong to the Romans, for no other reason than that on the following night the Tyrrhenians abandoned their camp and decamped.

13.3. On the next day the Romans, turning to plunder the camp abandoned by the Tyrrhenians and burying their own dead, withdrew to their own camp. There, holding an assembly, they bestowed the prizes of valour on those who had fought brilliantly: first on Caeso Fabius, the consul's brother, who had performed great and wonderful deeds; second on Siccius, who had managed to recover the camp; third on Marcus Flavoleius, the commander of the legion, both for his oath and for his strength amid

13.4. the dangers. Having done this and remained a few days in the camp, since none of the enemy came out to fight, they departed homeward. When all in the city wished, as for a greatest contest brought to a fairest issue, to add the honour of a triumph for the surviving consul, the consul refused their favour, saying it was neither holy nor lawful, over a brother's death and a colleague's loss, to march in procession and wear the crown; and laying down the standards and dismissing the soldiers to their homes, he resigned the consulship, though two months still remained of the year's term, being unable any longer to carry out the duties of the office; for he was suffering grievously from a severe wound and was bedridden.

14.1. The senate having chosen interreges for the holding of elections, and the second interrex having summoned the centuries to the field, Caeso Fabius—who had won the prizes of valour from the battle, and was brother to the man who had resigned the office—was designated consul for the third time, and with him Titus Verginius. These men, having divided the forces by lot, marched out into the open field:

14.2. Fabius to make war on the Aequians, who were ravaging the lands of the Latins, Verginius against the Veientes. The Aequians, then, when they learned that an army was coming against them, rose up and quickly departed from the enemy's country into their own cities; and thereafter they endured the ravaging of their land, so that the consul gained much money and many persons and the rest of the booty at the first onset. The Veientes at first remained within their walls, but when they thought they had a fit opportunity, they fell upon the enemy who were scattered over the plains and turned to plundering the booty.

14.3. Having a large and well-ordered force, they charged them, recovered the booty, and of those who came to grips with them, some they slew, others they put to flight; and had not Titus Siccius, then a legate, come to the rescue with a well-ordered band of foot and horse and checked them, nothing would have prevented the whole army from being destroyed. But while he hindered them, the rest, scattered one by one, managed to come together; and all gathering in one place, they seized a hill toward late evening and remained there through the following night.

14.4. The Veientes, lifted up by their success, encamped near the hill, and called those in the city, on the ground that they had shut up the Romans in a place where they would have none of the necessities, and would soon force them to hand over their arms. And when a great throng had come, two armies of theirs formed about the assailable flanks of the hill, and many other smaller posts at the less critical points; and all was full

14.5. of arms. The other consul, Fabius, when letters came from his colleague and he learned that those shut up on the hill were in extremity and would be in danger, if no one came to their aid, of being taken by famine, roused his army and led it with speed against the Veientes; and had he accomplished the march one day later, he would have availed nothing, but would have found the army there destroyed. For, pressed by want of necessities, those holding the hill came out to choose the most seemly of deaths, and engaging the enemy fought, most of them worn out in body by hunger, thirst, sleeplessness, and the

14.6. other hardship. But not long after, when Fabius' army was seen approaching, numerous and well-ordered, it brought courage to their own and fear to the enemy; and the Tyrrhenians, no longer thinking themselves a match to engage a good and unwearied force, abandoned their camps and departed. When both Roman forces had come together, they made a great camp near the city in a strong position, and after spending many days there and ravaging the best of the Veientes' country, they led the army home.

14.7. When the Veientes learned that the Roman forces had been dismissed from the standards, they took up their light-armed youth—both their own ordered band and that which had come from their neighbours—and burst into the plains adjoining their own country, and plundered them, full as they were of crops and cattle and men. For the farmers had come down from the strongholds for the sake of fodder for their cattle and the working of the fields, trusting their own army posted before them, and not having time, when it departed, to gather their goods again, not expecting that the Veientes, so sorely afflicted, would make so swift a counter-attack upon their adversary.

14.8. This incursion of the Veientes into Roman territory was brief in length of time, but among the greatest in the extent of country it overran, and it caused the Romans grief together with an unwonted shame, reaching even the Tiber river and the Janiculan hill, not twenty stades distant from Rome. For there was no force under the standards to prevent the enemy from advancing further. At any rate, the Veientes' army got away before the Romans could assemble and be marshalled.

15.1. When the senate had thereafter been convened by the consuls and consideration was given how the war against the Veientes should be carried on, the prevailing opinion was to keep a standing army on the frontiers, to guard the country by bivouacking in the open and remaining always under arms. But they were troubled both by the very heavy expense the garrisons would entail—the public treasury being exhausted by the continual campaigns and private fortunes worn out by the levies—and still more by how the enrolment of the garrisons to be sent out should be made, since no one would volunteer when all alike were liable, and to endure toil not by turns but continuously.

15.2. While the senate was perplexed on both these counts, the two Fabii, calling together those of their clan and taking counsel with them, promised the senate that they themselves would willingly undertake this hazard on behalf of all, bringing their own clients and friends, and serving at their own expense for as long as the war should last.

15.3. When all admired the nobility of their zeal and reckoned the victory as good as won by this single deed, they, famous and renowned throughout the whole city, took up their arms and marched out with prayers and sacrifices. They were led by Marcus Fabius, who had been consul the year before and had defeated the Tyrrhenians in battle, bringing with him about four thousand men, the greater part of whom were clients and companions, and of the Fabian clan itself three hundred and six men. Not long after, there followed them the Roman force as well, led by Caeso Fabius, the other consul.

15.4. Coming near the river Cremera, which is not far from the city of the Veientes, they built upon a steep and precipitous height a fort large enough to be guarded by so great an army, digging double trenches around it and raising close-set towers; and the fort was named, from the river, Cremera. As many hands were at work and the consul lent his aid,

15.5. the work was finished sooner than one would have expected. After this he led his force out and passed over to the other parts of the Veientes' country, turned toward the rest of Tyrrhenia, where the Veientes' cattle were, since they never expected a Roman army to come there. Gathering much booty, he led it back to the newly built fort, rejoicing at his quarry on both counts—both for the swift vengeance taken on the enemy, and because he was about to furnish the garrison of the place with much abundance. For he carried nothing of it to the public treasury, nor distributed any of it to the soldiers, but gave the sheep and beasts of burden and yokes of oxen and iron and everything else useful for husbandry to those patrolling the country.

15.6. Having done this, he led the army home. After the fortification of the place, the Veientes' affairs went very badly, since they could neither till their land in safety nor receive provisions imported from abroad.

15.7. For the Fabii, dividing their force into four parts, with one guarded the fort, and with the other three continually plundered and ravaged the enemy's country; and often, when the Veientes openly attacked them with no small force, or sought to draw them into places held by ambushes, they got the better in both cases, and after making many of them dead, withdrew safely to the place. So that the enemy no longer dared to come to grips with them, but for the most part remained behind their walls and continually watched for chances to steal out. So that winter ended.

16.1. In the following year, when Lucius Aemilius and Gaius Servilius had assumed the consulship, word was brought to the Romans that the Volscians and Aequians had made a compact to lead out armies against them at the same time, and would soon invade their territory; and the report was true. For sooner than anyone expected, both peoples, with their forces, were ravaging the country each in his own quarter, on the supposition that the Romans would not be able both to withstand the Tyrrhenian war and to receive them as they attacked.

16.2. Others again came reporting that all Tyrrhenia had taken up arms against them and was prepared to send a common force to aid the Veientes. For the Veientes, unable to dislodge the fort by themselves, had taken refuge with them, reminding them of kinship and friendship and recounting all the wars they had waged in their company; and in return for all this they asked them to join in the war against the Romans, on the ground that they were standing as a bulwark before all Tyrrhenia and were holding back the war that flowed from Rome against all men of their race. And the Tyrrhenians, persuaded, promised to send them

16.3. as large a force as they asked. The senate, learning of this, voted to send out three armies; and when the levies had been quickly made, Lucius Aemilius was sent against the Tyrrhenians. There joined him in the expedition Caeso Fabius, who had lately laid down his office, having asked the senate to permit him to be with his kinsmen at Cremera, whom his brother had led out to garrison the place, and to share in the same struggles; and he went out, adorned with proconsular authority, along with his men.

16.4. Gaius Servilius, the other consul, made war on the Volscians; and Servius Furius, as proconsul, on the Aequian nation. To each of them followed two legions of Romans, and of Latins and Hernicans and the other allies a force not smaller than the Roman. To the proconsul Servius, then, the war went according to his wish and with speed; for in a single battle, and that without difficulty, he routed the Aequians, terrifying the enemy by his first onset, and thereafter ravaged their land, they having fled to their strongholds.

16.5. But to Servilius, the other consul, who had advanced to the contest with haste and rashness, much befell contrary to his expectation, the Volscians resisting very stoutly; so that, having lost many brave men, he was forced no longer to close with the enemy, but, remaining in his camp, to carry on the war by skirmishes and encounters of light-armed troops.

16.6. Lucius Aemilius, who had been sent against the Tyrrhenians, finding the Veientes encamped before the city, and with them much auxiliary force from their countrymen, delayed no longer but set to work; and on the day after he pitched camp he led his forces out to battle, the Veientes coming to grips with much boldness. When the contest was evenly balanced, he took the cavalry and charged the enemy on the right wing, and when he had shaken it, passed to the other, fighting from horseback where the ground was suitable for cavalry, and where it was not, dismounting and fighting on foot. When both wings were hard pressed, those in the centre no longer held out, but were driven back by the foot, and after this all fled to their camp.

16.7. Aemilius followed the fleeing, keeping his force in order, and destroyed many. Coming near the camp and assaulting it in relays, he remained both that day and the following night, and on the next day, when the enemy were worn out by toil and wounds and sleeplessness, he made himself master of the camp. The Tyrrhenians, when they saw the Romans already mounting the palisades, abandoned the camp and fled, some into the city, others to the neighbouring mountains.

16.8. That day, then, the consul remained in the enemy's camp; on the next, having crowned those who had fought best with the most distinguished gifts, he bestowed upon the soldiers all that had been left in the camp—beasts of burden and slaves and tents full of many good things. And the Roman army came into great abundance, as from no other battle ever; for the Tyrrhenian nation was luxurious and lavish, both at home and in the field, carrying about, beyond their necessities, works of wealth and art of every kind, contrived for pleasure and luxury.

17.1. On the following days the Veientes, now worn out by their misfortunes, sent the eldest of their citizens, bearing suppliant-boughs, to the consul to treat for peace. And these men, lamenting and entreating and recounting with many tears all that was apt to move pity, persuaded the consul to permit them to send envoys to Rome to treat with the senate concerning the ending of the war, and, until the envoys should return with the answers, to do no harm to their country. And that they might be allowed to do this, they agreed to furnish the Roman army with grain for two months, and money for the pay of

17.2. six months, as the victor required. The consul, taking what was brought and distributing it to the army, made the truce with them. The senate, having heard the embassy and read the consul's letters—in which he made much exhortation and urged them to lay aside the war against the Tyrrhenians as quickly as possible—issued a decree to grant peace, as the enemy asked; but on what just terms it should be made, the consul Lucius Aemilius was to determine, as should

17.3. seem best to him. Having received these answers, the consul made a treaty with the Veientes, granting a peace more lenient than profitable to the victors, neither cutting off any of their land, nor imposing any further fine in money, nor confirming the agreements by the giving of hostages.

17.4. This brought him great ill-will and was the cause of his not receiving from the senate the thanks for his successes. For they opposed him when he asked for a triumph, charging him with arrogance in the terms, since he had made them not with the common consent. But that he might not take the matter as an insult or in anger, they voted that he should lead his force against the Volscians, to aid his colleague, in the hope that, if he could set right the war there—for there was much manliness in him—he might wipe out

17.5. their anger over his former errors. The man, vexed at the dishonour, made a great accusation of the senate before the people, as though it were displeased that the war against the Tyrrhenians had been ended. He said they did this out of design and contempt for the poor, that the latter, freed from foreign wars, might not demand the promises concerning the land-allotment, with which they had now for many years been cheated by them. Having said this and much like it, and in unrestrained anger heaped reproaches upon the patricians, he dismissed from the standards the force that had campaigned with him, and sending for that which was tarrying with Furius the proconsul among the Aequians, he discharged it to their homes; whereby he again gave the tribunes much license to accuse the senators in the assemblies and to set the poor at variance with the well-to-do.

18.1. After these men, Gaius Horatius and Titus Menenius took up the consulship, in the seventy-sixth Olympiad, in which Scamander of Mitylene won the stadium-race, Phaedon being archon at Athens. To these men at first the civic tumult was an obstacle to managing public affairs, the people being roused and allowing nothing else of the common business to be carried out until the public land should be divided; but in time the disturbing and tumultuous elements yielded, giving way to necessity, and came willingly to the campaigns.

18.2. For of the Tyrrhenians the eleven cities that had not shared in the peace held a common assembly and accused the Veientine nation of having ended the war against the Romans without the common consent, and demanded that they do one of two things: either break the agreements made with the Romans

18.3. or join with them in war against them. The Veientes pleaded the necessity of the peace, but submitted to common deliberation how they might dissolve it with decency. Then someone proposed to them to make a complaint of the fortification of Cremera and the refusal of the garrison to withdraw from it; first to demand by word that they leave the place, and, if they would not persuade them, to besiege the fort and make this the beginning of the war.

18.4. Having agreed to this, they departed from the gathering; and not long after, the Veientes, sending an embassy to the Fabii, demanded the fort of them, and all Tyrrhenia was in arms. The Romans, perceiving this from the Fabii's dispatches, resolved that both consuls go out to the war, the one bringing on them from Tyrrhenia, the other still standing against the Volscians.

18.5. Horatius, then, leading two legions and a sufficient number from the other allies, led his force against the Volscians; and Menenius, leading an equal force against the Tyrrhenians, was about to make his sortie. While he was preparing and wasting time, the fort at Cremera was taken by the enemy before he could come, and the whole Fabian clan was destroyed. Concerning the disaster that overtook these men a twofold account is given, the one less plausible, the other coming nearer the truth. I will set down both, as I received them.

19.1. Some, then, say that when an ancestral sacrifice was due, which the Fabian clan had to perform, the men went out, bringing a few clients to the rites, and proceeded without scouting the roads or marching in companies under standards, but carelessly and unguardedly, as travelling in peace and through a friendly land.

19.2. The Tyrrhenians, knowing of their departure beforehand, laid an ambush in a part of the road with a portion of their army, and with the rest of their force in order followed not long after. When the Fabii drew near the ambushes, the Tyrrhenians, rising from the ambush, fell upon them, some in front, some from the flanks, and not long after the rest of the Tyrrhenian force attacked from behind; and surrounding them on every side, some with slings, some with bows, some with javelins and spears, by the multitude of their missiles they overcame them all.

19.3. This account, then, seems to me the less plausible. For it is not likely that men under the standards, so many in number, should return to the city from camp for the sake of a sacrifice without a decree of the senate, since the rites could have been performed by others sharing in the same clan but advanced in years; nor, even if all had departed from the city and no part of the Fabian clan was left at the hearth, was it likely that all those holding the fort would abandon its guard; for even three or four, coming, would have sufficed to perform the rites for the whole clan. For these reasons, then, the account did not seem to me trustworthy.

20.1. The other, which I consider truer concerning the destruction of the men and the capture of the fort, is somewhat as follows. As the men often went out for forage, and, because of their success in their ventures, kept advancing continually farther, the Tyrrhenians, having got ready a large army, encamped in the nearest places, unseen by the enemy. Then, sending out from those places flocks and herds and droves of grazing horses to pasture, in word, they enticed the men to these; and the men, going out, seized the herdsmen and drove off the

20.2. cattle. The Tyrrhenians, doing this continually and drawing the enemy ever farther from the fort, when they had destroyed their caution about safety by luring them with continual gains, set ambushes in the strategic places by night, and others seized the higher lookouts of the plains; and on the next day, having sent ahead a few armed men, as if to guard the herdsmen, they sent out many herds from the places.

20.3. When it was reported to the Fabii that, having crossed the nearby hills, they would in a little while find the plain full of all kinds of beasts, and the force guarding them not sufficient, they went out from the fort, leaving a sufficient guard in it; and accomplishing the march with haste and zeal, they appeared in order before the guards of the cattle; and these, not awaiting them, fled. The Fabii, supposing themselves in safety, seized the herdsmen and drove off the cattle.

20.4. Meanwhile the Tyrrhenians, rising from the ambush, fell upon them from every side at many points. And the greater part of the Romans, scattered and unable to aid one another, perished there. But as many as were in a body, eager to seize some safe position and pressing toward the mountains, fell into another ambush lying in wait in woods and glens. A fierce battle ensued, with much slaughter on both sides. They nonetheless drove off these too, and filling the ravine with dead, ran up to a hill not easy to take; on which, in want of necessities, they passed the following night.

21.1. On the next day, when those holding the fort learned the fortune that had befallen their countrymen—that the greater part of the army had perished in the plundering, while the best part was besieged, shut up on a deserted hill, and unless some swift aid came to them, would be destroyed for want of necessities—they went out in haste, leaving very few guards in the fort. And the Tyrrhenians, before they could join the others, ran down upon them from the places and encircled them, and after they had performed many noble exploits, in time destroyed them all.

21.2. Not long after, those who had seized the hill, pressed by hunger and thirst, resolved to close with the enemy; and joining battle, few against many, they fought from dawn till night, and made such slaughter of the enemy that the heaps of the dead, poured out in many places, were a hindrance to them in the fighting. The Tyrrhenians, having lost more than a third of their army and fearing for the rest, raised their arms a little and through their recall-signals made overtures to the men, promising them amnesty and a passage out, if they would lay down their arms and abandon the fort.

21.3. When the men did not accept the offers, but chose a noble death, they came against them again in relays, no longer fighting hand to hand in close combat, but throwing from afar in a mass with spears and stones, and the multitude of missiles was like a snowstorm. The Romans, rallying by companies, charged them as they would not stand their ground, and, receiving many wounds from those around them, held out.

21.4. When the swords of many were useless—some blunted at the edge, others broken—and the rims of their shields about the boss were shattered, and most were drained of blood and pierced with missiles and palsied in their limbs from the multitude of wounds, the Tyrrhenians, holding them in contempt, came to close quarters; and the Romans, falling upon them like wild beasts, seized their spears and broke them, and grasped their swords by the edges and tore them away, and rolling their bodies to the ground grappled them, contending more by spirit than by strength.

21.5. So that the enemy no longer came to grips with them, dismayed at the endurance of the men and dreading the desperate frenzy they had taken on in their despair of life; but standing off, they again threw in a mass with sticks and stones and whatever else came to hand, and at last buried them under the multitude of missiles. Having destroyed the men, they ran to the fort, carrying the heads of the most distinguished,

21.6. expecting to take by assault those within. But the deed did not turn out for them according to their hope; for those left in it, emulating the noble death of their comrades and kinsmen, came out, few though they were in all, and after fighting a long time, were all destroyed in the same manner as the others; and the place, now deserted, the Tyrrhenians took over. To me this account seemed far more credible than the former; and both are found in worthy Roman writings.

22.1. What is joined to these by certain writers, being neither true nor plausible, but fashioned by the multitude out of some misheard report, deserves not to be left unexamined. For some say that, when the three hundred and six Fabii had perished, one only child of the clan was left—introducing a thing not only implausible but even

22.2. impossible. For it was not possible that all the Fabii who went out to the fort should be childless and unmarried. For their ancient law compelled those of age to marry, and to rear all their offspring of necessity; and this law the Fabii alone, surely, would not have dissolved, when it had been observed by their fathers down to their own age.

22.3. And even if one should grant this, yet that other thing one could not concede: that none of them had brothers still of a boy's age. For these things resemble fables and theatrical fictions. And their fathers, as many as were still of age to beget children, when such desolation had seized the clan, would they not, willing and unwilling, have begotten other children, that neither the ancestral rites should be left undone nor so great a glory of the clan be destroyed?

22.4. Unless, indeed, no fathers were left to any of them either, but everything impossible came together in the case of those three hundred and six men: that no infant children were left to them, no pregnant wives, no boy brothers, no fathers in their prime. Examining the account in this way, I have judged it untrue,

22.5. but the other true: that of the three brothers, Caeso and Quintus and Marcus, who held the seven consecutive consulships, a child was left to Marcus, and that this is what is meant by the survivor of the house of the Fabii.

22.6. Nothing prevents the opinion arising among the many that he alone was the survivor of the Fabian clan—when no other of the rest became distinguished and illustrious besides this one man grown to manhood—not because there was no other, but because there was no other like those, judging kinship by valour, not by nature. And concerning these matters this is enough.

23.1. The Tyrrhenians, then, having destroyed the men and taken over the fort at Cremera, led their forces against the rest of the Roman army. The other consul, Menenius, happened to be encamped not far off, in no safe place; and when the Fabian kinsmen and their clients were perishing, he was some thirty stades distant from the spot where the disaster occurred, and he gave not a few the impression that, knowing in what evils the Fabii were, he took no thought of them, out of envy of the valour and

23.2. glory of the men. Therefore afterward, being brought to trial by the tribunes chiefly on this charge, he was condemned. For the city of the Romans grieved exceedingly at being shorn of the valour of so many and such men, and was bitter and implacable toward whatever seemed to have been the cause of so great a calamity; and that day on which the disaster occurred it made black and accursed, and would begin no good work on it, dreading the fortune that had then befallen it.

23.3. When the Tyrrhenians came near the Romans, observing their camp—it lay under the flank of a mountain—they despised the general's inexperience and gladly took the advantage fortune gave them. At once, taking their cavalry, they went up the other side of the hill, none hindering, to the summit; and seizing the crest overhanging the Romans, they laid down their arms there, and bringing up the rest of their force in safety, fortified the camp with a high rampart and a deep ditch.

23.4. If, then, Menenius, perceiving what an advantage he had given the enemy, had repented his error and led the army to a safer place, he would have been wise; but as it was, taking it as a disgrace to seem to have erred and clinging to his stubbornness against those who would set him right, he fell a fall worthy of shame.

23.5. For inasmuch as the enemy, making their sorties from the higher ground each time, had many advantages—snatching the provisions brought to the Romans by the traders, and attacking those who went out for fodder or water—it came about that the consul was master neither of the time in which he was to fight nor of the place, which seem great charges against commanders inexperienced in generalship; while to the Tyrrhenians both these were

23.6. as they wished. Not even then did Menenius endure to remove his army, but leading it out he drew it up as for battle, despising those who suggested what was profitable. And the Tyrrhenians, reckoning the general's folly a great piece of good fortune, came down from their camp, being not less than double the enemy.

23.7. When they joined battle, there was much slaughter of the Romans, who could not keep their order. For the Tyrrhenians thrust them back, having the nature of the ground as their ally and aided by the great weight of those posted behind—for they were drawn up in depth. And when the most distinguished centurions had fallen, the rest of the Roman force gave way and fled to the camp; and the enemy followed, took their standards, seized their wounded, and became masters of the dead. And

23.8. shutting them up to a siege and making many assaults through the rest of the day, and not even letting up at night, they took the camp, those within abandoning it, and became masters of many persons and much property; for the fugitives had no power to carry off their goods, but were glad to save their very bodies, and many did not even keep their arms.

24.1. Those in Rome, learning of the destruction of their men and the capture of the camp—for the first who escaped from the rout came while it was still deep night—fell into great alarm, as was natural; and as though the enemy would presently be upon them, snatching up their arms, some manned the walls, others drew up before the gates, and others seized the heights of the city.

24.2. There was disorderly running throughout the whole city and confused shouting, and on the roofs of the houses the household throng stood ready for defence and contest, and continual fires, as it was night and that a dark one, were raised from torches and from the roofs in such numbers that to those watching from afar the glare seemed continuous and gave the impression of a city in flames.

24.3. And if then the Tyrrhenians, disregarding the spoils of the camp, had followed the fugitives hard on foot, the whole force that had marched against them would have been destroyed; but as it was, turning to plunder what had been left in the camp and giving their bodies rest, they robbed themselves of a great boast. On the following day, leading their forces against Rome and being some sixteen stades distant, they seized the mountain from which Rome is in full view, called the Janiculum; from which, setting out, they plundered and ravaged the Roman territory unhindered, in great contempt of those within, until the other consul, Horatius, arrived, leading the force from among the Volscians.

24.4. Then indeed the Romans, thinking themselves in safety, armed the youth in the city and went out into the field. When they had fought the first battle eight stades from the city by the temple of Hope, and conquered and beaten off those opposed to them, and after this, when the Tyrrhenians again came on with a larger force, fought brilliantly by the gates called Colline, they took breath from their fear, and that year came to an end.

25.1. In the following year, about the summer solstice in the month Sextilis, men experienced in war assumed the consulship, Servius Servilius and Aulus Verginius, to whom the war against the Tyrrhenians, great and difficult though it was, appeared golden when set beside that within the walls. For since the land had been left unsown the past winter, owing to the fortification of the nearby mountain and the continual raids, and since not even the traders any longer brought in provisions from abroad, a severe scarcity of grain seized Rome, full as it was of throngs both native and

25.2. gathered from the fields. For of citizens in their prime there were above one hundred and ten thousand, as was found by the latest census; and of women and children and household servants, and of traders and resident aliens engaged in mechanical trades—for it was lawful to no Roman to lead the life of a retailer or craftsman—there were not less than three times the number of the citizen body; whom it was not easy to appease as they raged at their plight and ran together into the forum and cried out against the magistrates, and pressed in throngs to the houses of the rich and tried to plunder, without purchase, the food stored up by them.

25.3. The tribunes, gathering them into assembly and accusing the patricians of always contriving some evil against the poor, and calling all the terrible things that ever befell through fortune, which is inscrutable and unguarded against by men, the deeds of those men,

25.4. made them bitter and insolent. Beset by such evils, the consuls sent men to buy grain in concert from the nearby places with much money, and ordered those who had laid up in their houses more than a moderate amount for their own living to bring it to the public store, fixing a fair price. By these and many other such contrivances they checked the lawless acts of the poor and gained a respite to prepare for the war.

26.1. When the provisions from abroad were slow in coming, and all the food within the walls had been consumed, and there was no other escape from these evils, but one of two things had to be done—either to drive the enemy from the country with all their force at all hazards, or, remaining within the walls, to be destroyed by famine and faction—choosing the lighter of the evils, they resolved to face the dangers from the enemy.

26.2. Leading their forces out of the city about midnight, they crossed the river on rafts and, before broad day, encamped near the enemy. On the next day, coming forth, they drew up the army as for battle. Verginius held the right wing, Servilius the left.

26.3. When the Tyrrhenians saw them ready for the contest, they rejoiced greatly, thinking that by this single hazard, if it went according to their wish, they would overthrow the Roman dominion, knowing that all that was bravest of their soldiery had set out for that contest, and having a hope in which there was much rashness, that they would easily master them, since they had defeated the force under Menenius drawn up against them in difficult ground. A stout and long battle ensued, and having killed many of the Romans, but lost far more of their own, they withdrew step by step to their camp.

26.4. Verginius, holding the right wing, did not allow his men to pursue, but to remain at their success; but Servilius, posted on the other wing, pursued those opposed to him, following far. When he had got into the heights, the Tyrrhenians turned about, and with those who came to aid from the camp, charged them. The Romans, holding out a little while, turned their backs, and being pursued down the hill, perished scattered.

26.5. Verginius, learning in what fortunes the army holding the left wing was, with all his force in order led a flanking march through the mountain. Coming behind those who were pursuing his men, he left a part of the army there to hinder those coming to aid from the camp, and himself, leading the rest, bore down on the enemy. Meanwhile those with Servilius, encouraged by the presence of their own, turned about and, standing firm, fought. Encircled by both, the Tyrrhenians, able neither to break through forward because of those engaging them, nor to flee back to the camp because of those coming on behind, were—not unmanfully

26.6. but unluckily—for the most part cut down. The Romans having won a pitiable victory, and the contest having taken an issue not wholly fortunate, the consuls encamped before their dead and bivouacked the following night; while the Tyrrhenians holding the Janiculum, since no aid came from home, resolved to abandon the fort, and decamping by night, departed to the city of the Veientes, lying nearest to them of the Tyrrhenian cities.

26.7. The Romans, having mastered their camp, plundered all the property that was left, being impossible to carry off in flight, and took many wounded prisoners, some left behind in the tents, others strewn along the whole road.

26.8. For some clung to the road home, eager to reach it, and held out following beyond their strength; then, their limbs growing heavy, half-dead they sank to the ground; whom the Roman horsemen, advancing far along the road, took up. And when there was no longer any enemy, having pulled down the fort and bringing the spoils, they came to the city, carrying the bodies of those who had died in the battle—a pitiable sight to all the citizens, because of the number

26.9. and valour of the dead. So that the people thought it fitting neither to feast as having won a fine contest, nor to mourn as over a great and irremediable calamity; and the senate voted the necessary sacrifices to the gods, but did not permit the consuls to make the triumphal procession of victory. Not many days after, the city was filled with provisions of every kind, both from those sent at public charge and from the usual traders who brought in much grain, so that all came into their former plenty.

27.1. When the wars in the field were ended, the civic strife was again kindled, the tribunes once more stirring up the multitude; and the other measures of theirs the patricians scattered, opposing each one; but the trial of Menenius, the recently retired consul, though they took much pains, they were unable to dissolve.

27.2. But the man, brought to trial by two tribunes, Quintus Considius and Titus Genucius, and called to account for his conduct of the war, which had taken an issue neither fortunate nor seemly, but being chiefly attacked over the destruction of the Fabii and the capture of Cremera, was, when the plebeian throng judged by tribes, condemned by no few votes—he being the son of Agrippa Menenius, who had brought the people back from their secession and reconciled them to the patricians; whom, when he died, the senate honoured with a most splendid burial from the public funds, and the women of the Romans mourned for a year, laying aside purple and gold.

27.3. Yet those who condemned him did not assess his penalty at death, but at a fine, which, examined against present-day fortunes, would appear ridiculous, but to the men of that time, who tilled their own soil and lived on bare necessities, and especially to that man, who had inherited poverty from his father, was severe and grievous: the number of two thousand asses. The as at that time was a copper coin weighing a pound, so that the whole fine amounted, in weight of copper, to sixteen talents.

27.4. And this appeared invidious to the men of that time, and wishing to amend it, they did away with money fines and transferred them to fines of sheep and oxen, fixing the number of these too for the future impositions to be laid by the magistrates on private persons. From the condemnation of Menenius the patricians again took occasion for their anger against the plebeians, and no longer permitted the land-allotment to be carried out for him,

27.5. nor wished to yield anything soft. Not long after, the people too repented of their judgment, when they learned of the man's end; for he no longer came into the company of men, nor was seen by anyone in any public place, and though it was open to him, by paying the fine, to be excluded from none of the new measures—for not a few of his friends were ready to count out his fine—he would not accept it, but assessing his calamity at death, remaining at home and admitting no one, he wasted away through despondency and abstinence from food and departed from life. Such, then, were the things done in this year.

28.1. When Publius Valerius Publicola and Gaius Nautius had assumed office, another of the patricians, Servius Servilius, who had been consul the year before, was, not long after laying down his office, brought to a trial for his life. Those who set the trial before the people were two of the tribunes, Lucius Caedicius and Titus Statius, demanding an account not of any crime but of fortune—because in the battle against the Tyrrhenians the man had thrust toward the enemy's camp more boldly than prudently, and had been pursued by those within who sallied out in a body, and had lost the best of the youth.

28.2. This trial appeared to all the patricians most grievous, and they were indignant, gathering together with one another, and deemed it monstrous, if those who did not stand amid dangers should bring to accusation the daring of generals and their refusal to shrink from any peril, in case the divine power should oppose their designs; and they reckoned, with reason, that such trials would be the cause of cowardice and shrinking and unwillingness in commanders to undertake anything new, whereby freedom is destroyed and dominion overthrown.

28.3. And they made much entreaty of the plebeians not to condemn the man at his trial, teaching them that they would greatly harm the city by punishing their generals for misfortunes.

28.4. When the time of the trial came, one of the tribunes, Lucius Caedicius, came forward and accused the man, that through folly and inexperience in generalship, leading the forces into manifest destruction, he had lost the best flower of the city, and that, had not swift knowledge of the disaster come to his colleague, who, leading his forces in haste, both checked the enemy and saved his own men, nothing would have prevented the whole other force from perishing, and the city for the future being half instead of double.

28.5. Having said this, he brought forward as witnesses such centurions as survived, and some of the other soldiers, who, seeking to clear their own disgrace at the defeat and flight, accused the general of the ill-luck in the contest. Then, pouring out much pity over the calamity of those who had then died and magnifying the dreadful thing, and recounting from much arrogance all the other things commonly said against the patricians to rouse ill-will, which were apt to deter those who would plead for the man, he gave over the speech.

29.1. Taking up the defence, Servilius said: If, fellow citizens, you have called me to trial and demand an account of my generalship, I am ready to make my defence; but if to a punishment already decided, and there will be no profit to me in showing that I do you no wrong, take my body, which long since you wish, and use it.

29.2. For to me it is better to die untried than, having got a hearing and not persuaded you, to perish; for I should seem to suffer justly whatever you condemn me to, and you will be less to blame for having robbed me of my speech and, while it is unclear whether I do you any wrong, indulged your anger still further. Your mind toward me will be plain from your hearing, as I conjecture from your tumult or silence, whether you have called me to punishment or to trial.

29.3. So saying, he stopped; and when silence followed and most cried out to him to take courage and say what he wished, he took up the speech again and said: But if, fellow citizens, I shall find in you judges and not enemies, I think I shall easily persuade you that I do no wrong. I will make the beginning of my speech from what you all know. I came to office with the excellent Verginius, at the time when the Tyrrhenians, having fortified against you the hill above the city, were masters of all the open country, and were in hope of overthrowing our dominion

29.4. quickly. There was great famine in the city, and faction, and helplessness as to what should be done. Confronting such times, so troubled and fearful, I, along with my colleague, conquered the enemy in two battles and forced them to abandon the fort and depart; and the famine I soon ended, filling the markets with abundant food; and to the consuls after me I handed over the country free of hostile arms, and the city sound of every civic disease, into which the demagogues had cast it.

29.5. Of what crime, then, am I answerable to you? Unless to conquer the enemy is to wrong you. If it befell some of the soldiers to die in the battle while fighting successfully, how does Servilius wrong the people? For surely no one of the gods becomes a surety to generals for the lives of all who fight, nor do we take up commands on fixed and stated terms, so as to master all the enemy and lose none of our own. For what man could endure to take upon himself all that belongs to judgment and all that belongs to fortune? But great deeds we ever purchase at the price of great dangers.

30.1. And it was not to me first, coming to grips with enemies, that this befell, but to all, one may say, who fought desperate battles with their own smaller forces against the larger forces of their foes. For some have already pursued enemies and themselves fled, and killed many of their adversaries and

30.2. lost still more of their own. I forbear to say that many, utterly defeated, returned with shame and great loss, and not one of these paid the penalty to fortune; for the calamity is enough, and to win no praise, if nothing else, is a great and grievous penalty to commanders. Yet so far am I from saying what all moderate men will call just—that I ought not to undergo an examination of fortune—that even if no one else had endured to enter such a contest, I alone do not beg off, but agree that my fortune be examined no less than my judgment, having first declared this:

30.3. I see that human actions, both unfortunate and fortunate, are judged not from the particular deeds, which are many and various, but from the end; and when this turns out according to one's wish, even if the things between, being many, do not happen pleasantly, I hear them nonetheless praised by all and emulated and reckoned of good fortune; but when they take wretched ends, even if everything before the end goes most easily, men assign them not to the good fortune of

30.4. the doers but to the bad. Keeping this aim before you, examine my fortune too, which I have used in the wars. And if you find me defeated by the enemy, call my fortune bad; but if victorious over my foes, good. Concerning fortune, then, not ignorant that all who speak of it are tedious, though I have still more to say, I will cease.

31.1. Since they accuse me also of judgment—not daring to charge me with treason or unmanliness, the grounds on which trials of other generals take place, but with inexperience in generalship and folly, because I underwent an unnecessary danger in thrusting toward the enemy's camp—I wish to give you an account of this too, having this readiest to say: that to censure what has been done is very easy and within any man's power, but to hazard fine undertakings is hard and the part of few; and that things future are not, like things past, manifest in their nature, but the past we apprehend by sense and experience, the future we conjecture by divinations and opinions, in which there is much that is deceptive; and that it is easiest of all things to conduct wars in word, standing outside the danger,

31.2. which is what my accusers do. But to let these go, come, in the gods' name, tell me: do I appear to you the only or the first to have attacked a fort, leading my forces against high ground? Or have I done so along with many others of your generals, some of whom succeeded, while for others the attempt did not turn out as they wished? Why then, leaving the rest aside, do you judge me, if you reckon these the deeds of bad generalship and folly? And how many other things bolder than this it falls to commanders to do, when the occasion least admits of the safe and calculated course?

31.3. Some have snatched their own standards and hurled them among the enemy, that to the slack and cowardly courage might come of necessity, knowing that those who did not recover the standards must by their generals' order die in disgrace; others, having invaded the enemy's country, broke up the bridges of the rivers they had crossed, that to those minded to flee the hope of safety, appearing impossible, might give courage and spirit in the battles; others, having burned their tents and baggage, laid necessity on their men to take from the enemy's country whatever they needed.

31.4. I forbear to tell the rest, which are countless, and all the bold deeds and devices of other generals we have learned of by history and experience, for which none of those disappointed of their hope ever paid the penalty. Unless, indeed, one of you can charge me with having thrust the others forward into manifest destruction while keeping my own body out of danger. But if I was reckoned among them all, and departed last, and shared the same fortune with the rest, what wrong do I do? Concerning myself, then, let this be enough.

32.1. Concerning the senate and the patricians, since your common hatred, which you hold because of the land-allotment that was prevented, grieves me too, and the accuser did not conceal it but made it no small part of his accusation, I wish to say a few words to you.

32.2. The speech will be with frankness; for otherwise I could not speak, nor is it profitable for you to hear. You do neither justly nor piously, plebeians, in feeling no gratitude to the senate for the benefits you have got from it, many and great as they are, and, if in some matter you asked of it something which, conceded, would greatly harm the commonwealth, and it opposed you—not from envy, but seeing the city's advantage—you take this in anger.

32.3. You ought rather to have desisted from your eagerness, regarding its counsels as made from the best motives and for the good of all; or, if you were unable to restrain an unprofitable desire by prudent reckoning, to demand the same things with persuasion,

32.4. not with force. For voluntary gifts are pleasanter both to those who give than constrained ones, and surer to those who receive than such as are not. But this, by the gods, you do not reckon; rather, by the demagogues—as the sea by the winds rising now from one quarter, now another—stirred up and made savage, you do not allow the city to lie even the briefest time in quiet and calm. Therefore it has come about that we hold war better than peace; for when we war, we do ill to our enemies, but when we keep peace, to our friends. And yet, plebeians, if you hold all the counsels of the council fine and profitable, as they are, why do you not suppose

32.5. this one too to be among them? But if you think the senate has not a single right thought, but governs the city shamefully and badly, why then do you not, removing it altogether, yourselves rule and deliberate and wage the wars for dominion, instead of nibbling at it and dissolving it piecemeal by snatching off the most distinguished in your trials? For it were better for all of us to be warred upon in common than

32.6. for each one singly to be falsely accused in private. But it is not you who are the cause of this, as I said, but the demagogues who throw you into confusion, neither enduring to be ruled nor knowing how to rule. And so far as depended on their folly and inexperience, this vessel of ours would often have capsized; but as it is, that which corrects their errors and provides you a city sailing upright is the very senate that hears the most evil from them.

32.7. These things, whether pleasant for you to hear or grievous, I have spoken with all truth and boldly; and I would rather, using frankness profitable to the commonwealth, die, than, speaking to your pleasure, be saved.

33.1. Having spoken such words, and neither turning to lamentations and wailings over his calamity, nor appearing abject in entreaties and unseemly grovelings, nor displaying any other ignoble disposition, he gave over the speech to those who wished to plead or testify for him. Many others, then, coming forward, sought to clear him of the charge, and most of all Verginius, who had been consul at the same time and was thought to be the cause of the victory; who not only declared him guiltless, but thought he ought to be praised and honoured by all as the best of men in war and the most prudent of generals.

33.2. He said they ought, if they judged the war to have taken a good issue, to feel gratitude to both of them; but if a bad one, to punish both; for their counsels and deeds and the fortunes from the divine power had been common to them. And not only the man's speech but his life too carried conviction, being tested in all good deeds.

33.3. There was added to this, what most moved pity, a sympathetic cast of countenance, such as is wont to appear about those who have suffered or are about to suffer dreadful things. So that even the kinsmen of the dead, who seemed implacable toward the cause of their calamity, became softer and laid aside their anger, as they showed; for when the votes were given out, no tribe condemned the man. Thus, then, the danger that overtook Servilius came to such an end.

34.1. Not long after, a Roman army went out against the Tyrrhenians, led by one of the consuls, Publius Valerius. For the Veientine force had again gathered, the Sabines having joined them—who, until then shrinking from joining the war as one aiming at the impossible, then, when they learned of Menenius' exile and the fortification of the mountain near Rome, thinking the Roman forces humbled and the spirit of the city beaten, joined the Tyrrhenians, sending a large force.

34.2. The Veientes, trusting both in their own force and in the Sabines' lately come, and awaiting the auxiliaries from the other Tyrrhenians, had an eagerness to march on Rome with the greater part of their army, as though none would come to grips with them, but one of two things—either they would take the city by storming the walls, or reduce it by famine.

34.3. Valerius forestalled their attempt while they still delayed and awaited their laggard allies, himself leading the best of the Romans in their prime and the auxiliary force from the allies, making the sortie not openly, but so as to escape their notice as much as possible. For setting out from Rome toward late evening and crossing the Tiber, he encamped not far from the city; then, rousing his army about midnight, he led it swiftly, and before day fell upon one of the enemy's camps.

34.4. For there were two camps, separate—the Tyrrhenian apart, the Sabine elsewhere—not far from each other. Bringing his force first against the Sabine camp, while most were still asleep and there was no considerable guard—as in a friendly land and in great contempt of the enemy, who were nowhere reported—he made himself master of it at the first onset. Of the men, some were slaughtered still in their beds, others had just risen and were putting on their arms, others, armed but scattered and not in order, defended themselves, and most, fleeing to the other camp, were caught by the cavalry and destroyed.

35.1. The Sabine camp being taken in this fashion, Valerius led his force against the other, where the Veientes had seized a not very strong position. It was no longer possible for those approaching the camp to escape notice; for it was now broad day, and the Sabines who had fled reported to the Tyrrhenians both their own disaster and the march against them; and it was necessary to come to grips with the

35.2. enemy in earnest. There ensued, as the Tyrrhenians fought with all zeal before their camp, a sharp battle and much slaughter on both sides, and the decision of the war long remained evenly balanced, swaying this way and that. Then the Tyrrhenians gave way, driven back by the Roman cavalry, and withdrew to their camp; and the consul followed, and when he came near the works—they were poorly built, and the place, as I said, not very secure—he assaulted at many points, toiling through the rest of that day and not resting even the following night.

35.3. The Tyrrhenians, worn out by their continual hardships, abandoned the camp about dawn, and some fled into the city, others scattered into the nearby woods. Having become master of this camp too, he rested the army that day; on the next he distributed the spoils, both from the camps, which were many, to those who had fought, and adorned with the customary crowns those who had fought best in the battles.

35.4. He who was judged to have fought best of all and to have routed the Veientine force was Servilius, who had been consul the year before and had escaped the trial before the people, then sent out as a legate with Valerius; and for this valour he was the first to win the gifts reckoned greatest among the Romans. After this the consul, having stripped the enemy's dead and buried his own, led the army away, and stationing it near the city of the Veientes, challenged those within.

35.5. When no one came out to fight, seeing it a hopeless thing to take by storming the walls men holding a very strong city, he overran much of their land and invaded that of the Sabines. Having ravaged that too, still untouched, for many days, and now having his baggage heavy with the spoils, he led his force homeward; and the people, while he was yet far from the city, came to meet him crowned, burning frankincense along his path and receiving the army with bowls of mead; and the senate voted the triumphal procession.

35.6. The other consul, Gaius Nautius, to whom by lot the guarding of the Latin and Hernican allies had fallen, made his sortie more slowly—mastered neither by perplexity nor by shrinking from the danger, but watching the uncertainty of the war against the Veientes, that, if any reverse should befall the army there, a force might be ready, drawn up before the city, to prevent the enemy from invading the country, in case, like those who before had marched on Rome, they should attempt to fortify some places against the city.

35.7. In the interval, the war against the Latins, which the Aequians and Volscians had brought upon them, took a fortunate end; and some came reporting that the enemy, defeated in battle, had departed from their country, and that the allies needed no further aid for the present. Nautius, nonetheless, since affairs in Tyrrhenia had gone well for them, led out his army.

35.8. Invading the Volscians' country and traversing much of it, left deserted, he got very few slaves and cattle, but burning their fields, the grain being at its height, and damaging not a little else in the country, none coming to grips with him, he led the army away. These things, then, were done under these men.

36.1. The consuls who succeeded these, Aulus Manlius and Lucius Furius, when the senate had voted that one of them lead an army against the Veientes, cast lots concerning the sortie, as was their custom. Manlius, drawing the lot, led the forces out with speed and encamped near the enemy. The Veientes, being shut within their walls, for a time held out and sent embassies both to the other cities among the Tyrrhenians and to the Sabines, who had lately allied with them, asking them to send aid quickly to

36.2. them. When they failed in everything and their provisions were used up, compelled by necessity they came out to the consul, bearing suppliant-boughs—the eldest and most honoured of them—begging for the ending of the war. When Manlius bade them bring money for a year's pay for the army and provisions for two months, and, when they had done this, to send to Rome those who should treat with the senate concerning the settlement, they, approving this, quickly brought the pay for the army and the money allowed by Manlius instead of the grain, and came to Rome; and standing before the senate, they asked to obtain pardon for what had happened, and release from the war for the future.

36.3. Much being said on both sides, the opinion prevailed which advised making a truce with them; and a truce of forty years was made with them. They departed, feeling much gratitude to the city for the peace; and Manlius, coming to the city, having asked for the foot-triumph for ending the war, obtained it. There was also a census in their magistracy, and the citizens who registered themselves and their property and their sons of military age numbered a little more than one hundred and three thousand.

37.1. Those who took up the consular office after these, Lucius Aemilius Mamercus for the third time and Vopiscus Julius, in the seventy-seventh Olympiad, in which Dandes of Argos won the stadium-race, Chares being archon at Athens, passed an office very laborious and turbulent—keeping peace from foreign wars, for all the disputes were at rest, but by the factions within the city both being themselves brought into dangers and nearly destroying the city. For as soon as the multitude rested from campaigns, it rushed at once to the division of the public lands.

37.2. There was a certain man among the tribunes, bold and not unskilled in speech, Gnaeus Genucius, who whetted the angers of the poor. He, gathering assemblies each time and playing the demagogue to the needy, sought to compel the consuls to carry out what the senate had decreed concerning the land-allotment. They did not obey, saying that the task had been laid by the senate not upon their office but upon the consuls who succeeded Cassius and Verginius, against whom the preliminary decree was drawn; and at the same time that what the council votes are not laws valid forever, but measures for occasions, having a yearly force.

37.3. The consuls putting forward these reasons, Genucius, unable to compel them, since they had greater authority, turned to a headstrong course. For against those who had been consuls the year before, Manlius and Lucius, he brought a public suit, and proclaimed that they appear before the people to make defence, plainly defining the charge of the suit: that they wronged the people by not appointing the ten men whom the senate had voted

37.4. to make the division of the lots. As for not bringing to trial any of the other consuls—twelve magistracies having intervened since the preliminary decree was drawn—but putting forward these men alone for the broken promise, he gave fair reasons; and at last he said that only thus would the consuls then in office be compelled to allot the land, if they saw certain others paying the penalty to the people, considering that the same would befall themselves.

38.1. Having said this and exhorting all to come to the trial, and having sworn over sacrifices that he would in truth abide by his resolves and accuse the men with all zeal, he proclaimed a day on which he meant to hold the trial. Great fear and anxiety came upon the patricians, as to how they should both clear the men of the charge and check the demagogue's audacity. And it had been resolved by them, if the people voted anything against the consular office, not to permit it, resisting with all their might and, if need be, even coming to arms.

38.2. Yet there was no need of any violent measure, the danger taking a swift and unexpected resolution; for, one day only being still left for the trial, Genucius was found dead on his own couch, having no sign either of slaughter or of strangling or of poison or of any other death by treachery. When the disaster was known and the body brought into the forum, it seemed to be some divine intervention to hinder the trial, and at once the suit

38.3. was dissolved. For none of the other tribunes dared to revive the contest, but they even condemned Genucius for great madness. If, then, the consuls had continued to meddle no further, but had let it go, as the divinity had put the strife to sleep, no danger would have overtaken them; but as it was, turning to arrogance and contempt of the plebeians, and wishing to show how great the power of their office was, they wrought great evils. For, proclaiming a levy and compelling those who did not obey, with other penalties and with strokes of the rods, they drove the greater part of the plebeians to desperation, chiefly from such a cause as this.

39.1. A certain man of the plebeians, distinguished in war, Volero Publius, who had held command of companies in former campaigns, was then being enrolled by them as a common soldier instead of a centurion. When he resisted and refused to take a lower rank, having done no wrong in his former campaigns, the consuls, vexed at his frankness, ordered the lictors to tear his garment and flay his body with the rods.

39.2. The young man called upon the tribunes, and demanded, if he did any wrong, to stand trial before the plebeians. When the consuls paid him no heed, but commanded the lictors to drag and beat him, thinking the outrage unbearable, he became the steward of his own justice.

39.3. For the first of the lictors who approached, the young man—a strong man—struck full in the face with his fists and overthrew, and the one after him too. When the consuls grew angry and ordered all the attendants together to come on, the thing seemed dreadful to the plebeians present; and at once, banding together in a body and shouting the cry that incited one another's anger, they snatched the young man away, drove off the lictors with blows, and at last rushed upon the consuls; and had the consuls not abandoned the forum and fled,

39.4. they would have wrought some incurable evil. From this the whole city stood divided, and the tribunes, who till then had been quiet, then grew savage and accused the consuls. The strife over the land-allotment passed into another, greater contest concerning the order of the constitution. For the patricians, sharing the consuls' indignation as though their authority were being dissolved, demanded that the man who had dared to lay hands on the attendants be thrown from

39.5. the cliff. The plebeians, banding together, cried out and exhorted one another not to betray their freedom, but to bring the matter before the senate and accuse the consuls and demand some justice from them, because they had not allowed the man who called upon the tribunes' aid, and who wished to stand trial before the people if he had done any wrong, to obtain either of these rights, but had set the free man and citizen in the place of a slave, ordering him beaten.

39.6. These two ranged in opposition and neither willing to yield to the other, all the rest of the time of that consulship was spent—adorned with no fine deeds of war nor with civic actions worthy of mention.

40.1. When the elections came round, Lucius Pinarius and Publius Furius were designated consuls. At the very beginning of the year the city was filled with a certain dread and fear of the divine, many portents and signs occurring. And all the soothsayers and the interpreters of the sacred things declared that what was happening were signs of the anger of the gods, certain rites being performed neither piously nor purely.

40.2. And not long after, a sickness, the so-called pestilence, fell upon the women, and a mortality such as never before, especially among the pregnant. For miscarrying and bringing forth dead children, they died along with their infants; and neither supplications made at the shrines and altars of the gods, nor purificatory sacrifices performed both for the city and for private houses, brought them respite from the evils.

40.3. While the city was in such a calamity, information was given to the interpreters of the sacred rites by a certain slave, that one of the holy virgins who guard the immortal fire, Orbinia, had lost her virginity and was performing the sacred rites of the city, being unclean. They, removing her from the rites and setting a trial, when she was convicted on the proof, scourged her with rods and, having led her in procession through the city, buried her alive.

40.4. Of those who had wrought the unholy corruption, one made away with himself; the other the overseers of the rites seized and in the forum, scourging him like a slave, put to death. The sickness, then, that had fallen upon the women, and their great mortality, ceased at once after this deed.

41.1. The strife that had long persisted in the city, which the plebeians waged against the patricians, rose again. The tribune who roused it was Publius Volero, who the year before had disobeyed the consuls Aemilius and Julius when they were enrolling him as a common soldier instead of a centurion—appointed champion of the people by the poor for no other reason more than this (for his birth was of the common sort and he had been reared in much lowliness and want) than because he had seemed the first, a private man, to humble by disobedience the consular office, which has a royal dignity, and still more on account of the promises he had made when he sought the office, against the patricians,

41.2. that he would take away their power. He, as soon as it became possible for him, the divine wrath having abated, to attend to public affairs, gathering the people into assembly, brought in a law concerning the election of tribunes, transferring it from the curiate vote, which the Romans call curiatis, to the tribal. What the difference of these elections is, I will explain.

41.3. The curiate votes required that the senate first deliberate, and the multitude cast their votes by curiae, and that, after both these, none of the signs and omens from the divine power opposing, then they should be valid; but the tribal, with neither a preliminary decree being passed nor the priests and augurs prophesying, when completed in a single day by the tribesmen, should be final. And of the remaining four tribunes there were two who joined him in bringing in the law; whom, taking as associates, since those who did not wish the same were fewer, he prevailed.

41.4. The consuls and the senate and all the patricians tried to prevent the law; and coming in throngs into the forum, on the day on which the tribunes had announced they would ratify the law, they delivered speeches of every kind, the consuls and the eldest of the senate and everyone else who wished setting forth the absurdities in the law. The tribunes speaking in reply, and the consuls again, and the skirmish of words being prolonged to great length, that assembly was dissolved, the time being shut in by night. When the tribunes again proposed for a third meeting the decision concerning the law, and a still greater throng gathered to it, the like

41.5. occurrence to the former took place. Observing this, Publius resolved no longer to permit the consuls to speak against the law, nor to allow the patricians to be present at the voting; for these, in factions and bands, together with their clients, who were not few, held many parts of the forum, urging on those who attacked the law and raising tumult against the defenders and doing many other things, signs of disorder and violence in the voting.

42.1. His designs, which were tyrannical, were checked by another heaven-sent calamity that fell upon them. For a pestilential sickness laid hold of the city—occurring also throughout the rest of Italy, but most abounding at Rome; and no human aid availed any of the sufferers, but alike those tended with much care and those for whom nothing needful was done, died. Neither supplications of the gods nor sacrifices, nor those purifications, performed by individuals and on behalf of the commonwealth, to which men flee as a last resort in such calamities, then availed; and the disease distinguished neither age, nor nature, nor strength or weakness of body, nor art nor anything else thought to relieve the sickness, but fell upon women and men and old and young alike.

42.2. It did not, however, last long, which was the reason the whole city was not destroyed; but, like a river or a fire falling all at once upon men, it had a sharp onset and a swift departure. When the calamity abated, Publius, being now at the close of his office, since he could not ratify the law in the time remaining, the elections being at hand, again sought the tribuneship for the coming year, promising the plebeians many great things; and he was again designated tribune by them, together with two of his colleagues.

42.3. The patricians contrived against this to advance to the consulship a man bitter and a hater of the people, who would diminish nothing of the aristocracy: Appius Claudius, son of that Appius who had most opposed the people in the matter of their return. And though he opposed much and was unwilling even to go to the field for the elections, they nonetheless made the preliminary decree and elected him consul in his absence.

43.1. The elections being completed with much ease—for the poor abandoned the field when they heard this man named—Titus Quintius Capitolinus and Appius Claudius Sabinus took up the consulship, having neither natures nor purposes alike.

43.2. For it was Appius' opinion to keep the idle and poor people occupied with foreign campaigns, so that, both supplied with daily necessities from the enemy's country through their own labours—of which they stood most in need—and accomplishing what was profitable to the city, they might be least hostile and troublesome to those of the council who managed the commonwealth. And he declared that every pretext for war would be reasonable to a city aspiring to dominion and envied by all; and he thought fit to conjecture the future from what had already happened, recounting how many disturbances had occurred in the city, that all came during the lulls of the wars.

43.3. Quintius did not think any war should be undertaken, declaring that it was a thing to be content with, if, when summoned to necessary and externally brought dangers, the people should prove obedient, and teaching that if they applied force to those who would not obey, they would drive the plebeians to desperation, as the consuls before them had done; from which they would run one of two risks: either to put down the strife by blood and slaughter, or to endure to court the plebeians shamefully.

43.4. The command of that month belonged to Quintius, so that it was necessary for the other consul to do nothing against his will. The tribunes about Publius, delaying no longer, again brought in the law which the year before could not be ratified, adding to it that the office of the aediles too be voted in the same assemblies, and that all else that should need to be done and ratified before the people be voted on by the tribesmen in the same way; which was, in fact, a manifest dissolution of the senate and a sovereignty of the people.

44.1. Learning this, the consuls were beset by anxiety and reckoning how the disturbing and factious element might be removed quickly and safely. Appius gave it as his opinion to call to arms those who wished to preserve the ancestral constitution; and if any should take up arms against them, to treat these as enemies.

44.2. Quintius thought they ought to persuade the plebeians by speech and teach them otherwise, as men being carried, through ignorance of their interest, toward ruinous counsels; saying it was the work of utter madness to wish to take by force from the unwilling what one might get from one's willing fellow citizens.

44.3. When the others too who had been called into the council approved Quintius' opinion, the consuls, coming into the forum, asked of the tribunes a hearing and time. Hardly obtaining both, when the day they had asked of them came, a throng of every kind having gathered in the forum—which both magistracies had prepared as allies for themselves by solicitation—they were present to denounce the law. Quintius, then, being in other respects a reasonable man and most persuasive in winning the people by speech, asking first for a hearing, delivered a deft and pleasing harangue, so that those speaking for the law fell into much perplexity, having nothing juster or more reasonable to say.

44.4. And had his colleague chosen to meddle no further, the people, recognizing that they were demanding what was neither just nor pious, would have dropped the law; but as it was, when Appius delivered a speech haughty and harsh for the poor to hear, he made them hard to anger and implacable, and brought them to such strife as never before.

44.5. For not conversing with them as with free men and citizens, who had the authority to enact or repeal the law, but exercising authority as over base men or strangers or men holding their freedom on no firm footing, he made bitter and unendurable accusations, reproaching them with the cancellation of debts and casting up to them the secession of the consuls, when, snatching the sacred standards, they departed from the camp, laying upon themselves a voluntary flight; and recalling the oaths they had sworn, taking up their arms in defence of the land that bore them, which they had used against that very land.

44.6. Therefore he said it was no wonder they acted thus, if, having forsworn the gods, abandoned their leaders, and left their city deserted, so far as in them lay—and having made their return upon a confounding of faith, an overturning of laws, and a corruption of the ancestral polity—they showed no moderation and could not prove themselves good citizens, but were ever reaching for some excess and lawlessness: now demanding that they be allowed to appoint magistracies of their own, and making these unaccountable and inviolable; now bringing into capital trials whatever patricians they pleased, and transferring the lawful courts, to which the city had formerly given the judging of death and exile, from the purest tribe to the foulest rabble; now—these hirelings and homeless men—bringing in tyrannical and unequal laws against the well-born, and not even leaving the senate the power to deliberate beforehand about them, but stripping it of this honour too, which it had held undisputed from all time,

44.7. both when the city was ruled by kings and by tyrants. 44.8. Adding many other things like these, and sparing no bitter matter nor abusive name, at the last he added that argument at which the multitude was most indignant: that the city would never cease being in faction over everything, but would ever sicken with some new disease upon an old one, so long as the power of the tribunes remained; teaching that of every political and common matter one ought to look at the origins, that they may be pious and just; for from good seed, he said, good and prosperous fruits are wont to grow, and from bad, evil and ruinous ones.

45.1. If, then, he said, this office had entered the city with concord, present for the good of all, with auspicious omens, it would have been the cause to us of many great goods—favours, harmony, good order, good hopes from the divine power, ten thousand others. But as it is—since force introduced it, and lawlessness and faction and the dread of civil war and all that is most hateful among men—what, then, can ever prove good or saving, when it has had such beginnings? So that it remains for us to seek healings and remedies for the evils sprouting from it, so far as fall within human reckoning, while the bad root still

45.2. remains. For there will be no end or release from the divine wraths, until this malignant Fury and canker, sitting within, rots and corrupts all that is fair. But concerning these things there will be another speech and a fitter occasion; now, since one must settle present matters well, laying aside all dissembling, I say this to you: neither this law nor any other which the senate has not first deliberated shall be valid during my consulship; but I will both contend in words for the aristocracy, and, if it come to deeds, neither in these will I be behind my opponents; and if you did not before know how great the power of the consular office is, under my magistracy you shall learn.

46.1. Appius, then, said this; and of the tribunes the eldest and of greatest dignity, Gaius Laetorius, a man known to be no coward in the wars and not incapable in civic affairs, rose to answer this; and he delivered a long speech on behalf of the people, beginning from earliest times: how many hard campaigns the poor, slandered by him, had served—not only under the kings, when one might allege necessity, but also after their expulsion, winning freedom and dominion for their country;

46.2. yet they received no recompense from the patricians, nor enjoyed any of the common goods, but, as though captured in war, were robbed by them even of their freedom; which, wishing to recover, they were forced to abandon their country in longing for another land, in which it should be possible for them, being free, not to be outraged; and neither by forcing the senate nor by compelling it with war did they obtain their return to their own, but yielded to it when it asked and entreated them to recover what had been abandoned.

46.3. He recounted the oaths and recalled the compacts made at the return; in which there was first amnesty for all, then power for the poor to appoint magistracies that should be avengers for themselves,

46.4. and adversaries to those wishing to oppress them. Having recounted these, he pointed to the laws the people had lately ratified, both the one transferring the courts—how the senate had given the people authority to judge whatever patricians they pleased—and the one concerning the voting, which made not the centuriate assembly but the curiate sovereign of the votes.

47.1. Having gone through the speech on behalf of the people, turning upon Appius, he said: Then do you dare to revile these men, through whom the city has become great from small and illustrious from obscure? And do you call others factious, and reproach them with a fortune of exile, as though all these did not still remember your own case—that your ancestors, having quarrelled with the magistrates and abandoned their own country, settled here as suppliants? Unless, indeed, you, abandoning your own country in longing for freedom, did a fine thing, but the Romans, having done

47.2. the like to you, did no fine thing. And do you dare to revile the power of the tribunes as having entered the city for evil, and persuade these men to abolish the holy and immovable protection of the poor, secured by great compulsions both of gods and of men—O most people-hating and most tyrannical of men? And could you not learn even this, that in saying these things you revile both the senate and your own office? For the senate too, rising against the kings, whose arrogances and outrages it no longer thought fit to bear, established the consular office, and before driving those men from the city made others masters of the royal power.

47.3. So that what you say of the tribuneship, that it entered for evil, since it got its origin from sedition, this you say also against the consulship. For no other pretext introduced that either, but the patricians'

47.4. faction against the kings. But why do I argue these things with you as with a good and moderate citizen, whom all these know to be perverse by birth and bitter and people-hating, and unable ever to tame his savage nature? Why do I not rather close with you, putting deeds before words, and show how great a power the people has, unknown to you—whom you were not ashamed to call homeless and foul—and how great a power this office has, which the law compels you to turn aside from and yield to? Laying aside, I too, all dissembling, I will lay hold of action.

48.1. So saying, and having sworn an oath, the greatest among them, either to ratify the law or to let go of life, when silence fell from the multitude and an anxious expectation of what he meant to do, he ordered Appius to withdraw from the assembly. When he would not obey, but, placing the lictors before him and the throng he had brought ready from home, fought to avoid yielding the forum, Laetorius, having proclaimed silence, declared that the tribunes ordered the consul led off to prison.

48.2. And the attendant, ordered by him, came forward to lay hold of his person; but the first of the lictors who met him drove him off with a blow. A great outcry and indignation arising from those present, Laetorius himself rushed forward, exhorting the throng to defend; and those about Appius, having a numerous and strong band of young men, stood firm. After this unseemly words passed between them, and outcries and pushings of bodies; and at last the strife broke out into blows, and began to advance to throwing of stones.

48.3. The cause of checking this and of the dreadful things not advancing further was Quintius, the other consul, beseeching and entreating all, together with the eldest of the council, and thrusting himself into the midst of those skirmishing. And the remaining part of the day was

48.4. brief, so that they parted from one another unwillingly. On the following days the magistracies accused each other—the consul the tribunes, that they had thought fit to dissolve his office by ordering the consul led to prison; and the tribunes the consul, that he had laid blows on bodies sacred and consecrated by the law (and Laetorius still had the marks of the blows visible on his face)—and the whole city, swelling and grown savage, stood divided.

48.5. Then the people, together with the tribunes, kept guard over the Capitol, leaving their watch neither by day nor by night; and the senate, assembling, made much and laborious search how the dissension should be ended, considering the magnitude of the danger, and that not even the consuls were of the same mind. For Quintius thought fit to yield to the people in moderate things, but Appius to resist to the death.

49.1. When no end came of it, Quintius, taking each separately, the tribunes and Appius, begged and entreated and asked them to hold the common interest more pressing than the private. Seeing the tribunes already grown milder, but his colleague remaining in the same stubbornness, he persuaded those about Laetorius to make the senate sovereign over all the charges, both the private

49.2. and the public. When he had managed this, he convened the senate; and having praised the tribunes much and begged his colleague not to oppose the city's safety, he called upon those accustomed to declare their opinions.

49.3. First called, Publius Valerius Publicola declared this opinion: that whatever charges the tribunes and the consul brought against one another, for what they had suffered or done in the disturbance, since they had come to these not from design or private greed but from zeal for the common good, be publicly dropped, and that there be no trial concerning them; but concerning the law, since the consul did not allow a law to be brought before the assembly without a preliminary decree, that the council deliberate first upon it; and that the tribunes, together with the consuls, take care for the concord of the citizens, when the vote on it should be taken, and for good order.

49.4. When all approved the opinion, Quintius at once gave over to the council the vote concerning the law; and though Appius accused much and the tribunes argued much in reply, the opinion which thought fit to bring in the law prevailed by many votes. The preliminary decree being ratified, both the private quarrels of the magistrates were dissolved, and the people, gladly receiving the senate's concession, voted the law. From that time the elections of the tribunes and aediles, down to our own day, the tribal assemblies vote without auspices and all the rest of the religious observance. This was the resolution of the disturbance that then held the city.

50.1. Not long after, it seemed good to the Romans to enrol armies and send out both consuls against the Aequians and Volscians. For great forces from both peoples were reported to have marched out and to be plundering the allies of the Romans. The forces being quickly prepared, Quintius went to make war on the Aequians, Appius on the Volscians, having divided the commands by lot. And it befell each of the consuls to fare as was fitting:

50.2. for the army assigned to Quintius, loving the fairness and moderation of the man, was eager for everything ordered, and undertook most hazards unbidden, working glory and honour for its commander; and it traversed much of the Aequians' country, ravaging it, the enemy not daring to come to grips, from which it gained much booty and great gains. Spending no long time in the enemy's country, it came to the city unscathed, bringing its general illustrious for his deeds.

50.3. But the force that went out with Appius, out of hatred for him, neglected much of their ancestral discipline. For it continued in deliberate cowardice throughout the whole campaign and in contempt of its commander; and when it had to fight the Volscian army, being drawn up by the officers into order, it would not come to grips with the enemy; but the centurions and front-rank men, some throwing down the standards, others abandoning their post, fled to the camp.

50.4. And had not the enemy, marvelling at the strange flight and fearing it might be some ambush, turned aside from a longer pursuit, the greater part of the Romans would have been destroyed. They did this out of envy of their commander, that the man might not, by performing some fine exploit, be made illustrious by a triumph and the other honours.

50.5. On the following day, when the consul partly censured them for their inglorious flight, partly exhorted them to redeem a most shameful deed by a fine contest, and partly threatened, if they would not stand amid dangers, to use the laws against them, they persisted in disobedience and clamour, and bade him lead them out of the enemy's country, as men no longer able, from their wounds, to hold out; for most of them had bound up their sound flesh as though wounded. So that Appius was forced to lead the army out of the enemy's country, and the Volscians, following them as they departed, killed many of them.

50.6. When they were in friendly territory, the consul gathered them into assembly, and after reproaching them much, said he would use the punishment for deserters. Though the legates and others in office begged him much to be moderate and not add calamity to calamity for the city, taking account of none of them, he confirmed the punishment.

50.7. And after this the centurions whose companies had fled, and the standard-bearers, as many as had lost their standards, were—some beheaded with the axe, others beaten to death with rods; and of the rest of the multitude, from every decade one man chosen by lot died before the others. This is the Roman ancestral punishment for those who leave their ranks or abandon their standards. And after this, the general, himself hated, and bringing back what was left of the army downcast and dishonoured, when the elections came round, returned to his country.

51.1. After these were designated consuls Lucius Valerius for the second time and Tiberius Aemilius. The tribunes, holding off a short time, again brought in the question of the land-allotment; and approaching the consuls, asked them to confirm to the people the promises the senate had made in the consulship of Spurius Cassius and Proculus Verginius, begging and entreating.

51.2. And both consuls supported them—Tiberius Aemilius bearing the senate a certain old grudge, not without reason, because, when his father asked a triumph, it did not permit him to lead it; and Valerius wishing to assuage the people's anger against him for the death of Spurius Cassius, whom he had killed for attempting kingship when Valerius was quaestor—a man the most distinguished of those of his time in commands of wars and civic deeds, who first introduced into the city the measure concerning the land-allotment, and was chiefly hated for it by the patricians, as one taking up the people's cause before them.

51.3. So then, the consuls having promised them to bring forward in the senate the question of dividing the public lots, and to join in ratifying the law, the tribunes, trusting them, came before the senate and went through reasonable speeches. To these the consuls, opposing nothing, that they might not bear the imputation of contentiousness, asked the eldest to declare their opinions.

51.4. The first called by them was Lucius Aemilius, father of one of the consuls; who said it seemed to him both just and profitable to the city that the common property be of all and not of a few, and advised yielding to the people's persuasion, that their concession might be a favour. For, he said, having given them many other things not of their own choice but yielded under necessity, and those holding the possessions, of the produce of which they had reaped unnoticed, ought to feel grateful, and, when prevented, not to cling to the land.

51.5. He said that, along with justice—which all would agree to be strong—the public property was indeed common to all, but the private to each who had acquired it by law; and that the matter had already become necessary by the senate's decree, voted seventeen years before, to divide the land. And he declared that it had then deliberated this with a view to advantage, that the land should not be waste, and the poor throng that kept house in the city should not be idle—as now, envying others' goods—but that youth should be reared for the city at the hearth and on ancestral lots, having something to take pride in from being well reared.

51.6. Since, for the landless, scantily nourished from others' possessions which they work for hire, either no desire for offspring grows in them at all from the start, or, if it grows, it brings forth bad and unlucky fruit, gathered as one might expect from lowly marriages,

51.7. and reared in beggared circumstances. I, then, he said, declare my opinion: that the consuls confirm what was deliberated beforehand by the council and dragged out through the intervening disturbances, and that they appoint the men who shall make the division.

52.1. When Aemilius had said this, the second called, Appius Claudius, who had been consul the year before, declared the contrary opinion, teaching that the senate had had no purpose of dividing the public lands—for long ago what it resolved would have taken effect—but had put it off to a time and another decision, eager to put down the faction that then held the city, which the consul aiming at tyranny was introducing, and who afterward paid a fitting penalty;

52.2. nor had the consuls who drew the lot after the preliminary decree carried out what was voted, seeing what a beginning of evils would enter the city if the poor became accustomed to allotting the common property among themselves; and the fifteen consulships after them, though many dangers were brought upon them by the people, endured nothing that was not profitable to the commonwealth to do, because it was not even permitted them by the preliminary decree to appoint land-distributors,

52.3. but only to those first consuls. So that for you too, he said, O Valerius, and you, Aemilius, to bring in redistributions of land, which the council did not order you to do, is neither honourable, for men of good ancestors, nor safe. And concerning the preliminary decree—that you who became consuls so many times later are not bound by it—

52.4. this is enough. Concerning some having appropriated the public property by force or by stealth, a brief speech suffices me. For if anyone knows of someone enjoying what he cannot show a lawful possession of, let him bring information to the consuls and let it be judged by the laws, which it will not be necessary to write anew; for they were written long ago, and no time has effaced them.

52.5. Since Aemilius also spoke about the profit, that the land-allotment would be for the good of all, I wish to leave this part too unrefuted. For it seems to me that he sees only the present and does not look ahead to the future—that what seems a small thing in the public lands for the idle and

52.6. poor will be the cause of many great evils. For the habit that enters along with it and remains in the city will be ruinous and dreadful forever; for getting them does not remove the wicked desires from the soul, but increases them and makes them worse. Let the deeds be your proof of this; for why should you heed my words or Aemilius'?

53.1. You all know, surely, how many enemies we have overcome, how much land we have plundered, how much booty we have taken from the captured places—of which the enemy, deprived, who were prosperous before, are now in great want; and that of none of these were robbed, nor got a smaller share in the distributions, those who lament their poverty.

53.2. Do they, then, by these acquisitions, appear to have mended any part of their old fortune and advanced to distinction in their lives? I could have wished, and prayed to the gods, that they were less burdensome billet-quarterers to the city; but as it is—for you see and hear them lamenting that they are in extreme poverty. So that not even if they got what they now ask, and still more than this, would they mend their lives.

53.3. For their poverty dwells not in their fortunes but in their characters; which not only this small lot will not fill up, but not even all the gifts of kings and tyrants. And we shall do, if we concede these things to them too, the like of physicians who tend the sick to their pleasure. For not the sick part of the state will be healed, but the sound part too will catch the disease. And in general, O senate, you have need of much care and forethought, that you may save, with all zeal, the manners of the city that are being corrupted.

53.4. For you see to what the people's disorder has advanced, and how it no longer thinks fit to be ruled by the consuls; which felt no repentance for what was done here, but showed the same disorder even in the camp, throwing down its arms and abandoning its ranks and giving up its standards to the enemy and using a shameful flight before coming to grips—as though it would rob me alone of the glory of victory, and not also the country of the blow against its foes.

53.5. And now the Volscians set up trophies over the Romans, and their shrines are adorned with our spoils, and they are in such boasts as never before—they who till now begged our commanders for the enslavement and razing of their cities.

53.6. Is it, then, just or honourable that you should feel grateful to them for such achievements, and adorn them with public gifts, allotting to them the land of which the enemy hold, so far as depends on these men, a part? But why should I accuse these men, to whom, through their lack of education and low birth, fine things are of small account, when I see that not even in all your characters does the ancient spirit any longer dwell, but dignity is called arrogance by some, justice folly, manliness madness, and self-control simplicity? And what was hateful among our forebears is now exalted and appears wonderfully good to the corrupt—cowardice and buffoonery and malice and crafty cleverness and recklessness toward everything and obedience to none of one's betters; which, taking hold of many strong cities before now,

53.7. have overturned them from their foundations. These things, O senate, whether they are pleasant for you to hear or grievous, I have spoken with all truth and frankness—to those of you who will be persuaded, if indeed you are persuaded, both useful for the present and safe for the future; but to me, who for the common good take on private hatreds, the cause of many dangers to come. For I am able to foresee what will happen by reckoning, and I make others' sufferings examples of my own.

54.1. When Appius had said this, and almost all the others had declared the same opinion, the senate was dissolved. The tribunes, holding the failure in anger, departed, and afterward considered how they should take vengeance on the man; and it seemed best to them, after much deliberation, to bring Appius to a trial carrying the penalty of death. And after this, having accused the man in assembly, they exhorted all to come on the appointed day to cast their vote concerning him.

54.2. The charges they meant to bring were these: that he had proposed wicked measures against the people, and introduced faction into the city, and laid hands on a tribune contrary to the sacred laws, and, having commanded an army, returned with great loss and disgrace. Having proclaimed these before the multitude, and appointed a certain fixed day on which they said they would bring the trial to a conclusion, they summoned him to be present then to make his defence.

54.3. When all the patricians were indignant and prepared with all zeal to save the man, and exhorted Appius to yield to the occasion and assume a demeanour suited to present fortunes, the man said he would do nothing either ignoble or unworthy of his past deeds, and would endure ten thousand deaths sooner than clasp anyone's knees; and he prevented those prepared to plead for him, saying he would be doubly ashamed to see others doing on his behalf what he did not think it becoming to do for himself.

54.4. Saying these and many like things, and neither changing his garb nor altering the proud look of his face nor abating any of his spirit, when he saw the city upright and on tiptoe in expectation of the contest, a few days still remaining, he made away with himself.

54.5. His kinsmen, then, pretended that a sickness had been the cause of his death; and when the body was brought into the forum, his son, approaching the tribunes and the consuls, asked them to convene for him the lawful assembly and to permit the speech customary among the Romans at the burials of good men to be delivered over his father.

54.6. The tribunes opposed, while the assembly was still being convened by the consuls, and ordered the youth to carry off the corpse. The people, however, did not endure it, nor overlook the outrage, that the body be cast out dishonoured, but permitted the youth to render his father the customary honours. Appius, then, met with such an end.

55.1. The consuls, having enrolled their forces, led them out of the city—Lucius Valerius to make war on the Aequians, Tiberius Aemilius on the Sabines. For these too, during the time of the faction, had invaded Roman territory, and after greatly damaging it had departed, carrying off abundant booty. The Aequians, then, after often coming to grips and receiving many blows, fled to their camp, lying in a strong place, and thereafter no longer came out to battle.

55.2. Valerius attempted to take their camp by siege, but was hindered by the divine power. For while he was already at work, darkness came from heaven and much rain, and lightnings and harsh thunders. When the army was dispersed, the storm at once ceased, and great clear weather held the place. Taking this for an omen, the consul, the soothsayers also forbidding him to besiege the place any longer, turned aside and ravaged their land, and allowing the soldiers to profit by all the booty he got, led his force

55.3. home. As Tiberius Aemilius traversed the enemy's country at first with much contempt and expecting no adversary, the Sabine force came upon him, and a pitched battle took place, beginning about the middle of the day and lasting till sunset. When darkness fell, the forces withdrew to their own camps, neither victorious nor defeated.

55.4. On the following days the commanders buried their dead and entrenched their camps, and both held the same view—to keep their own positions under guard and no longer to begin battle. Then in time, breaking up their tents, they led away their forces.

56.1. In the year after these consuls, in the seventy-eighth Olympiad, in which Parmenides of Posidonia won the stadium-race, Theagenides holding the yearly office at Athens, there were appointed consuls of the Romans Aulus Verginius Caelimontanus and Titus Numicius Priscus. They had but just taken up the office when a large Volscian army was reported at hand. And not long after, one of the Roman outposts, taken by assault, was burning; it was not far from Rome, and the smoke announced the disaster to those in the city.

56.2. Then—for it was still night—the consuls, sending out some horsemen for reconnaissance, and stationing guards on the walls and themselves drawing up before the gates with the lightest-armed, awaited the reports from the horsemen; and when day came and the force in the city had assembled to them, they led it against the enemy. But these, having plundered and burned the fort, departed in haste.

56.3. Then the consuls, having put out what was still burning and left a guard at the place, returned to the city; and a few days later, with their own forces and those of the allies, both marched out—Verginius against the Aequians, Numicius against the Volscians; and to both the war went according to

56.4. their wish. For the Aequians did not dare to come to grips with Verginius as he ravaged their country, but, having set an ambush of picked men in woods, who were to attack the enemy when scattered, they failed of their hope, the Romans quickly perceiving it and a stout battle ensuing, in which the Aequians lost many of their own; so that they did not even attempt another battle.

56.5. As Numicius led his army against the city of the Antiates, which was then among the first of the Volscian cities, no force opposed him, but each was forced to defend from the walls. Meanwhile most of their land was cut down, and a certain seaside town was taken, which they used as a port and market for the necessities of life, drawing most of their gains from the sea and by piracy. Slaves, then, and money and cattle and merchants' wares the army plundered by the consul's permission, but the free persons, as many as the war had not already destroyed, were taken off to the slave-market. There were taken also twenty-two long ships of the Antiates and other ships' tackle and equipment.

56.6. After this, by the consul's order, the Romans set fire to the houses and pulled down the dockyards and razed the wall from its foundations, so that even after their departure the fort might be of no use to the Antiates. These things, then, were done by each consul separately; and to both there was further a new campaign against the Sabine land, which, having ravaged, they led their force home, and this year came to an end.

57.1. In the following year, Titus Quintius Capitolinus and Quintus Servilius Priscus having assumed the consular office, the whole native force of the Romans was under arms, and the allied contingents came of their own accord, before any campaign was announced to them. After this the consuls, having made prayers to the gods and purified the army, marched out against the enemy.

57.2. The Sabines, against whom Servilius marched, neither came to battle nor went out into the open field; but remaining in their forts, they endured their land being cut down and their houses burned and their slaves deserting; so that the Romans departed from their country with much ease, heavy with spoils and brilliant with boasts. Such was the issue of Servilius' campaign.

57.3. Those who campaigned with Quintius against the Aequians and Volscians—for from both peoples those who would fight before the rest had gathered in the same place and encamped opposite, before the city of the Antiates—advancing faster than at a walk, appeared before them; and not far from their camp, at the first place where they were seen and saw the enemy, which lay low, they laid down their baggage, wishing to make it appear that they did not fear an enemy far superior in number.

57.4. When all was ready for battle on both sides, they went out into the plain, and joining battle, fought till midday, neither yielding to the enemy nor gaining, each side ever equalizing the hard-pressed part with those posted in reserve. Herein especially the Aequians and Volscians, exceeding the Romans in number, held up and prevailed, the enemy not having a number equal to their zeal.

57.5. Quintius, seeing many of his own dead and most of the survivors wounded, was minded to recall his force; but fearing he might give the enemy the impression of flight, he resolved that they must hazard all. Choosing the best of the horse, on the right, which was most hard pressed, he came to the aid of his men.

57.6. And partly reproaching the officers themselves for their cowardice, partly reminding them of former contests, partly recounting the disgrace and the danger that would overtake them in flight, at last he said a thing not true, which most of all put courage in his own men and fear in the enemy. For he said that the other of their wings had already driven back the enemy and was now near their camp.

57.7. So saying, he charged the enemy, and dismounting from his horse, with the picked horsemen about him fought hand to hand. Thereupon a certain daring fell on those till then hard pressed, and all pushed forward as though they had become other men; and the Volscians—for they were drawn up there—after holding out a long time, gave way. When Quintius had driven these back, mounting his horse he rode along to the other line, and pointed out to the foot there the beaten part of the enemy, and exhorted them not to fall short of the others in valour.

58.1. After this none of the enemy held their ground any longer, but all fled together to the camp. The pursuit of them, however, was not long, but the Romans at once turned back, their bodies slack with toil and their arms no longer in like condition. After a few days had passed, which they had spent in truce for the burial of their own dead and the tending of the worn-out, having repaired what was lacking for the war, they fought another battle around the Roman camp.

58.2. For another force having joined the Volscians and Aequians from the surrounding places, which were not far off, their general, lifted up because his own men were five times the enemy, and seeing the Roman camp not in a strong position, supposed it the best occasion to attack them. With this in mind, about midnight he led his force against the Roman camp, and ringing it about, kept guard, that they might not depart unnoticed.

58.3. Quintius, when he learned the multitude of the enemy, received it gladly, and waiting until day came and the hour of full market, perceiving the enemy now worn out by sleeplessness and skirmishes, and not advancing in companies or in order but poured out in many places and scattered, opened the gates of the camp and ran out with the picked horsemen; and the foot, closing up their companies, followed.

58.4. The Volscians, terrified at their boldness and the frenzied onset, holding out a short time, were thrust back and at the same time gave way from the camp; and—for there was a tolerably high hill not far from the camp—up this they ran, to rest and form again into order. But it was not granted them to form and recover themselves, for the enemy followed hard upon them, closing up their companies as much as possible, that they might not be dashed back forcing their way against high ground.

58.5. There ensued a great contest for much of the day, and many dead fell on both sides. And the Volscians, though exceeding in number and having got the safety of the ground, enjoyed no benefit from either of these, but, forced by the zeal and valour of the Romans, abandoned the hill, and

58.6. fleeing to the camp, most of them died. For the Romans did not let them go in pursuit, but followed hard on foot, and did not turn back before they had taken their camp by storm. Becoming masters of persons and of all that was left in the camp—horses and arms and very much money—they encamped there that night; on the following day the consul, having prepared what was needful for a siege, led his force against the city of the Antiates, no more than thirty stades distant.

58.7. There happened to be present, for the sake of guarding, certain Aequian auxiliaries of the Antiates, watching the walls; who then, fearing the boldness of the Romans, attempted to make their escape from the city. When the Antiates learned of it, being prevented by them from departing, they resolved to hand over the city to the Romans as they approached.

58.8. The Antiates, learning this from an informer, yielded to the occasion, and after deliberating in common with those men, handed over the city to Quintius on these terms: that the Aequians depart under truce, and the Antiates receive a garrison and do what the Romans commanded. On these terms the consul became master of the city, and having taken pay and all else the army needed, and established a garrison, he led his force away; in return for which the senate received him with a kindly meeting and honoured him with the procession of a triumph.

59.1. In the following year the consuls were Tiberius Aemilius for the second time and Quintus Fabius, son of one of the three brothers who had led the garrison sent to Cremera and perished there with their clients. The senate, the tribunes again stirring up the multitude over the land-allotment, and one of the consuls, Aemilius, supporting them, ratified a decree—wishing to court and conciliate the poor—to divide among them a certain portion of the Antiate territory, which they had taken by the spear and held the year

59.2. before. And there were appointed leaders of the colony Titus Quintius Capitolinus, to whom the Antiates had surrendered, and with him Lucius Furius and Aulus Verginius. The division of the country was no object of eagerness to the mass of the poor Romans, as men being driven from their country; and few having registered, it seemed good to the senate, since the colony was not of sufficient number, to permit those Latins and Hernicans who wished to share in the settlement. So those sent to Antium divided the land among their own, leaving a portion of it to the Antiates.

59.3. In the interval there was a campaign of both consuls—Aemilius into the Sabine country, Fabius into the Aequian. To Aemilius, remaining a long time in the enemy's country, no force came out to fight for the land, but having ravaged it without fear, when the time of the elections came, he led his forces home. The Aequians, before being driven to the necessity of having their army destroyed or their walls taken, made overtures to Fabius for reconciliation and friendship.

59.4. The consul, having exacted two months' provisions for the army and two tunics per man and money for six months' pay and anything else that was pressing, made a truce with them, until they should come to Rome and obtain a settlement from the senate. The senate, learning this, entrusted to Fabius full authority to settle with the Aequians on whatever terms he himself chose.

59.5. After this, treaties were made for the cities, the consul mediating between them, of this sort: that the Aequians be subjects of the Romans, holding their own cities and lands, and send the Romans nothing but troops, whenever ordered, dispatching them at their own expense. Having agreed to this, Fabius led his force home and, together with his colleague, appointed the magistrates for the coming year.

60.1. Those designated consuls by them were Spurius Postumius Albinus and Quintus Servilius Priscus for the second time. Under these the Aequians were thought to transgress the agreements lately made with the Romans, from such a cause as this.

60.2. Of the Antiates, as many as had hearths and lots remained in the land, tilling both their allotted possessions and those marked off by the colonists, on certain fixed and appointed shares which they paid them from the produce; but those who had none of these abandoned the city, and the Aequians receiving them readily, setting out from there, they plundered the lands of the Latins. From this, as many of the Aequians as were bold and needy joined them in their raidings.

60.3. When the Latins lamented this before the senate and asked either that an army be sent or that they themselves be permitted to repel those who began the war, the councillors, learning of it, neither themselves voted to send an army nor permitted the Latins to lead one out, but choosing three envoys, led by Quintus Fabius who had made the treaty with the nation, they sent them, giving them instructions to inquire of the leaders of the nation whether they sent out the raiders by common counsel into the country both of the allies and of the Romans—for there had been some incursions of the exiles into it too—or whether the commonwealth was the cause of none of these doings; and if they should say the deeds were those of private men without the people's sanction, to demand back what had been plundered and the surrender of the perpetrators of the wrongs.

60.4. When the envoys arrived and heard the speeches, the Aequians gave them evasive answers, saying the deed had not been by common counsel, but refusing to give up the doers, men who had lost their city and become wanderers and were suppliants of theirs in their

60.5. poverty. At this Fabius, indignant and recalling the broken agreements they had made, when he saw the Aequians dissembling and asking time for deliberation and detaining him under pretext of hospitality, undertook to spy out matters in the city, and going about every public and sacred place under pretence of sightseeing, and seeing all the workshops full of weapons of war, some already finished, others still in hand, he discerned their intent.

60.6. And coming to Rome, he reported to the senate what he had heard and seen. And it, no longer doubting, voted to send the fetiales to declare war on the Aequians, unless they drove the Antiate exiles from the city and submitted to justice for those they had wronged. The Aequians gave the men bolder answers, and agreed to receive the war not unwillingly.

60.7. But the Romans were not able to send an army against them that year, whether the divine power hindered, or because of the sicknesses that held the multitude for a large part of the year; but, for the guarding of the allies, a small force went out, led by Quintus Servilius, one of the consuls, and tarried on the borders of the Latins.

60.8. In the city, the temple of Jupiter the Faithful was consecrated by Spurius Postumius, his colleague, on the so-called Nones of the month June, on the hill of Enyalius—a temple built by the last king Tarquinius, but which had not received from him the dedication customary among the Romans. Then, the senate so resolving, Postumius took the inscription of it for himself. Nothing else worthy of mention was done under these consuls.

61.1. In the seventy-ninth Olympiad, in which Xenophon of Corinth won, Archedemides being archon at Athens, Titus Quintius Capitolinus and Quintus Fabius Vibulanus assumed the consulship—Quintius being designated to the office by the people for the third time, Fabius for the second. To both of these the senate, having handed over large and well-prepared armies, sent them out.

61.2. Quintius, then, was assigned to guard their own land, as much as bordered on the enemy, and Fabius to ravage the Aequians'; and he found the Aequians awaiting him on the borders with a large force. When both sides had pitched their camps in the strongest places, they went out into the plain, the Aequians having challenged and begun the battle, and they continued through much of the day, fighting ardently and laboriously, each placing the victory in himself and no other.

61.3. When the swords of most of them had become useless from the continual blows, the commanders sounded the recall, and they withdrew to their camps. After this action there was no longer a pitched battle between them, but certain skirmishes and clashes of light-armed troops over water and in the escorting of provisions, continual; yet in these too they were mostly

61.4. evenly matched. While these things were happening, a part of the Aequian army, going round by other roads, invaded the part of the Roman territory that lay farthest from the border and for that reason was unguarded; from which it carried off many persons and much property, and, eluding those patrolling their land with Quintius, departed to its own. This happened repeatedly and brought much disgrace upon the consuls.

61.5. Then Fabius, learning through scouts and prisoners that the best of the Aequian force had gone out from the camp, leaving the eldest in his own camp, himself went out by night, bringing horsemen and the freshest of the foot. The Aequians, having plundered the places they had invaded, were departing, carrying off much booty; and Fabius appeared upon them when they had not gone far, took away the booty, and in battle conquered those who stood their ground, who proved themselves brave men; the rest, scattered, escaping their pursuers through knowledge of the roads, fled to the camp.

61.6. When the Aequians had been checked by this disaster, which had come upon them contrary to expectation, they broke up their camp by night and departed, and no longer thereafter came out of the city; but they endured to see their grain, then at its height, gathered by the enemy, and their herds of cattle driven off, their property plundered and their farmsteads given to fire and many prisoners led away. Having accomplished this, Fabius, since he had to hand over the office to others, roused his force and led it away; and Quintius did the same.

62.1. Coming to Rome, they designated as consuls Aulus Postumius Albus and Servius Furius. These had but lately taken up the office when messengers from the Latin allies, dispatched in haste, came to the Romans. These, standing before the senate, made plain that the affairs of the Antiates were unstable, the Aequians sending embassies to them in secret and openly, under pretext of trade, many Volscians entering the city—whom those Antiates who had earlier abandoned the city when it was being allotted, owing to poverty, and had deserted to the Aequians, were bringing in,

62.2. as I said. They reported that many of the natives and many of the colonists had been corrupted along with them; and that, unless they were forestalled with a worthy garrison, some unexpected war would rise against the Romans from there too. Not long after these, others sent by the Hernicans reported that a large Aequian force had gone out and, settled in their country, was plundering and pillaging everything, and that, together with the Aequians, the Volscians too were in the field, furnishing the greater part of the army.

62.3. To this the senate voted to send another garrison against those Antiates who were disturbing affairs—for some of them had come to make defence and were plainly meditating nothing sound—a garrison which should keep the city in safety; and to lead the army against the Aequians, the other of the consuls, Servius Furius; and the sortie of both was swift.

62.4. The Aequians, learning that the Roman army had gone out, rose up from the Hernican country and advanced to meet them. When they saw one another, that day they encamped not far apart, and on the next the enemy came to the Roman camp to make trial of their intent.

62.5. When the Romans did not come out to battle, they used skirmishes, and having done nothing worth mention, departed with great boasting. The Roman consul, leaving the camp on the following day—for the place was not very safe—removed to a more suitable one, where he dug a deeper ditch and threw up a higher rampart. To the enemy, seeing this, much boldness accrued; and still more, when an allied force came to them from the Volscian and Aequian nations, they delayed no longer but led on against the Roman camp.

63.1. The consul, considering that the force with him would not be a match fighting against both nations, sent some of the horsemen to carry letters to Rome, by which he asked that swift aid come to them, since the whole army with him was in danger of being destroyed.

63.2. His colleague Postumius, having read this—it was about midnight when the horsemen arrived—through many heralds summoned the senators from their houses; and a decree of the senate was passed, before broad day, that Titus Quintius, who had been consul for the third time, taking the freshest of the young men, both foot and horse, adorned with proconsular authority, march against the enemy at once; and that Aulus Postumius, the other consul, gathering the rest of the forces, which needed more time to assemble, come to his aid as soon as he could get speed. And day already

63.3. dawned, and Quintius gathered the volunteers, about five thousand men; and without much delay he led them out of the city. Suspecting this, the Aequians waited and, before the aid should come to the Romans, resolved to assault their camp, and, thinking to take it by force and numbers, came out in a body, dividing themselves into two.

63.4. There ensued a great contest through the whole day, as they boldly mounted the outworks at many points, and neither javelins nor missiles from archers nor stones from slings, hurled in unceasing volleys, held them off. Thereupon the consul and the legate, exhorting one another, at one moment threw open the gates and ran out with the freshest against the enemy, and clashing with them at both points of assault, drove back those mounting the rampart. A rout taking place, the consul, pursuing those opposed to him a little, turned back;

63.5. but his brother and legate, Publius Furius, borne on by his resolution and zeal, drove as far as the enemy's camp, pursuing and slaying. There were two cohorts about him, numbering no more than a thousand men. The enemy, learning this, becoming about five thousand, advanced against him from the camp; and these came on from in front, while their horsemen, riding round in a circle, fell upon the Romans from

63.6. behind. Encircled in this fashion by them and cut off from their own, when it was open to them to save themselves by handing over their arms—for the enemy invited them to this and set great store on taking a thousand of the best Romans prisoner, hoping through them to find a fair settlement of the war—they, despising them and exhorting one another to do nothing unworthy of the city, fighting and killing many of the enemy, all died.

64.1. These having been destroyed, the Aequians, lifted up by the advantage, came to the Roman camp, raising aloft the head of Publius fixed on a spear, and those of the other distinguished men, thinking thereby to terrify those within and force them to hand over their arms. But to them there came, toward the calamity of the fallen, a certain pity, and they bewailed their fortune; but toward the contest a double boldness grew, and a fine longing either to conquer or to die in the same manner as those men, before coming into the enemy's hands.

64.2. That night, then, while the enemy lay encamped against the rampart, the Romans remained sleepless, repairing the damaged parts of the camp and making ready many and various other things with which to ward them off, if they should attempt again to assault the walls. On the following day the assaults began again, and the rampart was torn through at many points; and often the Aequians were driven off by sallies in bands from the camp, and often those who came out too boldly were beaten back by the others.

64.3. And this went on through the whole day; whereupon the Roman consul, pierced through his shield with a javelin, was wounded in the thigh, and many others of the distinguished, as many as fought around him; and now, when the Romans were already worn out, unexpectedly toward late evening Quintius appeared, approaching, leading the volunteer aid of the freshest; whom the enemy, seeing approach, turned about, leaving the siege unfinished; and the Romans, sallying out upon them as they departed, slew the laggards.

64.4. They did not, however, pursue long, being weak from wounds in most cases, but quickly turned back. And after this each side kept guard over themselves, remaining in their camps for a long time.

65.1. Then another force of the Aequians and Volscians, supposing they had a fine occasion to plunder the Roman territory, since the best of their force was in the field, went out by night; and bursting into the farthest country, where the farmers thought there was no danger, they got much money and

65.2. many persons. They did not, however, have a fine or fortunate end to their departure from there. For the other consul, Postumius, leading the aid that had been gathered to those being warred upon in the camp, when he learned what the enemy were doing, appeared upon them unexpectedly.

65.3. They neither were dismayed nor feared his approach, but laying down at leisure their baggage and the booty in one strong place, and leaving a sufficient guard over these, the rest in order advanced to grips with the Romans; and engaging, they performed deeds worthy of mention, few fighting against many—for many, now scattered, streamed together upon them from the fields—lightly armed against men with their whole bodies under guard, and they made many of the Romans dead, and came near, being caught in a foreign land, to setting up trophies over those who had come against them.

65.4. But the consul and the picked Roman horsemen with him, charging on unbridled horses against the strongest and best-fighting part of them, broke the line and struck down many. The front fighters being destroyed, the rest of the force, turning, gave way to flight; and those guarding the baggage, abandoning it, went off into the nearby mountains. In the contest itself, then, but few of them perished, but in the flight very many, being ignorant of the country and pursued by the Roman horse.

66.1. While these things were happening, the other consul, Servius, having learned that his colleague was approaching to aid him, and fearing lest the enemy meet him and cut him off from the road to him, planned to draw them off by making assaults on the

66.2. camp. But the enemy forestalled him; for when they learned of the disaster of their own men, which those who survived from the foray reported, they broke up their camp on the first night after the battle and departed to the city, not having accomplished all they wished.

66.3. For, besides those who died in the battles and the forays, they lost in that flight many more than before. For those weighed down by toil and wounds, advancing slowly, when their limbs failed them fell, especially about the streams and rivers, burning with thirst; whom the Roman horsemen, overtaking, slew.

66.4. Nor indeed did the Romans return having prospered in everything from that contest; for they had lost many brave men in the battles, and a legate who proved the most illustrious of all in the contest; yet they returned bringing the city a victory inferior to none. These things were done under their magistracy.

67.1. In the following year, Lucius Aebutius and Publius Servilius Priscus having taken up the office, the Romans performed no deed worth mention either in war or in civic matters, being afflicted by a pestilential sickness such as never before; which first came upon the herds of grazing horses and oxen, and from these fell upon the flocks of goats and sheep, and destroyed nearly all the four-footed beasts; then it laid hold of the herdsmen and farmers, and, passing through all the country, fell upon the city.

67.2. The multitude of slaves and hirelings and the poor throng that it destroyed it was not easy to discover. For at first the dead were carried off in heaps on wagons, but at last those of whom the least account was made were thrust into the channel of the river that flows by. Of those of the senatorial council a fourth part was reckoned to have perished, among whom were both consuls and most of the tribunes.

67.3. The sickness began about the Kalends of the month September, and lasted that whole year, seizing and destroying every nature and age alike. When the neighbours gained knowledge of the evils holding Rome, the Aequians and Volscians, thinking it a fine occasion to overthrow her dominion, made compacts and oaths with one another concerning alliance; and having prepared the things needful for a siege, both as fast as they could, led out their forces.

67.4. And that they might take from Rome the aid of the allies, they first invaded the land of the Latins and Hernicans. When an embassy came to the senate from each of the peoples being warred upon, asking for alliance, one of the consuls, Lucius Aebutius, happened to have died that very day, and Publius Servilius was near death; who, still breathing a little, summoned

67.5. the senate. Of the senators most, half-dead, carried on litters and holding session, answered those present to report to their people that the senate permitted them to defend against the enemy through their own valour, until the consul should recover and the

67.6. force that should fight with them be gathered to them. The Romans having so answered, the Latins, having brought into their cities from the fields what they could, kept guard of the walls, and let the rest perish. The Hernicans, vexed at the spoiling and plundering of their fields, took up arms and went out. Having fought brilliantly and lost many of their own, but killed far more of the enemy, being forced back, they fled to their walls and no longer attempted battle.

68.1. The Aequians and Volscians, having plundered their country fearlessly, came to the lands of the Tusculans. Plundering these too, none defending, they reached the borders of the Gabini. Marching through this land too without fear, they came to Rome.

68.2. They threw the city into sufficient confusion, but were not able to master it; for though the Romans were weak in body and had lost both consuls—for Servilius too had died lately—arming beyond their strength, they stood upon the walls. The circuit of the city at that time was as great as the circle of the city of the Athenians. The parts lying on hills and sheer rocks are fortified by nature itself and need little guarding; the parts walled along the Tiber river—whose breadth is about four plethra, and whose depth is such that large ships can sail it, and whose stream, swift like any other, makes great eddies—it is not possible for foot to cross except by a bridge, which at that time was a single one, made of wood, which they broke up in the wars.

68.3. One spot, which is the most assailable of the city, from the gates called Esquiline to the Colline, is fortified by hand. For a ditch is dug before it, at its narrowest greater than a hundred feet wide, and its depth is thirty feet; and a wall stands above the ditch, held within by a mound high and broad, such that it can neither be shaken down by rams nor overturned when the foundations are undermined.

68.4. This place is about seven stades in length and fifty feet in breadth; in which then the Romans, drawn up in numbers, held off the enemy's assault, the men of that time knowing neither how to build covered sheds for filling ditches, nor the engines called helepoleis. The enemy, then, despairing of taking the city, departed from the wall, and having ravaged the country through which they passed, led their forces home.

69.1. The Romans, having chosen the so-called interreges for the elections—which they are accustomed to do whenever anarchy holds the city—designated as consuls Lucius Lucretius and Titus Veturius Geminus. Under their magistracy the sickness ceased, and the civic charges, both private and public, met with a postponement, one of the tribunes, Sextus Titius, attempting again to stir up the measure concerning the land-allotment, but the people preventing it and putting it off to more suitable occasions.

69.2. Great eagerness fell upon all to take vengeance on those who had marched against the city in the time of the sickness; and at once, the senate having voted and the people ratified the war, they enrolled the forces, none of those of military age, nor even any whom the law released, thinking fit to be left out of that campaign. The force being divided into three, one part was left to guard the city, led by Quintus Furius, a man of consular rank; the two went out with the consuls against

69.3. the Aequians and Volscians. This same thing had already happened among the enemy too. For the best force from each of the peoples, gathered together, was in the field under two commanders, and was about to set out from the Hernican land, where it then was, and overrun all the Roman subject territory; the less serviceable was left to guard their own towns, lest

69.4. some sudden onset of enemies come upon them. The Roman consuls, deliberating on this, thought it best first to attack their cities, by some such reckoning: that their common army would be dissolved, if each learned that their own affairs were in extreme danger, and would think it far better to save their own than to destroy the enemy's. Lucretius, then, invaded the Aequian country, Veturius the Volscian. The Aequians, then, seeing all outside being destroyed, kept the city and the forts under guard.

70.1. But the Volscians, led on by boldness and arrogance, and despising the Roman army as not a match to engage their own multitude, went out to fight for their land, and encamped near Veturius. As is wont to befall a newly levied army, gathered from a civic and farming crowd assembled for the occasion, in which much was unarmed and untried in dangers, it did not take courage even to come to grips with the enemy;

70.2. but at the Romans' very first onset, the multitude, thrown into confusion and enduring neither the war-cry nor the clash of arms, fled headlong to the walls; so that many, caught in the narrows of the roads, died, and far more were thrust together at the gates while the horsemen pursued.

70.3. The Volscians, then, having met with this disaster, blamed themselves for their folly and no longer attempted to hazard anything. The commanders holding the field armies of the Volscians and Aequians, learning that their own lands were being warred upon, resolved that they too should do something noble; and rising from the Hernican and Latin lands, they led their army against Rome with all speed and anger, by some such opinion of their own: that of two fine deeds one would fall to them to accomplish—either to take Rome, which was unguarded, or to drive the enemy out of their own country, since the consuls would be forced to aid their

70.4. country being warred upon. With this in mind, they led their army on at speed, that, falling upon the city unexpectedly, they might at once set to work.

71.1. Coming as far as the city of Tusculum, when they learned that the whole circuit of Rome was teeming with arms, and that before the gates four cohorts had taken the field, each of six hundred men, they turned aside from the road to Rome, and, settling in the country below the city, which in the former invasion they had passed over, ravaged it.

71.2. When one of the consuls, Lucius Lucretius, appeared upon them and pitched his camp not far off, thinking it a fine occasion, before the other Roman force, which Veturius led, should come to Lucretius as an ally, to join battle, having placed their baggage on a hill and left two cohorts over it, the rest advanced into the plain; and engaging the Romans, they proved themselves brave men in the contest

71.3. for a long time. But some of the guards in the rear, learning that an army was descending over a hill, supposed that the other consul had come, leading the force with him, and fearing lest they be encircled by both, no longer held their ground, but turned to flight. In this contest both their commanders, having performed the deeds of brave men, fell, and many others, good men, fighting around them; and those who fled from the battle, scattered, withdrew each to his own country.

71.4. From this Lucretius, having gained much security, ravaged the Aequian land, and Veturius the Volscian, until the time of the elections came. Then, rousing their forces, they led them home, and both led in their triumphs of victory—Lucretius mounted on a four-horse chariot, Veturius entering on foot. For these two triumphs are given to commanders by the senate, as I said, equal in all else, but differing in this, that the one is mounted, the other on foot.