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The History of Rome By Titus Livius

Translated By D. Spillman

Index

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BOOK IV

A law was passed concerning the intermarriage of the patricians and plebeians, after strong resistance on the part of the patricians. Military tribunes with consular power. Censors created. Restoration of the lands unjustly taken from the people of Ardea. Spurius Melius, suspected of aiming at regal power, is slain by C. Servilius Ahala by order of Quintius Cincinnatus, dictator. Cornelius Cossus, having killed Tolumnius, king of the Veientes, offers the second spolia opima. Duration of the censorship, originally five years, limited to one year and a half. Fidenæ reduced, and a colony settled there. The colonists destroyed by the Fidenatians, who are subsequently conquered by Mamercus Æmilius, dictator. A conspiracy of the slaves put down. Postumius, a military tribune, slain by the army for his cruelties. Pay from the treasury first given to the soldiers. Operations against the Volscians, Fidenatians, and Faliscians.

Marcus Genucius and Caius Curtius followed these as consuls. The year was disturbed both at home and abroad. For at the commencement of the year Caius Canuleius, tribune of the people, proposed a law concerning the intermarriage of the patricians and commons; by which the patricians considered that their blood would be contaminated, and the privileges of birth would be confounded; and a hint at first lightly suggested by the tribunes, that it should be lawful that one of the consuls should be elected from the commons, afterwards proceeded so far, that the nine tribunes proposed a bill, "that the people should have the power of electing the consuls, whether they wished, from the commons or the patricians. But they thought that if that were done, the supreme authority would not only be shared with the lowest ranks, but be wholly transferred from the nobility to the commons. With joy therefore the patricians heard that the people of Ardea had revolted in consequence of the injustice of the taking away their land, and that the Veientians had laid[Pg 250] waste the frontiers of the Roman territory, and that the Volscians and Æquans murmured on account of the fortifying of Verrago; so much did they prefer an unsuccessful war to an ignominious peace." These tidings therefore being received and with exaggerations, in order that during the din of so many wars the tribunitian proceedings might be suspended, they order the levies to be held, preparations to be made for war and arms with the utmost activity; with more energy, if possible, than had been used in the consulship of Titus Quintius. Then Caius Canuleius declared aloud in brief terms in the senate, that "the consuls wished in vain to divert the commons from attention to the new laws; that they never should hold a levee while he lived, before the commons had first ratified the laws proposed by him and his colleagues;" and he instantly summoned them to an assembly.

Both the consuls incited the senate against the tribune, and the tribune the people against the consuls at one and the same time. The consuls denied "that tribunitian frenzies could any longer be endured; that they were now come to a crisis; that more hostilities were being stirred up at home than abroad. That this happened not more through the fault of the commons than of the patricians; nor more through that of the tribunes than of the consuls. That the matter for which there was a reward in the state thrived always with the greatest proficiency; that thus it was that men became meritorious in peace, thus in war. That at Rome the highest reward was for sedition; that had ever been the source of honour both to individuals and to collective bodies. They should remember in what condition they had received the majesty of the senate from their forefathers, in what condition they were about to transmit it to their children; that, like the commons, they should have it in their power to boast that it was improved in degree and in splendour. That there was no end, nor would there be, so long as the promoters of sedition were rewarded with honour in proportion as sedition was successful. What and how important schemes Caius Canuleius had set on foot! that he was introducing confounding of family rank, a disturbance of the auspices both public and private, that nothing may remain pure, nothing uncontaminated; that, all distinction being abolished, no one might know either himself or those he belonged to. For what other tendency had those promiscuous[Pg 251] intermarriages, except that intercourse between commons and patricians might be made common after the manner of wild beasts; so that of the offspring each may be ignorant of what blood he may be, of what form of religion he was; that he may belong half to the patricians, half to the commons, not being homogeneous even with himself? That it appeared not enough, that all things divine and human should be confounded; that those disturbers of the common people were now preparing to (seize) the consulship; and first that they sounded people's sentiments in mere conversation on the project of having one consul appointed from the commons; that now the proposition was brought forward, that the people may appoint the consuls, whether they pleased from the patricians or from the people; and that they would appoint no doubt every most turbulent person. The Canuleii, therefore, and the Icilii would be consuls. (They expressed a hope) that Jupiter, the best and greatest, would not suffer the imperial majesty of the sovereign power to descend to that; and that they would certainly die a thousand deaths rather than such a disgrace should be incurred. They were certain that their ancestors, could they have divined that the commons would become not more placable to them, but more intractable, by making successive demands still more unreasonable, after they had obtained the first, would have rather submitted to any struggle, than have suffered such laws to be saddled on them. Because it was then conceded to them with respect to tribunes, the concession was made a second time. There was no end to it; tribunes of the commons and patricians could not subsist in the same state; either the one order or the other office must be abolished; and that a stop should be put to presumption and temerity rather late than never. (Was it right) that they, by sowing discord, should with impunity stir up the neighbouring states against us? and then prevent the state from arming and defending itself against those evils which they may have brought on us? and after they have almost sent for the enemy, not suffer the armies to be levied against the enemies? But Canuleius may have the audacity to declare openly in the senate that, unless the patrician suffer the laws proposed by himself as victorious, to be enacted, he would prevent the levy from being held. What else was this, but threatening that he would betray his country; that he would[Pg 252] suffer it to be attacked and captured? What courage would that expression afford, not to the Roman commons, but to the Volscians, Æquans, and the Veientians! would they not hope that, under the generalship of Canuleius, they should be able to scale the Capitol and citadel, if with the deprivation of privilege and majesty, the tribunes should rob the patricians of their courage also? That the consuls were prepared to act against the wicked schemes of their countrymen, before they would act against the arms of the enemy."

Just when these matters were going on in the senate, Canuleius thus declaimed in favour of his laws and against the consuls: "Frequently even before now I think I have observed how much the patricians despised you, Romans, how unworthy they deemed you to dwell in the one city and within the same walls with them; but on the present occasion most clearly, in their having risen up so determinedly in opposition to those propositions of ours: in which what else do we do, but remind them that we are their fellow citizens, and that though we possess not the same power, we inhabit the same city? In the one we demand intermarriage, a thing which is usually granted to neighbours and foreigners: we have granted even to vanquished enemies the right of citizenship, which is more than the right of intermarriage. In the other we propose nothing new; we only reclaim and demand that which is the people's; that the Roman people may confer honours on whomsoever they may please. And what in the name of goodness is it for which they embroil heaven and earth? why was almost an attack made on me just now in the senate? why do they say that they will not restrain themselves from violence, and threaten that they will insult an office, sacred and inviolable? Shall this city no longer be able to stand, and is the empire at stake, if the right of free suffrage is granted to the Roman people, to confer the consulship on whomsoever they may please, and if a plebeian, though he may be worthy of the highest honour, is not precluded from the hope of attaining that honour? and is this of the same import, whether a plebeian be made a consul, as if any one were to propose a slave or the son of a slave to be consul? Do you perceive in what contempt you live? they would take from you a participation in this light, if it were permitted them. That you breathe, that you enjoy the faculty of speech, that you possess the forms of human beings, excites their indignation. Nay[Pg 253] even, as I hope for mercy, they say that it is contrary to religion that a plebeian should be made consul. I pray, though we are not admitted to the annals, nor to the commentaries of the pontiffs, do we not know even those things which strangers know? that consuls have succeeded kings? and that they possess no privilege, no majesty which was not formerly inherent in kings? Do you suppose that we ever heard it mentioned that Numa Pompilius, who not only was not a patrician, but not even a citizen of Rome, was sent for from the country of the Sabines by order of the people, with the approbation of the senate, and that he was made king at Rome? that afterwards Lucius Tarquinius, who was not only not of Roman, but not even of Italian extraction, the son of Damaratus of Corinth, an emigrant from Tarquinii, was made king, even whilst the sons of Ancus still lived? that after him Servius Tullius, the son of a captive woman of Corniculum, with his father unknown, his mother a slave, attained the throne by his ability and merit? For what shall I say of Titus Tatius the Sabine, whom Romulus himself, the founder of our city, admitted into partnership of the throne? Accordingly, whilst no class of persons is disdained, in whom conspicuous merit may be found, the Roman dominion increased. You do well to be dissatisfied now with a plebeian consul, when your ancestors disdained not foreigners as kings, and when, even after the expulsion of kings, the city was not shut against foreign merit. After the expulsion of the kings, we certainly admitted the Claudian family from the Sabine country not only into citizenship, but even into the number of the patricians. Can a man from a foreigner be made a patrician, then a consul? shall a Roman citizen, if he belong to the commons, be precluded from all hope of the consulate? Do we then deem it impossible that a man of the commons can be a person of fortitude and activity, qualified to excel both in peace and war, tyke to Numa, Lucius Tarquinius, and Servius Tullius? Or, should such appear, shall we not suffer him to meddle with the helm of government? or shall we have consuls like the decemvirs, the most abandoned of mortals, who were, however, all patricians, rather than like the best of kings, though new men?

"But (I may be told) no commoner has been consul since the expulsion of the kings. What then? ought no[Pg 254] innovation to be introduced? and what has not yet been practised, (and in a new state there are many things not yet practised,) ought not even such measures, even though they be useful, be adopted? During the reign of Romulus there were no pontiffs, nor augurs: they were appointed by Numa Pompilius. There was no census in the state, nor the distribution of centuries and classes; it was introduced by Servius Tullius: there never had been consuls; they were created after the expulsion of the kings. Of a dictator neither the office nor the name had existed; it commenced its existence among the senators. There were no tribunes of the people, ædiles, nor quæstors: it was resolved that those officers should be appointed. Within the last ten years we both created decemvirs for compiling laws, and we abolished them. Who can doubt but that in a city doomed for eternal duration, increasing to an immense magnitude, new civil offices, priesthoods, rights of families and of individuals, may be established? This very matter, that there should not be the right of intermarriage between patricians and commons, did not the decemvirs introduce within the last few years to the utmost injury of the commons, on a principle most detrimental to the public? Can there be a greater or more marked insult, than that one portion of the state, as if contaminated, should be deemed unworthy of intermarriage? What else is it than to suffer exile within the same walls, actual rustication? They wish to prevent our being mixed with them by affinity or consanguinity; that our blood be not mingled with theirs. What? if this cast a stain on that nobility of yours, which most of you, the progeny of Albans or Sabines, possess, not in right of birth or blood, but by co-optation into the patricians, having been elected either by the kings, or after the expulsion of kings, by order of the people, could ye not keep it pure by private regulations, by neither marrying into the commons, and by not suffering your daughters or sisters to marry out of the patricians. No one of the commons would offer violence to a patrician maiden; such lust as that belongs to the patricians. None of them would oblige any man against his will to enter into a marriage contract. But really that such a thing should be prevented by law, that the intermarriage of the patricians and plebeians should be interdicted, that it is which is insulting to the commons. Why do you not combine in enacting a[Pg 255] law that there shall be no intermarriage between rich and poor? That which has in all places and always been the business of private regulations, that a woman might marry into whatever family she has been engaged to, and that each man might take a wife out of whatever family he had contracted with, that ye shackle with the restraints of a most tyrannical law, by which ye sever the bonds of civil society and split one state into two. Why do ye not enact a law that a plebeian shall not dwell in the neighbourhood of a patrician? that he shall not go the same road with him? that he shall not enter the same banquet with him? that he shall not stand in the same forum? For what else is there in the matter, if a patrician man wed a plebeian woman, or a plebeian a patrician? What right, pray, is thereby changed? the children surely go with the father. Nor is there any thing which we seek from intermarriage with you, except that we may be held in the number of human beings and fellow citizens; nor is there any reason why ye contest the point, except that it delights you to strive for insult and ignominy to us.

"In a word, whether is the supreme power belonging to the Roman people, or is it yours? Whether by the expulsion of kings has dominion been acquired for you or equal liberty for all? It is fitting that the Roman people should be allowed to enact a law, if it please. Or will ye decree a levy by way of punishment, according as each bill shall be proposed? and as soon as I, as tribune, shall begin to call the tribes to give their votes, will you, forthwith, as consul, force the younger men to take the military oath, and lead them out to camp? and will you threaten the commons? will you threaten the tribune? What, if you had not already twice experienced how little those threats availed against the united sense of the people? Of course it was because you wished to consult for our interest, that you abstained from force. Or was there no contest for this reason, that the party which was the stronger was also the more moderate? Nor will there be any contest now, Romans: they will try your spirit; your strength they will not make trial of. Wherefore, consuls, the commons are prepared to accompany you to these wars, whether real or fictitious, if, by restoring the right of intermarriage, you at length make this one state; if they can coalesce, be united and mixed with you by private ties; if the hope, if the access[Pg 256] to honours be granted to men of ability and energy; if it is lawful to be in a partnership and share of the government; if, what is the result of equal freedom, it be allowed in the distribution of the annual offices to obey and to govern in their turns. If any one shall obstruct these measures, talk about wars, multiply them by report; no one will give in his name, no one will take up arms, no one will fight for haughty masters, with whom there is no participation of honours in public, nor of intermarriage in private."

When both the consuls came forward into the assembly, and the matter had changed from a long series of harangues to altercation, the tribune, on asking why it was not right that a plebeian should be made a consul, an answer was returned truly perhaps, though by no means expediently for the present contest, "that no plebeian could have the auspices, and for this reason the decemvirs had prohibited the intermarriage, lest from uncertainty of descent the auspices might be vitiated." The commons were fired with indignation at this above all, because, as if hateful to the immortal gods, they were denied to be qualified to take auspices. And now (as the commons both had a most energetic supporter in the tribune, and they themselves vied with him in perseverance) there was no end of the contentions, until the patricians, being at length overpowered, agreed that the law regarding intermarriage should be passed, judging that by these means most probably the tribunes would either give up altogether or postpone till after the war the question concerning the plebeian consuls; and that in the mean time the commons, content with the intermarriage-law (being passed,) would be ready to enlist. When Canuleius was now in high repute by his victory over the patricians and by the favour of the commons, the other tribunes being excited to contend for their bill, set to work with all their might, and, the accounts regarding the war augmenting daily, obstruct the levy. The consuls, when nothing could be transacted through the senate in consequence of the opposition of the tribunes, held meetings of the leading men at their own houses. It was becoming evident that they must concede the victory either to the enemies or to their countrymen. Valerius and Horatius alone of the consulars did not attend the meetings. The opinion of Caius Claudius was for arming the consuls against the tribunes. The sentiments of[Pg 257] the Quintii, both Cincinnatus and Capitolinus, were averse to bloodshed, and to violating (persons) whom by the treaty concluded with the commons they had admitted to be sacred and inviolable. Through these meetings the matter was brought to this, that they suffered tribunes of the soldiers with consular authority to be elected from the patricians and commons without distinction; that with respect to the election of consuls no change should be made; and with this the tribunes were content, as were also the commons. An assembly is now proclaimed for electing three tribunes with consular power. This being proclaimed, forthwith whoever had contributed to promote sedition by word or deed, more particularly men who had been tribunes, began to solicit support and to bustle about the forum as candidates; so that despair, in the first instance, of obtaining the honour, by reason of the irritated state of the people's mind, then indignation at having to hold the office with such persons, deterred the patricians; at length however, being forced, they stood as candidates, lest they might appear to have relinquished all share in the government. The result of this election showed that the sentiments of persons in the struggle for liberty and dignity are different from those they feel when the contest is laid aside, the judgment being unbiassed; for the people elected all patricians as tribunes, content with this, that the plebeians had been taken into account. Where could you now find in an individual such moderation, disinterestedness, and elevation of mind, as was then displayed by the entire people?

In the three hundred and tenth year after the city of Rome was built, for the first time military tribunes in the room of consuls enter into office, Aulus Sempronius Atratinus, Lucius Atilius, Titus Clælius; in whose office the concord prevailing at home afforded peace also abroad. There are some who, without mentioning the proposal of the law concerning the election of consuls from among the commons, say that three military tribunes were elected on account of the Veientian war being added to the war of the Æquans and the Volscians and to the revolt of the Ardeates, because two consuls could not execute so many wars together, these tribunes being invested also with the authority and insignia of consuls. The jurisdiction of that office however did not stand on a firm footing, because the third month[Pg 258] after they entered on the office, they resigned the honour, in pursuance of a decree of the augurs, as if unduly elected; because Caius Curtius, who had presided at the election, had not selected his tent with due regard to ceremony. Ambassadors came to Rome from Ardea complaining of the injustice in such a manner, that it appeared that, if it were redressed, they would continue in amity and the observance of the treaty, on the restitution of their land. The answer returned by the senate was: "that the judgment of the people could not be rescinded by the senate, besides such a measure could not be adopted on precedent or with justice;, as an additional reason also for the purpose of preserving concord between the several orders of the state. If the Ardeans were willing to abide a seasonable conjuncture, and leave to the senate the mode of redressing the injustice done to them, that the consequence would be that they would rejoice for having moderated their resentment, and that they should be convinced that the patricians were equally anxious that no injustice should arise against them, and that any which may have arisen should not be lasting." Thus the ambassadors, saying that they should lay the whole matter anew before their friends, were dismissed courteously. The patricians, now that the republic was without any curule magistrate, assembled together and elected an interrex. The contest whether consuls or military tribunes should be elected, kept the matter for several days in a state of interregnum. The interrex and senate strive that the elections of consuls be held; the tribunes of the people, and the people themselves, that elections of the military tribunes be held. The patricians succeeded, because both the commons, sure to confer the one or the other honour on patricians, gave up a needless contest, and the leaders of the commons preferred those elections at which no account was to be taken of them (as candidates) to those at which they should be passed by as unworthy. The tribunes of the commons also gave up the contest without a decision, as a compliment to the chiefs of the patricians. Titus Quintius Barbatus, the interrex, elects consuls Lucius Papirius Mugillanus, Lucius Sempronius Atratinus. During their consulship, the treaty was renewed with the Ardeans; and that is a record to prove, that they were consuls in that year, though they are not to be found among the ancient annals,[Pg 259] nor in the books of the magistrates. I suppose because military tribunes existed at the commencement of the year, on that account, though these consuls were substituted, the names of the consuls were left out, just as if the military tribunes were the entire year in office. Licinius Macer states, that they were found both in the Ardean treaty and in the linen books at the temple of Moneta. There was tranquillity both at home and abroad, though so many alarms were held out by the neighbouring states.

This year (whether it had tribunes only, or consuls substituted in the room of tribunes) is followed by a year when there were undoubtedly consuls, scil. Marcus Geganius Macerinus a second time, Titus Quintius Capitolinus a fifth time. This same year was the commencement of the censorship, a thing which arose from an humble origin, which afterwards increased so much in importance, that in it was vested the regulation of the morals and discipline of Rome, the senate and the centuries of the knights, the distinction of honour and of ignominy were under the sway of that office, the legal right to public and private places, the revenues of the Roman people fell under their beck and jurisdiction. The institution of the thing originated in this, that the people not having been subjected to a survey for several years, the census could neither be deferred, nor had the consuls leisure to discharge their duty, when wars impended from so many states. An observation was made by the senate, "that an office laborious in itself, and one little suited to the consular office, required a magistrate for itself, to whose authority should be submitted the duties of the several scribes, the custody and care of the records, as well as the adjustment of the form to be adopted in the census." And inconsiderable though the proposal might be, still the senate received it with great pleasure, because it increased the number of patrician magistrates in the state, judging also that that would come to pass, which really did occur, viz. that the influence of those who should preside, and the honour of the office would derive on it additional authority and dignity. The tribunes also, considering the discharge of the duty (as was really the case) as necessary rather than the duty itself, as being attended with lustre, did not indeed offer opposition, lest they should through perverseness show a disposition to thwart them even[Pg 260] in trifles. After the honour was rejected by the leading men of the state, the people by their suffrages appointed to the office of conducting the census Papirius and Sempronius, concerning whose consulate doubts are entertained, that in that magistracy they might have some recompence for the incompleteness of their consulate. They were called censors from the nature of their office.

Whilst these matters are transacting at Rome, ambassadors come from Ardea, imploring aid for their city, which was nearly destroyed, in consideration of their very ancient alliance, and of the treaty recently renewed. For by intestine wars they were not allowed to enjoy the peace with Rome, which they had by the soundest policy preserved; the cause and origin of which is said to have arisen from a struggle between factions; which have proved and ever will prove more a cause of destruction to several states, than foreign wars, famine, or disease, or any of the other evils which men refer to the anger of heaven, as the severest of public calamities. Two young men courted a maiden of a plebeian family, highly distinguished for beauty: one of them on a level with the maid in point of birth, and favoured by her guardians, who were themselves of the same rank; the other of noble birth, captivated by nothing but her beauty. The latter was aided by the good wishes of the nobles, through which party disputes made their way even into the girl's family. The nobleman was preferred in the judgment of the mother, who was anxious that her daughter should have the most splendid match possible: the guardians, mindful of party even in that transaction, strove for the person of their own order. As the matter could not be settled within the walls of the house, they proceeded to a court of justice. On hearing the claim of the mother and of the guardians, the magistrate decides the right of marriage in conformity with the wish of the mother. But violence was the more powerful. For the guardians, having harangued openly in the forum among persons of their own faction, on the injustice of the decree, collected a party and carry off the girl from her mother's house: against whom a body of nobles having arisen more incensed than before, attends the young man rendered furious by the outrage. A desperate battle takes place; the commons in no respect like to the Roman commons were worsted, and having set out from[Pg 261] the city in arms, and taken possession of a hill, make excursions into the lands of the nobles with fire and sword. The city too, which had been previously free from all contest, they set about besieging, having induced, by the hope of plunder, a multitude of artisans to join them: nor was any appearance or calamity of war absent; as if the whole state were infested by the mad rage of the two young men, who sought the accomplishment of the fatal match through their country's ruin. The arms and war at home seemed insufficient to both parties. The nobles called in the Romans to the relief of their besieged city; the commons called upon the Volscians to join them in storming Ardea. The Volscians, under the command of Clælius, an Æquan, came first to Ardea, and drew a line of circumvallation around the enemy's walls. When news of this was brought to Rome, Marcus Geganius, the consul, having set out immediately at the head of an army, selected a place for his camp about three miles from the enemy; and the day being now fast declining, he orders his soldiers to refresh themselves; then at the fourth watch he puts his troops in motion; and the work, once commenced, was expedited in such a manner, that at sun-rise the Volscians found themselves enclosed by the Romans with stronger works than the city was by themselves. The consul had also at another place connected an arm to the wall of Ardea, through which his friends might pass to and from the town.

The Volscian general, who up to that period had maintained his army, not out of provisions which had been previously provided, but with corn brought in daily from the plunder of the country, when now encompassed by a rampart he perceives himself suddenly destitute of every thing, calling the consul to a conference, says, that "if the Roman came for the purpose of raising the siege, he would withdraw the Volscians from thence." To this the consul made answer, that "the vanquished had to accept terms, not to dictate them; and as the Volscians came at their own discretion to attack the allies of the Roman people, they should not go off in the same same way." He orders, "that their general be given up, their arms laid down, acknowledging themselves vanquished, and ready to submit to his further orders: otherwise, whether they went away or stayed, that he would prove a determined enemy, and would prefer to carry to Rome a victory over the[Pg 262] Volscians than an insidious peace." The Volscians, determined on trying the slender hope they had in arms, all other being now cut off, besides many other disadvantages, having come to an engagement in a place unfavourable for fighting, and still more so for retreat, when they were being cut down on every side, from fighting have recourse to entreaties; having given up their general and surrendered their arms, they are sent under the yoke and dismissed full of disgrace and suffering, with one garment each. And when they halted not far from the city of Tusculum, in consequence of an old grudge of the Tusculans they were surprised, unarmed as they were, and suffered severe punishment, a messenger being scarcely left to bring an account of their defeat. The Roman general quieted the disturbed state of affairs at Ardea, beheading the principal authors of that commotion, and confiscating their effects to the public treasury of the Ardeans; the Ardeans considered the injustice of the decision completely repaired by such kindness on the part of the Roman people; it seemed to the senate, however, that something remained to be done to obliterate the remembrance of public avarice. The consul returns to the city in triumph, Clælius, the general of the Volscians, being led before his chariot, and the spoils being carried before him, of which he had stripped the enemy's army after he had sent them under the yoke. Quintius the consul, by his civil administration, equalled, which is no easy matter, the glory attained by his colleague in war; for he so regulated the domestic care of harmony and peace, by dispensing justice with moderation to the highest and the lowest, that both the patricians considered him a strict consul, and the commons, as one sufficiently lenient. Against the tribunes too he carried his measures more by his influence than by striving against them. Five consulships conducted with the same even tenor of conduct, and every part of his life being passed in a manner worthy of the consular dignity, rendered himself almost more venerable than the high office itself. On this account no mention was made of the military tribunes during this consulate.

They appoint as consuls Marcus Fabius Vibulanus, Publius Æbutius Cornicen. Fabius and Æbutius, the consuls, inasmuch as they perceived that they succeeded to a greater glory of achievements performed at home and abroad,[Pg 263] (the year was rendered particularly remarkable among the neighbouring states, both friendly and hostile, because relief had been afforded to the Ardeans in their perilous situation with so much zeal,) the more strenuously exerted themselves in obtaining a decree of the senate, that they might completely efface the infamy of the decision from the memory of men, to the effect that since the state of the Ardeans had been reduced to a few by intestine war, a colony should be sent thither as a protection against the Volscians. This is what was stated publicly on the tables, that the intention entertained of rescinding the decision might escape the knowledge of the commons and tribunes. But they had agreed that, a much greater number of Rutulian colonists being enrolled than of Romans, no land should be distributed, except that which had been intercepted by the infamous decision; and that not a sod of it should be assigned to any Roman, until all the Rutulians had had their share. In this way the land returned to the Ardeans. The commissioners appointed to transplant the colony to Ardea were Agrippa Menenius, Titus Clælius Siculus, and Marcus Æbutius Elva. When they, in the discharge of their by no means popular office, had given offence to the commons by assigning to the allies the land which the Roman people had decided to be their own, and were not even much supported by the patricians, because they had not deferred in any way to the influence of any one, a day having been appointed for them by the tribunes to appear before the people, they escaped all vexatious annoyance by enrolling themselves as settlers and remaining in the colony, which they now had as a testimony of their integrity and justice.

There was peace at home and abroad both this and the following year, Caius Furius Pacilus and Marcus Papirius Crassus being consuls. The games which had been vowed by the decemvirs, in pursuance of a decree of the senate on occasion of the secession of the commons from the patricians, were performed this year. An occasion for sedition was sought in vain by Pætelius, who, having been made a tribune of the commons a second time, by denouncing these same threats, could neither prevail on the consuls to submit to the senate the questions concerning the division of the lands[Pg 264] among the people; and when, after a hard struggle, he had succeeded so far that the patricians should be consulted as to whether it was their pleasure that an election should be held of consuls or of tribunes, consuls were ordered to be elected; and the menaces of the tribune were now laughed at, when he threatened that he would stop the levy, inasmuch as the neighbouring states being now quiet, there was no occasion either for war or for preparations for war. This tranquil state of things is followed by a year, in which Proculus Geganius Macerinus, Lucius Menenius Lanatus were consuls, remarkable for a variety of disasters and dangers, also for disturbances, famine, for their having almost submitted their necks to the yoke of arbitrary power through the allurement of largesses. Foreign war alone was wanting, by which if matters had been aggravated, they could scarcely have stood out against them by the aid of all the gods. Their misfortunes began with famine; whether it was that the season was unfavourable to the crops, or that the cultivation of the land was relinquished for the allurements of the city, and of public harangues; for both causes are assigned. And the patricians accused the commons as being idle; the tribunes of the commons complained sometimes of the fraud, at other times of the negligence of the consuls. At length the commons prevailed, without opposition on the part of the senate, that Lucius Minutius should be appointed president of the market; doomed to be more successful in that office in preserving liberty than in the discharge of his own peculiar province: although in the end he bore away the well-earned gratitude of the people as well as the glory of having lowered the price of provisions. When he had made but slight advance in relieving the markets by sending embassies around the neighbouring states by land and sea to no purpose, except that an inconsiderable quantity of corn was imported from Etruria, and applying himself to the careful dispensations of their scanty stock, by obliging persons to show their supply, and to sell whatever was over and above a month's provision, and by depriving the slaves of one half of their daily allowance; then by censuring and holding up to the resentment of the people the corn-hoarders, he rather discovered the great scarcity of grain than relieved it by this rigorous inquisition. Many of the com[Pg 265]mons, all hope being lost, rather than be tortured by dragging out existence, muffled up their heads and precipitated themselves into the Tiber.

Then Spurius Mælius, of the equestrian order, extremely rich considering these times, set about a project useful in itself, but having a most pernicious tendency, and a still more pernicious motive. For having, by the assistance of his friends and clients, bought up corn from Etruria at his private expense, (which very circumstance, I think, had been an impediment in the endeavour to reduce the price of corn by the exertions of the state,) he set about giving out largesses of corn: and having won over the commons by this munificence, he drew them with him wherever he went, conspicuous and consequential beyond the rank of a private citizen, insuring to him as undoubted the consulship by the favour (they manifested towards him) and the hopes (they excited in him.) He himself, as the mind of man is not to be satiated with that which fortune holds out the hope of, began to aspire to things still higher, and altogether unwarrantable; and since even the consulship would have to be taken from the patricians against their will, he began to set his mind on kingly power;—that that would be the only prize worthy of such grand designs and of the struggle which would have to be endured. The consular elections were now coming on, which circumstance destroyed him completely, his plans being not yet arranged or sufficiently matured. Titus Quintius Capitolinus was elected consul for the sixth time, a man by no means well suited to answer the views of one meditating political innovations: Agrippa Menenius is attached to him as colleague, who bore the cognomen of Lanatus: and Lucius Minutius as president of the markets, whether he was re-elected, or created for an indefinite period, as long as circumstances should require; for there is nothing certain in the matter, except this, his name was entered as president in the linen books among the magistrates for both years. Here Minucius, conducting the same office in a public capacity which Mælius had undertaken to conduct in a private character, the same class of persons frequenting the houses of both, having ascertained the matter, lays it before the senate, "that arms were collecting in the house of Mælius, and that he held assemblies in his house: and that his designs were unquestionably bent on regal dominion: that the time[Pg 266] for the execution of the project was not yet fixed: that all other matters were settled; and that the tribunes were bought over for hire to betray the public liberty, and that the several parts were assigned to the leaders of the multitude. That he laid these things before them almost later than was consistent with safety, lest he might be the reporter of any thing uncertain or ill-grounded." When these things were heard, the chiefs of the patricians both rebuked the consuls of the former year, for having suffered those largesses and meetings of the people to go on in a private house, as well as the new consuls for having waited until a matter of such importance should be reported to the senate by the president of the markets, which required the consul to be not only the reporter, but the punisher also; then Titus Quintius said, "that the consuls were unfairly censured, who being fettered by the laws concerning appeal, enacted to weaken their authority, by no means possessed as much power in their office as will, to punish that proceeding according to its atrocity. That there was wanting a man not only determined in himself, but one who was unshackled and freed from the fetters of those laws. That he would therefore appoint Lucius Quintius dictator; that in him there would be a determination suitable to so great a power." Whilst all approved, Quintius at first refused; and asked them what they meant, in exposing him in the extremity of age to such a contest. Then when they all said that in that aged mind there was not only more wisdom, but more energy also, than in all the rest, and went on loading him with deserved praises, whilst the consul relaxed not in his original determination; Cincinnatus at length having prayed to the immortal gods, that his old age might not prove a detriment or disgrace to the republic at so dangerous a juncture, is appointed dictator by the consul: he himself then appoints Caius Servilius Ahala his master of the horse.

On the next day, having stationed proper guards, when he had gone down to the forum, and the attention of the commons was attracted to him by the strangeness and extraordinary nature of the thing, and Mælius's friends and himself their leader perceived that the power of such high authority was directly aimed at them; when, moreover, those who were not aware of the designs on regal power, went on asking, "what tumult, what sudden war, had called for either the[Pg 267] dictatorial authority, or Quintius, after his eightieth year, administrator of affairs," Servilius, master of the horse, being sent by the dictator to Mælius, says, "The dictator summons you." When he, being alarmed, asked what he meant, and Servilius stated that "he must stand a trial," and answer the charge brought against him before the senate by Minucius, Mælius drew back into the band of his adherents, and at first, looking around him, he began to skulk off: at length when the beadle, by order of the master of the horse, was bringing him off, being rescued by those present, and running away, he implored the protection of the Roman people, and alleged that he was persecuted by a conspiracy of the patricians because he had acted kindly towards the people: he besought them that they would assist him in this critical emergency, and not suffer him to be butchered before their eyes. Ahala Servilius overtook and slew him whilst exclaiming in this manner; and smeared with the blood of the person so slain, and surrounded by a body of young nobles, he carries back word to the dictator that Mælius having been summoned to him, and commencing to excite the multitude after he had repulsed the beadle, had received condign punishment. "Thou hast acted nobly, Caius Servilius," said the dictator, "in having saved the republic."

He then ordered the multitude, who were much agitated, not knowing what judgment to form of the deed, to be called to an assembly: and he openly declared, "that Mælius had been justly put to death, even though he may have been innocent of the charge of aiming at regal power, who, when summoned to attend the dictator by the master of the horse, had not come. That he himself had taken his seat to examine into the case; that, after it had been investigated, Mælius should have met a result corresponding to his deserts; that when employing force, in order that he might not commit himself to a trial, he had been checked by force. Nor should they proceed with him as with a citizen, who, born in a free state amid laws and rights, in a city from which he knew that kings had been expelled, and on the same year the sons of the king's sister and the children of the consul, the liberator of his country, had been put to death by their father, on a plot for readmitting the royal family into the city having been discovered, from which Collatinus Tarquinius the consul, through[Pg 268] a hatred of his name, was ordered to resign his office and go into exile; in which capital punishment was inflicted on Spurius Cassius several years after for forming designs to assume the sovereignty; in which the decemvirs were recently punished with confiscation, exile, and death, in consequence of regal tyranny in that city, Spurius Mælius conceived a hope of attaining regal power. And who was this man? Although no nobility, no honours, no deserts should open to any man the road to domination, yet still the Claudii and Cassii, by reason of the consulates, the decemvirates, the honours of their own and those of their ancestors, and from the splendour of their families, had raised their aspiring minds to heights to which it was impious to raise them: that Spurius Mælius, to whom a tribuneship of the commons should rather be an object of wishes than of hope, a wealthy corn-merchant, had conceived the hope to purchase the liberty of his countrymen for two pounds of corn; had supposed that a people victorious over all their neighbours could be cajoled into servitude by throwing them a morsel of food; so that a person whom the state could scarcely digest as a senator, it should tolerate as king, possessing the ensigns and authority of Romulus their founder, who had descended from and had returned to the gods. This was to be considered not more criminal than it was monstrous: nor was it sufficiently expiated by his blood; unless the roof and walls within which so mad a project had been conceived, should be levelled to the ground, and his effects were confiscated, as being contaminated with the price of purchasing kingly domination. He ordered, therefore, that the quæstors should sell this property and deposit the proceeds in the treasury."

He then ordered his house to be immediately razed, that the vacant ground might serve as a monument of nefarious hopes destroyed. This was called Æquimælium. Lucius Minucius was presented with a gilded ox on the outside of the gate Trigemina, and this not even against the will of the commons, because he distributed Mælius's corn, after valuing it at one as per bushel. In some writers I find that this Minucius had changed sides from the patricians to the commons, and that having been chosen as eleventh tribune of the people, he quieted a commotion which arose on the death of Mælius. But it is scarcely credible that the patricians[Pg 269] would have suffered the number of the tribunes to be increased, and that such a precedent should be introduced more particularly in the case of a man who was a patrician; or that the commons did not afterwards maintain, or at least attempt, that privilege once conceded to them. But the legal provision made a few years before, viz. that it should not be lawful for the tribunes to choose a colleague, refutes beyond every thing else the false inscription on the statue. Quintus Cæcilius, Quintus Junius, Sextus Titinius, were the only members of the college of tribunes who had not been concerned in passing the law for conferring honours on Minucius; nor did they cease both to throw out censures one time on Minucius, at another time on Servilius, before the commons, and to complain of the unmerited death of Mælius. They succeeded, therefore, in having an election held for military tribunes rather than for consuls, not doubting but that in six places, for so many were now allowed to be elected, some plebeians also might be appointed, by their professing to be avengers of the death of Mælius. The commons, though they had been agitated that year by many and various commotions, neither elected more than three tribunes with consular power; and among them Lucius Quintius, son of Cincinnatus, from the unpopular nature of whose dictatorship an occasion for disturbance was sought. Mamercus Æmilius, a man of the highest dignity, was voted in, prior to Quintius. In the third place they appoint Lucius Julius.

During their office Fidenæ, a Roman colony, revolted to Lars Tolunmius, king of the Veientians, and to the Veientians. To the revolt a more heinous crime was added. By order of Tolumnius they put to death Caius Fulcinius, Clælius Tullus, Spurius Antius, Lucius Roscius, Roman ambassadors, who came to inquire into the reason of this new line of conduct. Some palliate the guilt of the king; that an ambiguous expression of his, during a lucky throw of dice, having been mistaken by the Fidenatians, as if it seemed to be an order for their execution, had been the cause of the ambassadors' death. An incredible tale; that his thoughts should not have been drawn away from the game on the arrival of the Fidenatians, his new allies, when consulting him on a murder tending to violate the law of nations; and that the act was not afterwards viewed by him with horror. It is more probable that[Pg 270] he wished the state of the Fidenatians to be so compromised by their participation in so great a crime, that they might not afterwards look to any hope from the Romans. Statues of the ambassadors, who were slain at Fidenæ, were set up in the rostra at the public expense. A desperate struggle was coming on with the Veientians and Fidenatians, who, besides that they were neighbouring states, had commenced the war with so heinous a provocation. Therefore, the commons and their tribunes being now quiet, so as to attend to the general welfare, there was no dispute with respect to the electing of Marcus Geganius Macerinus a third time, and Lucius Sergius Fidenas, as consuls; so called, I suppose, from the war which he afterwards conducted. For he was the first who fought a successful battle with the king of the Veientians on this side of the Anio, nor did he obtain an unbloody victory. Greater grief was therefore felt from the loss of their countrymen, than joy from the defeat of the enemy: and the senate, as in an alarming crisis, ordered Mamercus Æmilius to be appointed dictator. He appointed as his master of the horse from the college of the preceding year, in which there had been tribunes of the soldiers with consular power, Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus, a youth worthy of his parent. To the levy held by the consuls were added the old centurions well versed in war, and the number of those lost in the late battle was made up. The dictator ordered Lucius Quintius Capitolinus and Marcus Fabius Vibulanus to attend him as his lieutenants-general. Both the higher powers, and the man suitable to such powers, caused the enemy to move from the Roman territory to the other side of the Anio, and continuing their retrograde movement, they took possession of the hills between Fidenæ and the Anio, nor did they descend into the plains until the troops of the Faliscians came to their aid; then at length the camp of the Etrurians was pitched before the walls of Fidenæ. The Roman dictator took his post at no great distance from thence at the conflux on the banks of both rivers, lines being run across between them, as far as he was able to follow by a fortification. Next day he marched out his army into the field.

Among the enemy there was a diversity of opinion. The Faliscians, impatient of the hardships of war at a distance from home, and sufficiently confident of their own strength,[Pg 271] earnestly demanded battle; the Veientians and Fidenatians placed more hope in protracting the war. Tolumnius, though the measures of his own subjects were more agreeable to him, proclaims that he would give battle on the following day, lest the Faliscians might not brook the service at so great a distance from their home. The dictator and the Romans took additional courage from the fact of the enemy having declined giving battle: and on the following day, the soldiers exclaiming that they would attack the camp and the city, if an opportunity of fighting were not afforded them, the armies advance on both sides into the middle of a plain between the two camps. The Veientians, having the advantage in numbers, sent around a party behind the mountains to attack the Roman camp during the heat of the battle. The army of the three states stood drawn up in such a manner, that the Veientians occupied the right wing, the Faliscians the left, whilst the Fidenatians constituted the centre. The dictator charged on the right wing against the Faliscians, Quintius Capitolinus on the left against the Veientians, and the master of the horse with the cavalry advanced in the centre. For a short time all was silence and quiet, the Etrurians being determined not to engage unless they were compelled, and the dictator looking back towards a Roman fort, until a signal should be raised, as had been agreed on, by the augurs, as soon as the birds had given a favourable omen. As soon as he perceived this, he orders the cavalry first to charge the enemy, after raising a loud shout; the line of infantry following, engaged with great fury. In no quarter did the Etrurian legions withstand the shock of the Romans. The cavalry made the greatest resistance; and the king himself, far the bravest of the cavalry, charging the Romans whilst they were pursuing in disorder in every direction, prolonged the contest.

There was then among the cavalry, Aulus Cornelius Cossus, a tribune of the soldiers, distinguished for the beauty of his person, and equally so for courage and great strength of body, and mindful of his rank, which, having received in a state of the highest lustre, he left to his posterity still greater and more distinguished. He perceiving that the Roman troops gave way at the approach of Tolumnius, wherever he directed his charge, and knowing him as being remarkable by his royal apparel, as he flew through the entire line, ex[Pg 272]claims, "Is this the infringer of human treaties and the violator of the law of nations? This victim I shall now slay, (provided the gods wish that there should be any thing sacred on earth,) and shall offer him up to the manes of the ambassadors." Having clapped spurs to his horse, he advances against this single foe with spear presented; and after having struck and unhorsed him, he immediately, by help of his lance, sprung on the ground. And as the king attempted to rise, he throws him back again with the boss of his shield, and with repeated thrusts pins him to the earth. He then stripped off the spoils from the lifeless body; and having cut off his head and carrying it on the point of his spear, he puts the enemy to rout through terror on seeing their king slain. Thus the line of cavalry, which alone had rendered the combat doubtful, was beaten. The dictator pursues closely the routed legions, and drove them to their camp with slaughter. The greater number of the Fidenatians, through their knowledge of the country, made their escape to the mountains. Cossus, having crossed the Tiber with the cavalry, carried off great plunder from the Veientian territory to the city. During the battle there was a fight also at the Roman camp against a party of the forces, which, as has been already mentioned, had been sent by Tolumnius to the camp. Fabius Vibulanus first defends his lines by a ring; then, whilst the enemy were wholly taken up with the entrenchment, sallying out from the principal gate on the right, he suddenly attacks them with the triarii: and a panic being thus struck into them there was less slaughter, because they were fewer, but their flight was no less disorderly than it had been on the field of battle.

Matters being managed successfully in every direction, the dictator, by a decree of the senate and order of the people, returned to the city in triumph. By far the most remarkable object in the triumph was Cossus, bearing the spolia opima of the king he had slain. The soldiers chaunted their uncouth verses on him, extolling him as equal to Romulus. With the usual form of dedication, he presented, as an offering, the spoils in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, near the spoils of Romulus, which, having been the first called opima, were the only ones at that time; and he attracted the eyes of all the citizens from the dictator's chariot to himself, and en[Pg 273]joyed almost solely the honour of that day's solemnity. The dictator offered up to Jupiter in the Capitol a golden crown a pound in weight, at the public expense, by order of the people. Following all the Roman writers, I have represented Aulus Cornelius Cossus as a military tribune, when he carried the second spolia opima to the temple of Jupiter Feretrius. But besides that those spoils are rightly considered opima, which one general has taken from another; and we know no general but the person under whose auspices the war is conducted, the inscription itself written on the spoils proves, against both me and them, that Cossus was consul when he took them. Having once heard Augustus Cæsar, the founder or restorer of all our temples, on entering the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, which being dilapidated by time he rebuilt, aver that he himself had read the said inscription on the linen breastplate, I thought it would be next to sacrilege to rob Cossus of such a testimony respecting his spoils as that of Cæsar, the renovator of the temple itself. Whether the mistake is chargeable on the very ancient annals and the linen books of the magistrates, deposited in the temple of Moneta, and which Licinius Macer occasionally cites as authorities, which have Aulus Cornelius Cossus consul with Titus Quintius Pennus, in the ninth year after this, every person may form his own opinion. For there is this additional proof, that a battle so celebrated could not be transferred to that year; that the three years before and after the consulship of Aulus Cornelius were entirely free from war, in consequence of a pestilence and a scarcity of grain; so that some annals, as if in mourning, present nothing but the names of the consuls. The third year from the consulship of Cossus has him as military tribune with consular power; in the same year as master of the horse, in which office he fought another distinguished horse battle. Conjecture is open on the matter; but, as I think, idle surmises may be turned to support any opinion: when the hero of the fight, having placed the recent spoils in the sacred repository, having before him Jove himself, to whom they were consecrated, and Romulus, no contemptible witnesses in case of a false inscription, entitled himself Aulus Cornelius Cossus consul.

Marcus Cornelius Maluginensis and Lucius Papirius Crassus being consuls, the armies were led into the territories[Pg 274] of the Veientians and Faliscians; numbers of men and cattle were driven off as spoil; the enemy was no where to be found on the land, and no opportunity of fighting was afforded; the cities however were not attacked, because a pestilential disorder ran through the people. Disturbances were also sought at home, but not actually excited, however, by Spurius Mælius, tribune of the people; who thinking that he might create some tumult through the popularity of his name, had both appointed a day of trial for Minucius, and had also proposed a law for confiscating the property of Servilius Ahala: alleging that Mælius had been circumvented through false impeachments by Minucius, charging Servilius with the killing of a citizen on whom no sentence had been passed; charges which, when brought before the people, proved to be more idle than the author himself. But the virulence of the disease now becoming worse, was more an object of concern to them, as also the terrors and prodigies, more especially because accounts were being brought, that houses were falling throughout the country, in consequence of frequent earthquakes. A supplication was therefore performed by the people, according to the form dictated by the decemvirs.[153] The year being still more pestilential, Caius Julius a second time and Lucius Virginius being consuls, occasioned such dread of desolation through the city and country, that not only no one left the Roman territory for the purpose of committing depredations, and not only did none of the patricians or commons entertain an idea of commencing any military aggressions; but the Fidenatians, who at first had shut themselves up either within their town, or mountains, or fortifications, now descended without provocation to commit depredations on the Roman territory. Then the army of the Veientians being called in to their aid, (for the Faliscians could be induced to renew the war neither by the distresses of the Romans, nor by the remonstrances of their allies,) the two states crossed the Anio; and displayed their ensigns at no great distance from the Colline gate. Great consternation arose therefore, not more in the country than in the city. Julius[Pg 275] the consul draws up his troops on the rampart and walls; the senate is consulted by Virginius in the temple of Quirinus. It is determined that Aulus Servilius be appointed dictator, who some say had the cognomen of Priscus, others that of Structus. Virginius having delayed whilst he consulted his colleague, with his permission, named the dictator at night. He appoints Postumus Æbutius Elva his master of the horse.

The dictator orders all to attend at break of day outside the Colline gate. All whosoever had sufficient strength to bear arms, attended; the standards were quickly brought forth from the treasury and conveyed to the dictator. Whilst these matters were going on, the enemies retired to the higher grounds; thither the dictator follows them with a determined army; and having come to a general engagement not far from Nomentum, he routed the Etrurian legions; he then drove them into the city of Fidenæ, and surrounded it with a rampart. But neither could the city be taken by storm as being high and well fortified, nor was there any effect in a blockade, because corn was supplied to them in abundance not only for necessary consumption, but for plenty also, in consequence of that previously laid up. Thus all hope being lost of taking it by assault, or of forcing it to a surrender, the dictator determined on carrying a sap into the citadel in places which were well known to him on account of their near situation on the remote side of the city, as being most neglected because it was best protected by reason of its own nature; he himself by advancing up to the walls in places most remote, with his army divided into four sections, which were to succeed each other in the action, by continuing the fight day and night continuously he prevented the enemy from perceiving the work; until the mountain being dug through from the camp, a passage was opened up into the citadel; and the Etrurians being diverted from the real danger by the idle threats, the shouting of the enemy over their heads proved to them that their city was taken. On that year Caius Furius Pacilus and Marcus Geganius Macerinus, censors, approved of the public edifice[154] in the Campus Martius, and the census of the people was there performed for the first time.

That the same consuls were re-elected on the follow[Pg 276]ing year, Julius for the third time, Virginius for the second time, I find in Licinius Macer. Valerius Antias and Quintus Tubero state that Marcus Manlius and Quintus Sulpicius were, the consuls for that year. But in representations so different both Tubero and Macer cite the linen books as their authority; neither of them denies that it was said by ancient historians that there were military tribunes on that year. Licinius thinks that we should unhesitatingly follow the linen books; and Tubero is uncertain as to the truth. But this also is left unsettled among other points not ascertained from length of time. Alarm was raised in Etruria after the capture of Fidenæ, not only the Veientians being terrified by the apprehension of similar ruin, but the Faliscians also, from the recollection of the war having first commenced with them, although they had not joined with those who renewed hostilities. Accordingly when the two nations, having sent ambassadors around to the twelve states, succeeded so far that a general meeting was proclaimed for all Etruria at the temple of Voltumna; the senate, apprehending a great attack threatening from that quarter, ordered Mamercus Æmilius again to be appointed dictator. Aulus Postumius Tubertus was appointed by him as master of the horse; and preparations for war were made with so much the more energy than on the last occasion, in proportion as there was more danger from the whole body of Etruria than from two of its states.

That matter passed off much more quietly than any one expected. Therefore when word was brought by certain traders, that aid was refused to the Veientians, and that they were bid to prosecute with their own strength a war entered into on their own separate views, and not to seek out persons as sharers in their distresses, to whom they had not communicated their hopes when flourishing; the dictator, that his appointment might not be in vain, all opportunity of acquiring military glory being now taken from him, desirous of performing during peace some work which might serve as a memorial of his dictatorship, sets about limiting the censorship, either judging its powers excessive, or disapproving of the duration rather than the extent of the office. Accordingly, having summoned a meeting, he says "that the immortal gods had taken on themselves that the public affairs should be managed externally, and that the general security[Pg 277] should be insured; that with respect to what was to be done within the walls, he would provide for the liberty of the Roman people. But that the most effectual guarding of it was, that offices of great power should not be of long continuance; and that a limit of time should be set to those to which a limit of jurisdiction could not be set. That other offices were annual, that the censorship was quinquennial; that it was a grievance to be subject to the same individuals for such a number of years in a considerable part of the affairs of life. That he would propose a law, that the censorship should not last longer than a year and half." Amid the great approbation of the people he passed the law on the following day, and says, "that you may know, Romans, in reality, how little pleasing to me are offices of long duration, I resign the dictatorship." Having laid down his own office, and set a limit to the office of others, he was escorted home with the congratulation and great good will of the people. The censors resenting Mamercus' conduct for his having diminished the duration of one of the offices of the Roman people, degraded him from his tribe, and increasing his taxes eight-fold, disfranchised[155] him. They say that he bore this with great magnanimity, as he considered the cause of the disgrace, rather than the disgrace itself; that the principal patricians also, though they had been averse to the curtailing the privileges of the censorship, were much displeased at this instance of censorial severity; inasmuch as each saw that he would be longer and more frequently subjected to the censors, than he should hold the office of censor. Certain it is that such indignation is said to have arisen on the part of the people, that violence could not be kept off from the censors through the influence of any person except of Mamercus himself.

The tribunes of the people, by preventing the election of consuls by incessant harangues, succeeded at length, after the matter had been well nigh brought to an interregnum, in having tribunes of the soldiers elected with consular authority: as for the prize of their victory, which was the thing sought, scil. that a plebeian should be elected, there was none. All patricians were elected, Marcus Fabius Vibulanus, Marcus[Pg 278] Foslius, Lucius Sergius Fidenas. The pestilence during that year afforded a quiet in other matters. A temple was vowed to Apollo for the health of the people. The duumvirs did much, by direction of the books, for the purpose of appeasing the wrath of heaven and averting the plague from the people; a great mortality however was sustained in the city and country, by the death of men and of cattle promiscuously. Apprehending a famine for the agriculturists, they sent into Etruria, and the Pomptine district, and to Cumæ, and at last to Sicily also to procure corn. No mention was made of electing consuls. Military tribunes with consular authority were appointed, all patricians, Lucius Pinarius Mamercinus, Lucius Furius Medullinus, Spurius Postumius Albus. In this year the violence of the distemper abated, nor was there any danger from a scarcity of corn, because provision had been previously made against it. Schemes for exciting wars were agitated in the meetings of the Æquans and Volscians, and in Etruria at the temple of Voltumna. Here the matter was postponed for a year, and by a decree it was enacted, that no meeting should be held before that time, the Veientian state in vain complaining that the same destiny hung over Veii, as that by which Fidenæ was destroyed. Meanwhile at Rome the chiefs of the commons, who had now for a long time been vainly pursuing the hope of higher dignity, whilst there was tranquillity abroad, appointed meetings to be held in the houses of the tribunes of the commons. There they concerted plans in secret: they complained "that they were so despised by the commons, that though tribunes of the soldiers, with consular authority, were now appointed for so many years, no plebeian ever obtained access to that honour. That their ancestors had shown much foresight in providing that plebeian offices should not be open to any patrician; otherwise they should be forced to have patricians as tribunes of the commons; so despicable were they even with their own party, and were not less despised by the commons than by the patricians." Others exculpated the commons, and threw the blame on the patricians,—"that by their intriguing and schemes it happened that the road to honour was barred against the commons. If the commons were allowed to breathe from their mixed entreaties and menaces, that they would enter on their suffrages with a due regard to men of their own party; and, assistance being al[Pg 279]ready procured, that they would assume a share in the government also." It is determined that, for the purpose of doing away with all intriguing, the tribunes should propose a law, that no person be allowed to add white to his garment for the purposes of canvassing. The matter may now appear trivial and scarcely deserving serious consideration, which then enkindled such strife between the patricians and commons. The tribunes, however, prevailed in carrying the law; and it appeared evident, that in their present state of irritation, the commons would incline their support to men of their own party; and lest this should be optional with them, a decree of the senate is passed, that the election for consuls should be held.

The cause was the rising, which the Hernicians and Latins announced as about to take place on the part of the Æquans and Volscians. Titus Quintius Cincinnatus, son of Lucius, (to the same person the cognomen of Pennus also is annexed,) and Caius Julius Mento were elected consuls: nor was the terror of war longer deferred. A levy being held under the devoting law, which with them is the most powerful instrument of forcing men into service, powerful armies set out from thence, and met at Algidum; and there the Æquans and Volscians fortified their camps separately; and the general took greater care than ever before to fortify their posts and train their soldiers; so much the more terror did the messengers bring to Rome. The senate wished that a dictator should be appointed, because though these nations had been often conquered, yet they renewed hostilities with more vigorous efforts than ever before, and a considerable number of the Roman youth had been carried off by sickness. Above all, the perverseness of the consuls, and the disagreement between them, and their contentions in all the councils, terrified them. There are some who state that an unsuccessful battle was fought by these consuls at Algidum, and that such was the cause of appointing a dictator. This much is certain, that, though differing in other points, they perfectly agreed in one against the wishes of the patricians, not to nominate a dictator; until when accounts were brought, one more alarming than another, and the consuls would not be swayed by the authority of the senate, Quintus Servilius Priscus, who had passed through the highest honours with singular honour, says, "Tri[Pg 280]bunes of the people, since we are come to extremities, the senate calls on you, that you would, by virtue of your authority, compel the consuls to nominate a dictator in so critical a conjuncture of the state." On hearing this, the tribunes, conceiving that an opportunity was presented to them of extending their power, retire together, and declare for their college, that "it was their wish that the consuls should be obedient to the instruction of the senate; if they persisted further against the consent of that most illustrious order, that they would order them to be taken to prison." The consuls were better pleased to be overcome by the tribunes than by the senate, alleging that the prerogatives of the highest magistracy were betrayed by the patricians and the consulship subjugated to tribunitian power, inasmuch as the consuls were liable to be overruled by a tribune in any particular by virtue of his power, and (what greater hardship could a private man have to dread?) even to be carried off to prison. The lot to nominate the dictator (for the colleagues had not even agreed on that) fell on Titus Quintius. He appointed a dictator, Aulus Postumius Tubertus, his own father-in-law, a man of the utmost strictness in command: by him Lucius Julius was appointed master of the horse: a suspension of civil business is also proclaimed; and, that nothing else should be attended to throughout the city but preparations for war, the examination of the cases of those who claimed exemption from the military service is deferred till after the war. Thus even doubtful persons are induced to give in their names. Soldiers were also enjoined of the Hernicians and Latins: the most zealous obedience is shown to the dictator on both sides.

All these measures were executed with great despatch: and Caius Julius the consul being left to guard the city, and Lucius Julius master of the horse, for the sudden exigencies of the war, lest any thing which they might want in the camp should cause delay, the dictator, repeating the words after Aulus Cornelius the chief pontiff, vowed the great games on account of the sudden war; and having set out from the city, after dividing his army with the consul Quintius, he came up with the enemy. As they had observed two separate camps of the enemy at a small distance one from the other, they in like manner encamped separately about a mile from them, the dictator towards Tusculum, the consul towards Lanuvium.[Pg 281] Thus they had their four armies, as many fortified posts, having between them a plain sufficiently extended not only for excursions to skirmish, but even for drawing up the armies on both sides in battle-array. From the time camp was brought close to camp, they ceased not from light skirmishing, the dictator readily allowing his soldiers, by comparing strength, to entertain beforehand the hope of a general victory, after they had gradually essayed the result of slight skirmishes. Wherefore the enemy, no hope being now left in a regular engagement, attacked the consuls' camp in the night, and bring the matter to the chance of a doubtful result. The shout which arose suddenly awoke not only the consuls' sentinels and then all the army, but the dictator also. When circumstances required instant exertion, the consul evinced no deficiency either in spirit or in judgment. One part of the troops reinforce the guards at the gates, another man the rampart around. In the other camp with the dictator, inasmuch as there is less of confusion, so much the more readily is it observed, what is required to be done. Despatching then forthwith a reinforcement to the consuls' camp, to which Spurius Postumius Albus is appointed lieutenant-general, he himself with a part of his forces, making a small circuit, proceeds to a place entirely sequestered from the bustle, whence he might suddenly attack the enemy's rear. Quintus Sulpicius, his lieutenant-general, he appoints to take charge of the camp; to Marcus Fabius as lieutenant he assigns the cavalry, and orders that those troops, which it would be difficult to manage amid a nightly conflict, should not stir before day-light. All the measures which any other prudent and active general could order and execute at such a juncture, he orders and executes with regularity; that was an extraordinary specimen of judgment and intrepidity, and one deserving of no ordinary praise, that he despatched Marcus Geganius with some chosen troops to attack the enemy's camp, whence it had been ascertained that they had departed with the greater part of their troops. When he fell on these men, wholly intent on the result of the danger of their friends, and incautious with respect to themselves, the watches and advanced guards being even neglected, he took their camp almost before the enemy were perfectly sure that it was attacked. Then when the signal given with smoke, as had been agreed on, was perceived[Pg 282] by the dictator, he exclaims that the enemy's camp was taken, and orders it to be announced in every direction.

And now day was appearing, and every thing lay open to view; and Fabius had made an attack with his cavalry, and the consul had sallied from the camp on the enemy now disconcerted; when the dictator on the other side, having attacked their reserve and second line, threw his victorious troops, both horse and foot, in the way of the enemy as they turned themselves about to the dissonant shouts and the various sudden assaults. Thus surrounded on every side, they would to a man have suffered the punishment due to their reassumption of hostilities, had not Vectius Messius, a Volscian, a man more ennobled by his deeds than his extraction, upbraiding his men as they were forming a circle, called out with a loud voice, "Are ye about offering yourselves here to the weapons of the enemy, undefended, unavenged? why is it then ye have arms? or why have you undertaken an offensive war, ever turbulent in peace, and dastardly in war? What hopes have you in standing here? do you expect that some god will protect you and bear you hence? With the sword way must be opened. Come on ye, who wish to behold your homes, your parents, your wives, and your children, follow me in the way in which you shall see me lead you on. It is not a wall, not a rampart, but armed men that stand in your way with arms in your hands. In valour you are equal to them; in necessity, which is the ultimate and most effective weapon, superior." As he uttered these words and was putting them into execution, they, renewing the shout and following him, make a push in that quarter where Postumius Alba had opposed his troops to them: and they made the victor give ground, until the dictator came up, as his own men were now retreating. To that quarter the whole weight of the battle was now turned. On Messius alone the fortune of the enemy depends. Many wounds and great slaughter now took place on both sides. By this time not even the Roman generals themselves fight without receiving wounds, one of them, Postumius, retired from the field having his skull fractured by a stroke of a stone; neither the dictator could be removed by a wound in the shoulder, nor Fabius by having his thigh almost pinned to his horse, nor the consul by his arm being cut off, from the perilous conflict.[Pg 283]

Messius, with a band of the bravest youths, by a furious charge through heaps of slaughtered foes, was carried on to the camp of the Volscians, which had not yet been taken: the same route the entire body of the army followed. The consul, pursuing them in their disordered flight to the very rampart, attacks both the camp and the rampart; in the same direction the dictator also brings up his forces on the other side. The assault was conducted with no less intrepidity than the battle had been. They say that the consul even threw a standard within the rampart, in order that the soldiers might push on the more briskly, and that the first impression was made in recovering the standard. The dictator also, having levelled the rampart, had now carried the fight into the camp. Then the enemy began in every direction to throw down their arms and to surrender: and their camp also being taken, all the enemy were set up to sale, except the senators.[156] Part of the plunder was restored to the Latins and Hernicians, when they demanded their property; the remainder the dictator sold by auction: and the consul, being invested with the command of the camp, he himself, entering the city in triumph, resigned his dictatorship. Some writers cast a gloom on the memory of this glorious dictatorship, when they state that his son, though victorious, was beheaded by Aulus Postumius, because, tempted by a favourable opportunity of fighting to advantage, he had left his post without orders. We are disposed to refuse our belief; and we are warranted by the variety of opinions on the matter. And it is an argument against it, that such orders have been entitled "Manlian," not "Postumian," since the person who first set on foot so barbarous a precedent, was likely to obtain the signal title of cruelty. Besides, the cognomen of "Imperiosus" was affixed to Manlius: Postumius has not been marked by any hateful brand. Caius Julius the consul, in the absence of his colleague, without casting lots, dedicated the temple of Apollo: Quintius resenting this, when, after disbanding his army, he returned into the city, made a complaint of it in the senate to no purpose.

To the year marked by great achievements is added an event which seemed to have no relation to the interest of[Pg 284] Rome, viz. that the Carthaginians, destined to be such formidable enemies, then, for the first times on the occasion of some disturbances among the Sicilians, transported an army into Sicily in aid of one of the parties.

In the city efforts were made by the tribunes of the people that military tribunes with consular power should be elected; nor could the point be carried. Lucius Papirius Crassus and Lucius Junius were made consuls. When the ambassadors of the Æquans solicited a treaty from the senate, and instead of a treaty a surrender was pointed out to them, they obtained a truce for eight years. The affairs of the Volscians, in addition to the disaster sustained at Algidum, were involved in strifes and seditions by an obstinate contention between the advocates for peace and those for war. The Romans enjoyed tranquillity on all sides. The consuls, having ascertained through the information of one of the college, that a law regarding the appraising of the fines,[157] which was very acceptable to the people, was about to be introduced by the tribunes, took the lead themselves in proposing it. The new consuls were Lucius Sergius Fidenas a second time, and Hostus Lucretius Tricipitinus. During their consulate nothing worth mentioning occurred. The consuls who followed them were Aulus Cornelius Cossus and Titus Quintius Pennus a second time. The Veientians made excursions into the Roman territory. A report existed that some of the youth of the Fidenatians had been participators in that depredation; and the cognizance of that matter was left to Lucius Sergius, and Quintus Servilius and Mamercus Æmilius. Some of them were sent into banishment to Ostia, because it did not appear sufficiently clear why during these days they had been absent from Fidenæ. A number of new settlers was added, and the land of those who had fallen in war was assigned to them. There was very great distress that year in consequence of drought; there was not only a deficiency of rain; but the earth also destitute of its natural moisture, scarcely enabled the rivers to flow. In some places the want of water occasioned heaps of cattle, which had died of[Pg 285] thirst, around the springs and rivulets which were dried up; others were carried off by the mange; and the distempers spread by infection to the human subject, and first assailed the husbandmen and slaves; soon after the city becomes filled with them; and not only were men's bodies afflicted by the contagion, but superstitions of various kinds, and most of them of foreign growth, took possession of their minds; persons, to whom minds enslaved by superstition were a source of gain, introducing by pretending to divination new modes of sacrificing; until a sense of public shame now reached the leading men of the state, seeing in all the streets and chapels extraneous and unaccustomed ceremonies of expiation for the purpose of obtaining the favour of the gods. A charge was then given to the ædiles, that they should see that no other than Roman gods should be worshipped, nor in any other manner, save that of the country. Their resentment against the Veientians was deferred till the following year, Caius Servilius Ahala and Lucius Papirius Mugillanus being consuls. Then also superstitious influences prevented the immediate declaration of war or the armies being sent; they deemed it necessary that heralds should be first sent to demand restitution. There had been battles fought lately with the Veientians at Nomentum and Fidenæ; and after that a truce, not a peace, had been concluded; of which both the time had expired and they had renewed hostilities before the expiration. Heralds however were sent; and when, according to ancient usage, they were sworn and demanded restitution, their application was not listened to. Then arose a dispute whether a war should be declared by order of the people, or whether a decree of the senate would be sufficient. The tribunes, by threatening that they would stop the levy, so far prevailed that the consuls should take the sense of the people concerning the war. All the centuries voted for it. In this particular also the commons showed a superiority by gaining this point, that consuls should not be elected for the next year.

Four military tribunes with consular authority were elected—Titus Quintius Pennus, from the consulship, Caius Furius, Marcus Postumius, and Aulus Cornelius Cossus. Of these Cossus held the command in the city. The other three, after the levy was held, set out to Veii, and were an instance how mischievous in military affairs is a plurality of com[Pg 286]manders. By insisting each on his own plans, whilst they severally entertained different views, they left an opportunity open to the enemy to take them at advantage. For the Veientians, taking an opportunity, attacked their line whilst still uncertain as to their movements, some ordering the signal to be given, others a retreat to be sounded: their camp, which was nigh at hand, received them in their confusion and turning their backs. There was more disgrace therefore than loss. The state, unaccustomed to defeat, was become melancholy; they hated the tribunes, they insisted on a dictator, the hopes of the state now seemed to rest on him. When a religious scruple interfered here also, lest a dictator could not be appointed except by a consul, the augurs on being consulted removed that scruple. Aulus Cornelius nominated Mamercus Æmilius, and he himself was nominated by him master of the horse. So little did censorial animadversion avail, so as to prevent them from seeking a regulator of their affairs from a family unmeritedly censured, as soon as the condition of the state stood in need of genuine merit. The Veientians elated with their success, having sent ambassadors around the states of Etruria, boasting that three Roman generals had been beaten by them in an engagement, though they could not effect a public co-operation in their designs, procured volunteers from all quarters allured by the hope of plunder. The state of the Fidenatians alone determined on renewing hostilities; and as if it would be an impiety to commence war unless with guilt, after staining their arms with the blood of the new settlers there, as they had on a former occasion with that of the ambassadors, they join the Veientians. After this the leading men of the two states consulted whether they should select Veii or Fidenæ as the seat of war. Fidenæ appeared the more convenient. Accordingly, having crossed the Tiber, the Veientians transferred the war thither. There was great consternation at Rome. The army being recalled from Veii, and that same army dispirited in consequence of their defeat, the camp is pitched before the Colline gate, and armed soldiers are posted along the walls, and a suspension of all civil business is proclaimed in the forum, and the shops were closed; and every place becomes more like to a camp than a city.

Then the dictator, having sent criers through the streets,[Pg 287] and having summoned the alarmed citizens to an assembly, began to chide them "that they allowed their minds to depend on such slight impulses of fortune, that, on the receipt of a trifling loss, which itself was sustained not by the bravery of the enemy, nor by the cowardice of the Roman army, but by the disagreement of the generals, they now dreaded the Veientian enemy, six times vanquished, and Fidenæ, which was almost taken oftener than attacked. That both the Romans and the enemies were the same as they were for so many ages: that they retained the same spirits, the same bodily strength, the same arms. That he himself, Mamercus Æmilius, was also the same dictator, who formerly defeated the armies of the Veientians and Fidenatians, with the additional support of the Faliscians, at Nomentum. That his master of the horse, Aulus Cornelius, would be the same in the field, he who, as military tribune in a former war, slew Lar Tolumnius, king of the Veientians, in the sight of both armies, and brought the spolia opima into the temple of Jupiter Feretrius. Wherefore that they should take up arms, mindful that with them were triumphs, with them spoils, with them victory; with the enemy the guilt of murdering the ambassadors contrary to the law of nations, the massacre of the Fidenatian colonists in time of peace, the infraction of truces, a seventh unsuccessful revolt. As soon as they should bring their camp near them, he was fully confident that the joy of these most impious enemies at the disgrace of the Roman army would not be of long continuance, and that the Roman people would be convinced how much better those persons deserved of the republic, who nominated him dictator for the third time, than those who, in consequence of his abolishing the despotism of the censorship, would cast a slur on his second dictatorship." Having offered up his vows and set out on his march, he pitches his camp fifteen hundred paces on this side of Fidenæ, covered on his right by mountains, on his left by the river Tiber. He orders Titus Quintius Pennus to take possession of the mountains, and to post himself secretly on some eminence which might be in the enemy's rear. On the following day, when the Etrurians had marched out to the field, full of confidence in consequence of their accidental success of the preceding day, rather than of their good fighting, he himself, having delayed a little until the senate brought back word that Quintius had gained[Pg 288] an eminence nigh to the citadel of Fidenæ, puts his troops into motion and led on his line of infantry in order of battle in their quickest pace against the enemy: the master of the horse he directs not to commence the fight without orders; that, when it would be necessary, he would give the signal for the aid of the cavalry; then that he would conduct the action, mindful of his fight with the king, mindful of the rich oblation, and of Romulus and Jupiter Feretrius. The legions begin the conflict with impetuosity. The Romans, fired with hatred, gratified that feeling both with deeds and words, calling the Fidenatian impious, the Veientian robbers, truce-breakers, stained with the horrid murder of ambassadors, sprinkled with the blood of their own brother-colonists, treacherous allies, and dastardly enemies.

In the very first onset they had made an impression on the enemy; when on a sudden, the gates of Fidenæ flying open, a strange sort of army sallies forth, unheard of and unseen before that time. An immense multitude armed with fire and all blazing with fire-brands, as if urged on by fanatical rage, rush on the enemy: and the form of this unusual mode of fighting frightened the Romans for the moment. Then the dictator, having called to him the master of the horse and the cavalry, and also Quintius from the mountains animating the fight, hastens himself to the left wing, which, more nearly resembling a conflagration than a battle, had from terror given way to the flames, and exclaims with a loud voice, "Vanquished by smoke, driven from your ground as if a swarm of bees, will ye yield to an unarmed enemy? will ye not extinguish the fires with the sword? or if it is with fire, not with weapons, we are to fight, will ye not, each in his post, snatch those brands, and hurl them on them? Come, mindful of the Roman name, of the valour of your fathers, and of your own, turn this conflagration against the city of your enemy, and destroy Fidenæ by its own flames, which ye could not reclaim by your kindness. The blood of your ambassadors and colonists and the desolation of your frontiers suggest this." At the command of the dictator the whole line advanced; the firebrands that were discharged are partly caught up; others are wrested by force: the armies on either side are now armed with fire. The master of the horse too, on his part, introduces among the cavalry a[Pg 289] new mode of fighting; he commands his men to take the bridles off their horses: and he himself at their head, putting spurs to his own, dashing forward, is carried by the unbridled steed into the midst of the fires: the other horses also being urged on carry their riders with unrestrained speed against the enemy. The dust being raised and mixed with smoke excluded the light from the eyes of both men and horses. That appearance which had terrified the soldiers, no longer terrified the horses. The cavalry therefore, wherever they penetrated, produced a heap of bodies like a ruin. A new shout then assailed their ears; and when this attracted the attention of the two armies looking with amazement at each other, the dictator cries out "that his lieutenant-general and his men had attacked the enemy on the rear:" he himself, on the shout being renewed, advances against them with redoubled vigour. When two armies, two different battles pressed on the Etrurians, now surrounded, in front and rear, and there was now no means of flight back to their camp, nor to the mountains, where new enemies were ready to oppose them, and the horses, now freed from their bridles, had scattered their riders in every direction, the principal part of the Veientians make precipitately for the Tiber. Such of the Fidenatians as survived, bend their course to the city of Fidenæ. Their flight hurries them in their state of panic into the midst of slaughter; they are cut to pieces on the banks; others, when driven into the water, were carried off by the eddies; even those who could swim were weighed down by fatigue, by their wounds, and by fright; a few out of the many make their way across. The other party make their way through the camp into the city. In the same direction their impetuosity carries the Romans in pursuit; Quintius more especially, and with him those who had just come down from the mountain, being the soldiers who were freshest for labour, because they had come up towards the close of the engagement.

These, after they entered the gate mixed with the enemy, make their way to the walls, and raise from their summit a signal to their friends of the town being taken. When the dictator saw this, (for he had now made his way into the deserted camp of the enemy,) he leads on the soldiers, who were now anxious to disperse themselves in quest of booty, entertaining a hope of a greater spoil in the city, to the gate; and being admitted within the walls, he proceeds to the citadel,[Pg 290] whither he saw the crowds of fugitives hurrying. Nor was the slaughter in the city less than in the battle; until, throwing down their arms, begging nothing but their life, they surrendered to the dictator. The city and camp are plundered. On the following day, one captive being allotted to each horseman and centurion, and two to those whose valour had been conspicuous, and the rest being sold by auction, the dictator in triumph led back to Rome his army victorious and enriched with spoil; and having ordered the master of the horse to resign his office, he immediately resigned his own on the sixteenth day (after he had obtained it); surrendering in peace that authority which he had received during war and trepidations. Some annals have reported that there was a naval engagement with the Veientians at Fidenæ, a thing as difficult as it was incredible, the river even now not being broad enough for such a purpose; and at that time, as we learn from old writers, being considerably narrower: except that perhaps in disputing the passage of the river, magnifying, as will happen, the scuffle of a few ships, they sought the empty honour of a naval victory.

The following year had as military tribunes with consular power Aulus Sempronius Atratinus, Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus, Lucius Furius Medullinus, Lucius Horatius Barbatus. To the Veientians a truce for twenty years was granted, and one for three years to the Æquans, though they had solicited one for a longer term. There was quiet also from city riots. The year following, though not distinguished either by war abroad or by disturbance at home, was rendered celebrated by the games which had been vowed during the war, both through the magnificence displayed in them by the military tribunes, and also through the concourse of the neighbouring states. The tribunes with consular power were Appius Claudius Crassus, Spurius Nautilus Rutilus, Lucius Sergius Fidenas, Sextus Julius Iulus. The exhibition, besides that they had come with the public concurrence of their states, was rendered still more grateful to the strangers by the courtesy of their hosts. After the games seditious harangues were delivered by the tribunes of the commons upbraiding the multitude; "that stupified with admiration of those persons whom they hated, they kept themselves in a state of eternal bondage; and they not only had not the cou[Pg 291]rage to aspire to the recovery of their hopes of a share in the consulship, but even in the electing of military tribunes, which elections lay open to both patricians and commons, they neither thought of themselves nor of their party. That they must therefore cease feeling surprised why no one busied himself about the interests of the commons: that labour and danger would be expended on objects whence emolument and honour might be expected. That there was nothing men would not attempt if great rewards were proposed for those who make great attempts. That any tribune of the commons should rush blindly at great risk and with no advantage into contentions, in consequence of which he may rest satisfied that the patricians against whom he should strive, will persecute him with inexpiable war, whilst with the commons in whose behalf he may have contended he will not be one whit the more honoured, was a thing neither to be expected nor required. That by great honours minds became great. That no plebeian would think meanly of himself, when they ceased to be despised by others. That the experiment should be at length made in the case of one or two, whether there were any plebeian capable of sustaining a high dignity, or whether it were next to a miracle and a prodigy that any one sprung from the commons should be a brave and industrious man. That by the utmost energy the point had been gained, that military tribunes with consular power might be chosen from among the commons also. That men well approved both in the civil and military line had stood as candidates. That during the first years they were hooted at, rejected, and ridiculed by the patricians: that at length they had ceased to expose themselves to insult. Nor did he for his part see why the law itself might not be repealed; by which that was made lawful which never could take place; for that there would be less cause for blushing at the injustice of the law, than if they were to be passed over through their own want of merit."

Harangues of this kind, listened to with approbation, induced some persons to stand for the military tribuneship, each avowing that if in office he would propose something to the advantage of the commons. Hopes were held out of a distribution of the public land, of colonies to be planted, and of money to be raised for the pay of the soldiers, by a tax imposed on the proprietors of estates. Then an opportunity[Pg 292] was laid hold of by the military tribunes, so that during the absence of most persons from the city, when the patricians who were to be recalled by a private intimation were to attend on a certain day, a decree of the senate might be passed in the absence of the tribunes of the commons; that a report existed that the Volscians had gone forth into the lands of Hernici to commit depredations, the military tribunes were to set out to examine into the matter, and that an assembly should be held for the election of consuls. Having set out, they leave Appius Claudius, son of the decemvir, as prefect of the city, a young man of great energy, and one who had ever from his cradle imbibed a hatred of the tribunes and the commons. The tribunes of the commons had nothing for which they should contend, either with those persons now absent, who had procured the decree of the senate, nor with Appius, the matter being now all over.

Caius Sempronius Atratinus, Quintus Fabius Vibulanus were elected consuls. An affair in a foreign country, but one deserving of record, is stated to have happened in that year. Vulturnum, a city of the Etrurians, which is now Capua, was taken by the Samnites; and was called Capua from their leader, Capys, or, what is more probable, from its champaign grounds. But they took possession of it, after having been admitted into a share of the city and its lands, when the Etrurians had been previously much harassed in war; afterwards the new-comers attacked and massacred during the night the old inhabitants, when on a festival day they had become heavy with wine and sleep. After those transactions the consuls whom we have mentioned entered on office on the ides of December. Now not only those who had been expressly sent, reported that a Volscian war was impending; but ambassadors also from the Latins and Hernicians brought word, "that never at any former period were the Volscians more intent either in selecting commanders, or in levying an army; that they commonly observed either that arms and war were to be for ever consigned to oblivion, and the yoke to be submitted to; or that they must not yield to those, with whom they contended for empire, either in valour, perseverance, or military discipline." The accounts they brought were not unfounded; but neither the senate were so much affected by the circumstance; and Caius Sempronius, to whom the province fell by lot,[Pg 293] relying on fortune, as if a most constant object, because he was the leader of a victorious state against one frequently vanquished, executed all his measures carelessly and remissly; so that there was more of the Roman discipline in the Volscian than in the Roman army. Success therefore, as on many other occasions, attended merit. In the first battle, which was entered on by Sempronius without either prudence or caution, they met, without their lines being strengthened by reserves, or their cavalry being properly stationed. The shout was the first presage which way the victory would incline; that raised by the enemy was louder and more continued; that by the Romans, being dissonant, uneven, and frequently repeated in a lifeless manner, betrayed the prostration of their spirits. The enemy advancing the more boldly on this account, pushed with their shields, brandished their swords; on the other side the helmets drooped, as the men looked around, and disconcerted they waver, and keep close to the main body. The ensigns at one time standing their ground are deserted by their supporters, at another time they retreat between their respective companies. As yet there was no absolute flight, nor was there victory. The Romans rather covered themselves than fought. The Volscians advanced, pushed against their line, saw more of the enemy slain than running away.

They now give way in every direction, the consul Sempronius in vain chiding and exhorting them; neither his authority nor his dignity availed any thing; and they would presently have turned their backs to the enemy, had not Sextus Tempanius, a commander of a troop of horse, with great presence of mind brought them support, when matters were now desperate. When he called out aloud, "that the horsemen who wished for the safety of the commonwealth should leap from their horses," the horsemen of all the troops being moved, as if by the consul's orders, he says, "unless this cohort by its arms can stop the progress of the enemy, there is an end of the empire. Follow my spear as your standard. Show to the Romans and Volscians, that no cavalry are equal to you as cavalry, nor infantry to you as infantry." When this exhortation was approved by a loud shout, he advances, holding his spear aloft. Wherever they go, they open a passage for themselves; putting forward their targets they force on to[Pg 294] the place where they saw the distress of their friends greatest. The fight is restored in every part, as far as their onset reached; nor was there a doubt but that if so few could, accomplish every thing at the same time, the enemy would have turned their backs.

And when they could now be withstood in no part, the Volscian commander gives a signal, that an opening should be made for the targeteers, the enemy's new cohort; until carried away by their impetuosity they should be cut off from their own party. When this was done, the horsemen were intercepted; nor were they able to force their way in the same direction as that through which they had passed; the enemy being thickest in that part through which they had made their way; and the consul and Roman legions, when they could no where see that party which had lately been a protection to the entire army, lest the enemy should cut down so many men of distinguished valour by cutting them off, push forward at all hazards. The Volscians, forming two fronts, sustained the attack of the consul and the legions on the one hand, with the other front pressed on Tempanius and the horsemen: and when they after repeated attempts were unable to force their way to their own party, they took possession of an eminence, and defended themselves by forming a circle, not without taking vengeance on their enemies. Nor was there an end of the battle before night. The consul also, never relaxing his efforts as long as any light remained, kept the enemy employed. The night at length separated them undecided as to victory; and such a panic seized both camps, from their uncertainty as to the issue, that, leaving behind their wounded and a great part of the baggage, both armies, as if vanquished, betook themselves to the adjoining mountains. The eminence, however, continued to be besieged till beyond midnight; but when word was brought to the besiegers that the camp was deserted, supposing that their own party had been defeated, they too fled, each whithersoever his fears carried him in the dark. Tempanius, through fear of an ambush, detained his men till daylight. Then having himself descended with a few men to look about, when he ascertained by inquiring from some of the wounded enemy that the camp of the Volscians was deserted, he joyously calls down his men from the eminence, and makes his way into the[Pg 295] Roman camp: where, when he found every thing waste and deserted, and the same unsightliness as with the enemy, before the discovery of this mistake should bring back the Volscians, taking with him all the wounded he could, and not knowing what route the consul had taken, he proceeds by the shortest roads to the city.

The report of the unsuccessful battle and of the abandonment of the camp had already reached there; and, above all other objects, the horsemen were mourned not more with private than with public grief; and the consul Fabius, the city also being now alarmed, stationed guards before the gates; when the horsemen, seen at a distance, not without some degree of terror by those who doubted who they were, but soon being recognised, from a state of dread produced such joy, that a shout pervaded the city, of persons congratulating each other on the horsemen having returned safe and victorious; and from the houses a little before in mourning, as they had given up their friends for lost, persons were seen running into the street; and the affrighted mothers and wives, forgetful of all ceremony through joy, ran out to meet the band, each one rushing up to her own friends, and through extravagance of delight scarcely retaining power over body or mind. The tribunes of the people who had appointed a day of trial for Marcus Postumius and Titus Quintius, because of the unsuccessful battle fought near Veii by their means, thought that an opportunity now presented itself for renewing the public odium against them by reason of the recent displeasure felt against the consul Sempronius. Accordingly, a meeting being convened, when they exclaimed aloud that the commonwealth had been betrayed at Veii by the generals, that the army was afterwards betrayed by the consul in the country of the Volscians, because they had escaped with impunity, that the very brave horsemen were consigned to slaughter, that the camp was shamefully deserted; Caius Julius, one of the tribunes, ordered the horseman Tempanius to be cited, and in presence of them he says, "Sextus Tempanius, I ask of you, whether do you think that Caius Sempronius the consul either commenced the battle at the proper time, or strengthened his line with reserves, or that he discharged any duty of a good consul? or did you yourself, when the Roman legions were beaten, of your own judgment dismount the cavalry and re[Pg 296]store the fight? then when you and the horsemen with you were cut off from our army, did either the consul himself come to your relief, or did he send you succour? Then again, on the following day, had you any assistance any where? or did you and your cohort by your own bravery make your way into your camp? Did you find a consul or an army in the camp, or did you find the camp forsaken, the wounded soldiers left behind? These things are to be declared by you this day, as becomes your valour and honour, by which alone the republic has stood its ground on this day. In a word, where is Caius Sempronius, where are our legions? Have you been deserted, or have you deserted the consul and the army? In a word, have we been defeated, or have we gained the victory?"

In answer to these questions the language of Tempanius is said to have been entirely devoid of elegance, but firm as became a soldier, not vainly parading his own merits, nor exulting in the inculpation of others: "How much military skill Caius Sempronius possessed, that it was not his business as a soldier to judge with respect to his commander, but the business of the Roman people when they were choosing consuls at the election. Wherefore that they should not require from him a detail of the plans to be adopted by a general, nor of the qualifications to be looked for in a consul; which matters required to be considered by great minds and great capacities; but what he saw, that he could state. That before he was separated from his own party, he saw the consul fighting in the first line, encouraging his men, actively employed amid the Roman ensigns and the weapons of the enemy; that he was afterwards carried out of sight of his friends. That from the din and shouting he perceived that the contest was protracted till night; nor did he think it possible, from the great numbers of the enemy, that they could force their way to the eminence which he had seized on. Where the army might be, he did not know; he supposed that as he protected himself and his men, by advantage of situation when in danger, in the same way the consul, for the purpose of preserving his army, had selected a more secure place for his camp. Nor did he think that the affairs of the Volscians were in a better condition than those of the Roman people. That fortune and the night had occasioned a multitude of mistakes on both sides:"[Pg 297] and then when he begged that they would not detain him, fatigued with toil and wounds, he was dismissed with high encomiums, not more on his bravery than his modesty. While these things were going on, the consul was at the temple of Rest on the road leading to Lavici. Waggons and other modes of conveyance were sent thither from the city, and took up the army, exhausted by the action and the travelling by night. Soon after the consul entered the city, not more anxious to remove the blame from himself, than to bestow on Tempanius the praises so well deserved. Whilst the citizens were still sorrowful in consequence of their ill success, and incensed against their leaders, Marcus Postumius, being arraigned and brought before them, he who had been military tribune with consular power at Veii, is condemned in a fine of ten thousand asses in weight, of brass. His colleague, Titus Quintius, who endeavoured to shift the entire blame of that period on his previously condemned colleague, was acquitted by all the tribes, because both in the country of the Volscians, when consul, he had conducted business successfully under the auspices of the dictator, Postumius Tubertus, and also at Fidenæ, as lieutenant-general of another dictator, Mamercus Æmilius. The memory of his father, Cincinnatus, a man highly deserving of veneration, is said to have been serviceable to him, as also Capitolinus Quintius, now advanced in years, humbly entreating that they would not suffer him who had so short a time to live to be the bearer of such dismal tidings to Cincinnatus.

The commons elected as tribunes of the people, though absent, Sextus Tempanius, Aulus Sellius, Sextus Antistius, and Spurius Icilius, whom the horsemen by the advice of Tempanius had appointed to command them as centurions. The senate, inasmuch as the name of consuls was now becoming displeasing through the hatred felt towards Sempronius, ordered that military tribunes with consular power should be elected. Those elected were Lucius Manlius Capitolinus, Quintus Antonius Merenda, Lucius Papirius Mugillanus. At the very commencement of the year, Lucius Hortensius, a tribune of the people, appointed a day of trial for Caius Sempronius, a consul of the preceding year, and when his four colleagues, in sight of the Roman people, entreated him that he would not involve in vexation their unoffending general, in whose case[Pg 298] nothing but fortune could be blamed, Hortensius took offence, thinking it to be a trying of his perseverance, and that the accused depended not on the entreaties of the tribunes, which were merely used for show, but on their protection. Therefore now turning to him, he asked, "Where were those patrician airs, where the spirit supported and confiding in conscious innocence; that a man of consular dignity took shelter under the shade of the tribunes?" Another time to his colleagues, "What do you intend doing, if I go on with the prosecution; will you wrest their jurisdiction from the people and overturn the tribunitian authority?" When they said that, "both with respect to Sempronius and all others, the power of the Roman people was supreme; that they had neither the will nor the power to do away with the judgment of the people; but if their entreaties for their commander, who was to them in the light of a parent, were to prove of no avail, that they would change their apparel along with him:" then Hortensius says, "The commons of Rome shall not see their tribunes in the garb of culprits. To Caius Sempronius I have nothing more to say, since when in office he has attained this good fortune, to be so dear to his soldiers." Nor was the dutiful attachment of the four tribunes more grateful alike to the commons and patricians, than was the temper of Hortensius, which yielded so readily to their just entreaties. Fortune no longer indulged the Æquans, who had embraced the doubtful victory of the Volscians as their own.

In the year following, when Numerius Fabius Vibulanus and Titus Quintius Capitolinus, son of Capitolinus, were consuls, nothing worth mentioning was performed under the conduct of Fabius, to whom that province had fallen by lot. When the Æquans had merely showed their dastardly army, they were routed by a shameful flight, without any great honour to the consul; therefore a triumph is refused. However in consequence of having effaced the ignominy of Sempronius's defeat, he was allowed to enter the city with an ovation. As the war was terminated with less difficulty than they had apprehended, so in the city, from a state of tranquillity, an unexpected mass of dissensions arose between the commons and patricians, which commenced with doubling the number of quæstors. When the patricians approved most highly of this measure, (viz. that, besides the two city quæs[Pg 299]tors, two should attend the consuls to discharge some duties of the military service,) after it was moved by the consuls, the tribunes of the commons contended in opposition to the consuls, that half of the quæstors should be appointed from the commons; for up to that time all patricians were appointed. Against this proceeding both the consuls and patricians at first strove with all their might; then by making a concession that the will of the people should be equally free in the case of quæstors, as they enjoyed in the election of tribunes with consular power, when they produced but little effect, they gave up the entire matter about increasing the number of quæstors. When relinquished, the tribunes take it up, and other seditious schemes are continually started, among which is that of the agrarian law. On account of these disturbances the senate was desirous that consuls should be elected rather than tribunes, but no decree of the senate could be passed in consequence of the protests of the tribunes; the government from being consular came to an interregnum, and not even that without a great struggle (for the tribunes prevented the patricians from meeting). When the greater part of the following year was wasted in contentions by the new tribunes of the commons and some interreges, the tribunes at one time hindering the patricians from assembling to declare an interrex, at another time preventing the interrex from passing a decree regarding the election of consuls; at length Lucius Papirius Mugillanus, being nominated interrex, censuring now the patricians, now the tribunes of the people, asserted "that the state, deserted and forsaken by man, being taken up by the providence and care of the gods, subsisted by the Veientian truce and the dilatoriness of the Æquans. From which quarter if any alarm of danger be heard, did it please them that the state, left without a patrician magistrate, should be taken by surprise? that there should be no army, nor general to enlist one? Will they repel a foreign war by an intestine one? And if they both meet, the Roman state can scarcely be saved, even by the aid of the gods, from being overwhelmed. That they, by resigning each a portion of their strict right, should establish concord by a compromise; the patricians, by suffering military tribunes with consular authority to be elected; the tribunes of the commons, by ceasing to protest against the[Pg 300] four quæstors being elected promiscuously from the commons and patricians by the free suffrage of the people."

The election of tribunes was first held. There were chosen tribunes with consular power, Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus a third time, Lucius Furius Medullinus a second time, Marcus Manlius, Aulus Sempronius Atratinus. On the last-named tribune presiding at the election of quæstors, and among several other plebeians a son of Antistius, a plebeian tribune, and a brother of Sextus Pompilius, also a tribune of the commons, becoming candidates, neither the power nor interest of the latter at all availed so as to prevent those, whose fathers and grandfathers they had seen consuls, from being preferred for their high birth. All the tribunes of the commons became enraged, above all Pompilius and Antistius were incensed at the rejection of their relatives. "What could this mean? that neither through their own kindnesses, nor in consequence of the injurious treatment of the patricians, nor even through the natural desire of making use of their new right, as that is now allowed which was not allowed before, was any individual of the commons elected if not a military tribune, not even a quæstor. That the prayers of a father in behalf of a son, those of one brother in behalf of another, had been of no avail, though proceeding from tribunes of the people, a sacrosanct power created for the support of liberty. There must have been some fraud in the matter, and Aulus Sempronius must have used more of artifice at the elections than was compatible with honour." They complained that by the unfairness of his conduct their friends had been kept out of office. Accordingly as no attack could be made on him, secured by his innocence and by the office he then held, they turned their resentment against Caius Sempronius, uncle to Atratinus; and, with the aid of their colleague Marcus Cornelius, they entered a prosecution against him on account of the disgrace sustained in the Volscian war. By the same tribunes mention was frequently made in the senate concerning the division of the lands, (which scheme Caius Sempronius had always most vigorously opposed,) they supposing, as was really the case, that the accused, should he give up the question, would become less valued among the patricians, or by persevering up to the period of trial he would give offence to the commons.[Pg 301] He preferred to expose himself to the torrent of popular prejudice, and to injure his own cause, than to be wanting to the public cause; and he stood firm in the same sentiment, "that no largess should be made, which was sure to turn to the benefit of the three tribunes; that it was not land was sought for the people, but odium for him. That he too would undergo that storm with a determined mind; nor should either himself, nor any other citizen, be of so much consequence to the senate, that in showing tenderness to an individual, a public injury may be done." When the day of trial came, he, having pleaded his own cause with a spirit by no means subdued, is condemned in a fine of fifteen thousand asses, though the patricians tried every means to make the people relent. The same year Postumia, a Vestal virgin, is tried for a breach of chastity, though guiltless of the charge; having fallen under suspicion in consequence of her dress being too gay and her manners less reserved than becomes a virgin, not avoiding the imputation with sufficient care. The case was first deferred, she was afterwards acquitted; but the chief pontiff, by the instruction of the college, commanded her to refrain from indiscreet mirth, and to dress with more regard to sanctity than elegance. In the same year Cumæ, a city which the Greeks then occupied, was taken by the Campanians.

The following year had for military tribunes with consular power, Agrippa Menenius Lanatus, Publius Lucretius Tricipitinus, Spurius Nautius Rutilus: to the good fortune of the Roman people, the year was remarkable rather by great danger than by losses. The slaves conspire to set fire to the city in several quarters, and whilst the people should be intent in bearing assistance to the houses in every direction, to take up arms and seize the citadel and Capitol. Jupiter frustrated their horrid designs; and the offenders, being seized on the information of two (accomplices), were punished. Ten thousand asses in weight of brass paid out of the treasury, a sum which at that time was considered wealth, and their freedom, was the reward conferred on the parties who discovered. The Æquans then began to prepare for a renewal of hostilities; and an account was brought to Rome from good authority, that new enemies, the Lavicanians, were forming a coalition with the old ones. The state had now become habituated, as it were, to the anniversary arms of the Æquans. When am[Pg 302]bassadors were sent to Lavici and brought back from thence an evasive answer, from which it became evident that neither war was intended there, nor would peace be of long continuance, instructions were given to the Tusculans, that they should observe attentively, lest any new commotion should arise at Lavici. To the military tribunes, with consular power, of the following year, Lucius Sergius Fidenas, Marcus Papirius Mugillanus, Caius Servilius the son of Priscus, in whose dictatorship Fidenæ had been taken, ambassadors came from Tusculum, just as they entered on their office. The ambassadors brought word that the Lavicanians had taken arms, and having ravaged the Tusculan territory in conjunction with the army of the Æquans, that they had pitched their camp at Algidum. Then war was proclaimed against the Lavicanians; and a decree of the senate having been passed, that two of the tribunes should proceed to the war, and that one should manage affairs at Rome, a contest suddenly sprung up among the tribunes. Each represented himself as a fitter person to take the lead in the war, and scorned the management of the city as disagreeable and inglorious. When the senate beheld with surprise the indecent contention between the colleagues, Quintus Servilius says, "Since there is no respect either for this house, or for the commonwealth, parental authority shall set aside this altercation of yours. My son, without having recourse to lots, shall take charge of the city. I wish that those who are so desirous of managing the war, may conduct it with more consideration and harmony than they covet it."

It was determined that the levy should not be made out of the entire body of the people indiscriminately. Ten tribes were drawn by lot; the two tribunes enlisted the younger men out of these, and led them to the war. The contentions which commenced between them in the city, were, through the same eager ambition for command, carried to a much greater height in the camp: on no one point did they think alike; they contended strenuously for their own opinion; they desired their own plans, their own commands only to be ratified; they mutually despised each other, and were despised, until, on the remonstrances of the lieutenant-generals, it was at length so arranged, that they should hold the supreme command on alternate days. When an account of these proceedings was brought to Rome, Quintus Servilius, taught by years[Pg 303] and experience, is said to have prayed to the immortal gods, that the discord of the tribunes might not prove more detrimental to the commonwealth than it had done at Veii: and, as if some certain disaster was impending over them, he pressed his son to enlist soldiers and prepare arms. Nor was he a false prophet. For under the conduct of Lucius Sergius, whose day of command it was, being suddenly attacked by the Æquans on disadvantageous ground near the enemy's camp, after having been decoyed thither by the vain hope of taking it, because the enemy had counterfeited fear and betaken themselves to their rampart, they were beaten down a declivity, and great numbers were overpowered and slaughtered by their tumbling one over the other rather than by flight: and the camp, retained with difficulty on that day, was, on the following day, deserted by a shameful flight through the opposite gate, the enemy having invested it in several directions. The generals, lieutenant-generals, and such of the main body of the army as kept near the colours, made their way to Tusculum; others, dispersed in every direction through the fields, hastened to Rome by different roads, announcing a heavier loss than had been sustained. There was less of consternation, because the result corresponded to the apprehensions of persons; and because the reinforcements, which they could look to in this distressing state of things, had been prepared by the military tribune: and by his orders, after the disturbance in the city was quieted by the inferior magistrates, scouts were instantly despatched, and brought intelligence that the generals and the army were at Tusculum; that the enemy had not removed their camp. And, what raised their spirits most, Quintus Servilius Priscus was created dictator in pursuance of a decree of the senate; a man whose judgment in public affairs the state had experienced as well on many previous occasions, as in the issue of that war, because he alone had expressed his apprehensions of the result of the disputes among the tribunes, before the occurrence of the misfortune; he having appointed for his master of the horse, by whom, as military tribune, he had been nominated dictator, his own son, as some have stated, (for others mention that Ahala Servilius was master of the horse that year;) and setting out to the war with his newly-raised army, after sending for those who were[Pg 304] at Tusculum, chose ground for his camp at the distance of two miles from the enemy.

The arrogance and negligence arising from success, which had previously existed in the Roman generals, were now transferred to the Æquans. Accordingly, when in the very first engagement the dictator had thrown the enemy's van into disorder by a charge of his cavalry, he immediately ordered the infantry to advance, and slew one of his own standard-bearers who hesitated in so doing. So great was the ardour to fight, that the Æquans did not stand the shock; and when, vanquished in the field, they made for their camp in a precipitate flight, the taking of it was shorter in time and less in trouble than the battle had been. After the camp had been taken and plundered, and the dictator had given up the spoil to the soldiers, and the cavalry, who had pursued the enemy in their flight, brought back intelligence that all the Lavicanians were vanquished, and that a considerable number of the Æquans had fled to Lavici, the army was marched to Lavici on the following day; and the town, being invested on all sides, was taken by storm and plundered. The dictator, having marched back his victorious army to Rome, resigned his office on the eighth day after he had been appointed; and before agrarian disturbances could be raised by the tribunes of the commons, allusion having been made to a division of the Lavicanian land, the senate very opportunely voted in full assembly that a colony should be conducted to Lavici. One thousand five hundred colonists were sent from the city, and received each two acres. Lavici being taken, and subsequently Agrippa Menenius Lanatus, and Lucius Servilius Structus, and Publius Lucretius Tricipitinus, all these a second time, and Spurius Rutilius Crassus being military tribunes with consular authority, and on the following year Aulus Sempronius Atratinus a third time, and Marcus Papirius Mugillanus and Spurius Nautius Rutilus both a second time, affairs abroad were peaceable for two years, but at home there was dissension from the agrarian laws.

The disturbers of the commons were Spurius Mæcilius a fourth time, and Spurius Mætilius a third time, tribunes of the people, both elected during their absence. And after they had proposed a bill, that the land taken from the enemy[Pg 305] should be divided man by man, and the property of a considerable part of the nobles would be confiscated by such a measure; for there was scarcely any of the land, considering the city itself was built on a strange soil, that had not been acquired by arms; nor had any other persons except the commons possession of that which had been sold or publicly assigned, a violent contest between the commons and patricians seemed to be at hand; nor did the military tribunes discover either in the senate, or in the private meetings of the nobles, any line of conduct to pursue; when Appius Claudius, the grandson of him who had been decemvir for compiling the laws, being the youngest senator of the meeting, is stated to have said; "that he brought from home an old and a family scheme, for that his great-grandfather, Appius Claudius, had shown the patricians one method of baffling tribunitian power by the protests of their colleagues; that men of low rank were easily led away from their opinions by the influence of men of distinction, if language were addressed to them suitable to the times, rather than to the dignity of the speakers. That their sentiments were regulated by their circumstances. When they should see that their colleagues, having the start in introducing the measure, had engrossed to themselves the whole credit of it with the commons, and that no room was left for them, that they would without reluctance incline to the interest of the senate, through which they may conciliate the favour not only of the principal senators, but of the whole body." All expressing their approbation, and above all, Quintius Servilius Priscus eulogizing the youth, because he had not degenerated from the Claudian race, a charge is given, that they should gain over as many of the college of the tribunes as they could, to enter protests. On the breaking up of the senate the tribunes are applied to by the leading patricians: by persuading, admonishing, and assuring them "that it would be gratefully felt by them individually, and gratefully by the entire senate, they prevailed on six to give in their protests." And on the following day, when the proposition was submitted to the senate, as had been preconcerted, concerning the sedition which Mæcilius and Mætilius were exciting by urging a largess of a most mischievous precedent, such speeches were delivered by the leading senators, that each declared "that for his part he had no measure to advise, nor did he see any[Pg 306] other resource in any thing, except in the aid of the tribunes. That to the protection of that power the republic, embarrassed as it was, fled for succour, just as a private individual in distress. That it was highly honourable to themselves and to their office that there resided not in the tribuneship more strength to harass the senate and to excite disunion among the several orders, than to resist their perverse colleagues." Then a shout arose throughout the entire senate, when the tribunes were appealed to from all parts of the house: then silence being established, those who had been prepared through the interest of the leading men, declare that they will protest against the measure which had been proposed by their colleagues, and which the senate considers to tend to the dissolution of the state. Thanks were returned to the protestors by the senate. The movers of the law, having convened a meeting, and styling their colleagues traitors to the interests of the commons and the slaves of the consulars, and after inveighing against them in other abusive language, relinquished the measure.

The following year, on which Publius Cornelius Cossus, Caius Valerius Potitus, Quintus Quintius Cincinnatus, Numerius Fabius Vibulanus were military tribunes with consular power, would have brought with it two continual wars, had not the Veientian campaign been deferred by the religious scruples of the leaders, whose lands were destroyed, chiefly by the ruin of the country-seats, in consequence of the Tiber having overflowed its banks. At the same time the loss sustained three years before prevented the Æquans from affording assistance to the Bolani, a state belonging to their own nation. Excursions had been made from thence on the contiguous territory of Lavici, and hostilities were committed on the new colony. As they had expected to be able to defend this act of aggression by the concurrent support of all the Æquans, when deserted by their friends they lost both their town and lands, after a war not even worth mentioning, through a siege and one slight battle. An attempt made by Lucius Sextius, tribune of the people, to move a law by which colonists might be sent to Bolæ also, in like manner as to Lavici, was defeated by the protests of his colleagues, who declared openly that they would suffer no order of the commons to be passed, unless with the approbation of the senate. On the following year the Æquans, having recovered Bolæ,[Pg 307] and sent a colony thither, strengthened the town with additional fortifications, the military tribunes with consular power at Rome being Cneius Cornelius Cossus, Lucius Valerius Potitus, Quintus Fabius Vibulanus a second time, Marcus Postumius Regillensis. The war against the Æquans was intrusted to the latter, a man of depraved mind, which victory manifested more effectually than war. For having with great activity levied an army and marched it to Bolæ, after breaking down the spirits of the Æquans in slight engagements, he at length forced his way into the town. He then turned the contest from the enemy to his countrymen; and when during the assault he had proclaimed, that the plunder should belong to the soldiers, after the town was taken he broke his word. I am more inclined to believe that this was the cause of the displeasure of the army, than that in a city lately sacked and in a colony still young there was less booty found than the tribune had represented. An expression of his heard in the assembly, which was very silly and almost insane, after he returned into the city on being sent for on account of some tribunitian disturbances, increased this bad feeling; on Sextus, a tribune of the commons, proposing an agrarian law, and at the same time declaring that he would also propose that colonists should be sent to Bolæ; for that those who had taken them by their arms were deserving that the city and lands of Bolæ should belong to them, he exclaimed, "Woe to my soldiers, if they are not quiet;" which words, when heard, gave not greater offence to the assembly, than they did soon after to the patricians. And the plebeian tribune being a sharp man and by no means devoid of eloquence, having found among his adversaries this haughty temper and unbridled tongue, which by irritating and exciting he could urge into such expressions as might prove a source of odium not only to himself, but to his cause and to the entire body, he strove to draw Postumius into discussion more frequently than any of the college of military tribunes. Then indeed, after so brutal and inhuman an expression, "Romans," says he, "do ye hear him threatening woe to his soldiers as to slaves? Yet this brute will appear to you more deserving of so high an honour than those who send you into colonies, after having granted to you cities and lands; who provide a settlement for your old age, who fight against such cruel and arrogant adversaries in defence[Pg 308] of your interests. Begin then to wonder why few persons now undertake your cause. What are they to expect from you? is it honours which you give to your adversaries rather than to the champions of the Roman people. You felt indignant just now, on hearing an expression of this man? What matters that, if you will prefer this man who threatens woe to you, to those who are desirous to secure for you lands, settlements, and property?"

This expression of Postumius being conveyed to the soldiers, excited in the camp much greater indignation. "Did the embezzler of the spoils and the defrauder threaten woe also to the soldiers?" Accordingly, when the murmur of indignation now became avowed, and the quæstor, Publius Sestius, thought that the mutiny might be quashed by the same violence by which it had been excited; on his sending a lictor to one of the soldiers who was clamorous, when a tumult and scuffle arose from the circumstance, being struck with a stone he retired from the crowd; the person who had given the blow, further observing with a sneer, "That the quæstor got what the general had threatened to the soldiers." Postumius being sent for in consequence of the disturbance, exasperated every thing by the severity of his inquiries and the cruelty of his punishment. At last, when he set no bounds to his resentment, a crowd collecting at the cries of those whom he had ordered to be put to death under a hurdle, he himself madly ran down from his tribunal to those who were interrupting the execution. There, when the lictors, endeavouring to disperse them, as also the centurions, irritated the crowd, their indignation burst forth to such a degree, that the military tribune was overwhelmed with stones by his own army. When an account was brought to Rome of so heinous a deed, the military tribunes endeavouring to procure a decree of the senate for an inquiry into the death of their colleague, the tribunes of the people entered their protest. But that contention branched out of another subject of dispute; because the patricians had become uneasy lest the commons, through dread of the inquiries and through resentment, might elect military tribunes from their own body: and they strove with all their might that consuls should be elected. When the plebeian tribunes did not suffer the decree of the senate to pass, and when they also protested against the election of consuls, the[Pg 309] affair was brought to an interregnum. The victory was then on the side of the patricians.

Quintus Fabius Vibulanus, interrex, presiding in the assembly, Aulus Cornelius Cossus, Lucius Furius Medullinus were elected consuls. During their office, at the commencement of the year, a decree of the senate was passed that the tribunes should, at the earliest opportunity, propose to the commons an inquiry into the murder of Postumius, and that the commons should appoint whomsoever they thought proper to conduct the inquiry. The office is intrusted to the consuls by the commons with the consent of the people at large, who, after having executed the task with the utmost moderation and lenity by punishing only a few, who there are sufficient grounds for believing put a period to their own lives, still could not succeed so as to prevent the people from feeling the utmost displeasure. "That constitutions, which were enacted for their advantages, lay so long unexecuted; while a law passed in the mean time regarding their blood and punishment was instantly put into execution and possessed full force." This was a most seasonable time, after the punishment of the mutiny, that the division of the territory of Bolæ should be presented as a soother to their minds; by which proceeding they would have diminished their eagerness for an agrarian law, which tended to expel the patricians from the public land unjustly possessed by them. Then this very indignity exasperated their minds, that the nobility persisted not only in retaining the public lands, which they got possession of by force, but would not even distribute to the commons the unoccupied land lately taken from the enemy, and which would, like the rest, soon become the prey of a few. The same year the legions were led out by the consul Furius against the Volscians, who were ravaging the country of the Hernicians, and finding no enemy there, they took Ferentinum, whither a great multitude of the Volscians had betaken themselves. There was less plunder than they had expected; because the Volscians, seeing small hopes of keeping it, carried off their effects and abandoned the town. It was taken on the following day, being nearly deserted. The land itself was given to the Hernicians.

The year, tranquil through the moderation of the tribunes, was succeeded by one in which Lucius Icilius was[Pg 310] plebeian tribune, Quintus Fabius Ambustus, Caius Furius Pacilus being consuls. When this man, at the very commencement of the year, began to excite disturbances by the publication of agrarian laws, as if such was the task of his name and family, a pestilence broke out, more alarming however than deadly, which diverted men's thoughts from the forum and political disputes to their domestic concerns and the care of their personal health; and persons think that it was less mischievous than the disturbance would have proved. The state being freed from this (which was attended) with a very general spread of illness, though very few deaths, the year of pestilence was followed by a scarcity of grain, the cultivation of the land having been neglected, as usually happens, Marcus Papirius Atratinus, Caius Nautius Rutilus being consuls. The famine would now have proved more dismal than the pestilence, had not the scarcity been relieved by sending envoys around all the states, which border on the Tuscan Sea and the Tiber, to purchase the corn. The envoys were prevented from trading in an insolent manner by the Samnitians, who were in possession of Capua and Cumæ; on the contrary, they were kindly assisted by the tyrants of Sicily. The Tiber brought down the greatest supplies, through the very active zeal of the Etrurians. In consequence of the sickness, the consuls laboured under a paucity of hands in conducting the government; when not finding more than one senator for each embassy, they were obliged to attach to it two knights. Except from the pestilence and the scarcity, there was no internal or external annoyance during those two years. But as soon as these causes of anxiety disappeared, all those evils by which the state had hitherto been distressed, started up, discord at home, war abroad.

In the consulship of Mamercus Æmilius and Caius Valerius Potitus, the Æquans made preparations for war; the Volscians, though not by public authority, taking up arms, and entering the service as volunteers for pay. When on the report of these enemies having started up, (for they had now passed into the Latin and Hernican land,) Marcus Mænius, a proposer of an agrarian law, would obstruct Valerius the consul when holding a levy, and when no one took the military oath against his own will under the protection of the tribune; an account is suddenly brought that the citadel[Pg 311] of Carventa had been seized by the enemy. The disgrace incurred by this event was both a source of odium to Mænius in the hands of the fathers, and it moreover afforded to the other tribunes, already pre-engaged as protestors against an agrarian law, a more justifiable pretext for resisting their colleague. Wherefore after the matter had been protracted for a long time by wrangling, the consuls calling gods and men to witness, that whatever disgrace or loss had either been already sustained or hung over them from the enemy, the blame of it would be imputed to Mænius, who hindered the levy; Mænius, on the other hand, exclaiming "that if the unjust occupiers would yield up possession of the public land, he would cause no delay to the levy:" the nine tribunes interposing a decree, put an end to the contest; and they proclaimed as the determination of their college, "that they would, for the purposes of the levy, in opposition to the protest of their colleague, afford their aid to Caius Valerius the consul in inflicting fines and other penalties on those who refused to enlist." When the consul, armed with this decree, ordered into prison a few who appealed to the tribune, the rest took the military oath from fear. The army was marched to the citadel of Carventa, and though hated by and disliking the consul, they on their first arrival recovered the citadel in a spirited manner, having dislodged those who were protecting it; some in quest of plunder having straggled away through carelessness from the garrison, afforded an opportunity for attacking them. There was considerable booty from the constant devastations, because all had been collected into a safe place. This the consul ordered the quæstors to sell by auction and carry it into the treasury, declaring that the army should then participate in the booty, when they had not declined the service. The exasperation of the commons and soldiers against the consul was then augmented. Accordingly, when by a decree of the senate the consul entered the city in an ovation, rude verses in couplets were thrown out with military licence; in which the consul was severely handled, whilst the name of Mænius was cried up with encomiums, when at every mention of the tribune the attachment of the surrounding people vied by their applause and commendation with the loud praises of the soldiers. And that circumstance occasioned more anxiety to the patricians, than the wanton raillery of the[Pg 312] soldiers against the consul, which was in a manner a usual thing; and the election of Mænius among the military tribunes being deemed as no longer questionable, if he should become a candidate, he was kept out of it by an election for consuls being appointed.

Cneius Cornelius Cossus and Lucius Furius Medullinus were elected consuls. The commons were not on any other occasion more dissatisfied at the election of tribunes not being conceded to them. This sense of annoyance they both manifested at the nomination of quæstors, and avenged by then electing plebeians for the first time as quæstors; so that in electing four, room was left for only one patrician; whilst three plebeians, Quintus Silius, Publius Aelius, and Publius Pupius, were preferred to young men of the most illustrious families. I learn that the principal advisers of the people, in this so independent a bestowing of their suffrage, were the Icilii, three out of this family most hostile to the patricians having been elected tribunes of the commons for that year, by their holding out the grand prospect of many and great achievements to the people, who became consequently most ardent; after they had affirmed that they would not stir a step, if the people would not, even at the election of quæstors, the only one which the senate had left open to the commons and patricians, evince sufficient spirit to accomplish that which they had so long wished for, and which was allowed by the laws. This therefore the people considered an important victory; and that quæstorship they estimated not by the extent of the honour itself; but an access seemed opened to new men to the consulship and the honours of a triumph. The patricians, on the other hand, expressed their indignation not so much at the honours of the state being shared, but at their being lost; they said that, "if matters be so, children need no longer be educated; who being driven from the station of their ancestors, and seeing others in the possession of their dignity, would be left without command or power, as mere salii and flamens, with no other employment than to offer sacrifices for the people." The minds of both parties being irritated, since the commons had both assumed new courage, and had now three leaders of the most distinguished reputation for the popular side; the patricians seeing that the result of all the elections would be similar to that for quæstors,[Pg 313] wherever the people had the choice from both sides, strove vigorously for the election of consuls, which was not yet open to them. The Icilii, on the contrary, said that military tribunes should be elected, and that posts of honour should be at length imparted to the commons.

But the consuls had no proceeding on hand, by opposing which they could extort that which they desired; when by an extraordinary and favourable occurrence an account is brought that the Volscians and Æquans had proceeded beyond their frontiers into the Latin and Hernican territory to commit depredations. For which war when the consuls commence to hold a levy in pursuance of a decree of the senate, the tribunes then strenuously opposed them, affirming that such a fortunate opportunity was presented to them and to the commons. There were three, and all very active men, and of respectable families, considering they were plebeians. Two of them choose each a consul, to be watched by them with unremitting assiduity; to one is assigned the charge sometimes of restraining, sometimes of exciting, the commons by his harangues. Neither the consuls effected the levy, nor the tribunes the election which they desired. Then fortune inclining to the cause of the people, expresses arrive that the Æquans had attacked the citadel of Carventa, the soldiers who were in garrison having straggled away in quest of plunder, and had put to death the few left to guard it; that others were slain as they were returning to the citadel, and others who were dispersed through the country. This circumstance, prejudicial to the state, added force to the project of the tribunes. For, assailed by every argument to no purpose that they would then at length desist from obstructing the war, when they yielded neither to the public storm, nor to the odium themselves, they succeed so far as to have a decree of the senate passed for the election of military tribunes; with an express stipulation, however, that no candidate should be considered, who was tribune of the people that year, and that no one should be re-elected plebeian tribune for the year following; the senate undoubtedly pointing at the Icilians, whom they suspected of aiming at the consular tribuneship as the reward of their turbulent tribuneship of the commons. Then the levy began to proceed, and preparations for war began to be made with the concurrence of all ranks. The diversity of the state[Pg 314]ments of writers leaves it uncertain whether both the consuls set out for the citadel of Carventa, or whether one remained behind to hold the elections; those facts in which they do not disagree are to be received as certain, that they retired from the citadel of Carventa, after having carried on the attack for a long time to no purpose: that Verrugo in the Volscian country was taken by the same army, and that great devastation had been made, and considerable booty captured both amongst the Æquans and in the Volscian territory.

At Rome, as the commons gained the victory so far as to have the kind of elections which they preferred, so in the issue of the elections the patricians were victorious; for, contrary to the expectation of all, three patricians were elected military tribunes with consular power, Caius Julius Julus, Publius Cornelius Cossus, Caius Servilius Ahala. They say that an artifice was employed by the patricians (with which the Icilii charged them even at the time); that by intermixing a crowd of unworthy candidates with the deserving, they turned away the thoughts of the people from the plebeian through the disgust excited by the remarkable meanness of some. Then tidings are brought that the Volscians and Æquans, whether the retention of the citadel of Carventa raised their hopes, or the loss of the garrison at Verrugo excited their resentment, united in making preparations for war with the utmost energy: that the Antians were the chief promoters of the project; that their ambassadors had gone about the states of both these nations, upbraiding their dastardly conduct; that shut up within their walls, they had on the preceding year suffered the Romans to carry their depredations throughout their country, and the garrison of Verrugo to be overpowered. That now not only armed troops but colonies also were sent into their territories; and that not only the Romans distributed among themselves and kept their property, but that they had made a present to the Hernici of Ferentinum what had been taken from them. After their minds were inflamed by these remonstrances, according as they made applications to each, a great number of young men were enlisted. Thus the youth of all the states were drawn together to Antium: there they pitched their camp and awaited the enemy. When these accounts are reported at Rome with much greater alarm than the circumstance warranted, the senate instantly ordered a[Pg 315] dictator to be nominated, which was their last resource in perilous circumstances. They say that Julius and Cornelius were much offended at this proceeding, and that the matter was accomplished with great warmth of temper: when the leading men of the patricians, complaining fruitlessly that the military tribunes would not conform to the judgment of the senate, at last appealed even to the tribunes of the commons, and stated that force had been used even with the consuls by that body on a similar occasion. The plebeian tribunes, overjoyed at the dissension among the patricians, said, "that there was no support in persons who were not held in the rank of citizens, nor even of human beings; if ever the posts of honour were open, and the administration of government were shared, that they should then see that the decrees of the senate should not be invalidated by the arrogance of magistrates; that in the mean while, the patricians, unrestrained as they were by respect for laws or magistrates, must manage the tribunitian office also by themselves."

This contention occupied men's thoughts at a most unseasonable time, when a war of such importance was on hand: until when Julius and Cornelius descanted for a long time by turns, on "how unjust it was that a post of honour conferred on them by the people was now to be wrested from them, since they were generals sufficiently qualified to conduct that war." Then Ahala Servilius, military tribune, says, "that he had remained silent for so long a time, not because he was uncertain as to his opinion, (for what good citizen can separate his own interests from those of the public,) but because he wished that his colleagues should of their own accord yield to the authority of the senate, rather than suffer the tribunitian power to be suppliantly appealed to against them. That even then, if circumstances permitted, he would still give them time to retract an opinion too pertinaciously adhered to. But since the exigences of war do not await the counsels of men, that the public weal was of deeper importance to him than the good will of his colleagues, and if the senate continued in the same sentiments, he would, on the following night, nominate a dictator; and if any one protested against a decree of the senate being passed, that he would be content with its authority."[158] When by this conduct he bore away the well[Pg 316]-merited praises and good will of all, having named Publius Cornelius dictator, he himself being appointed by him as master of the horse, served as an instance to those who considered his case and that of his colleagues, how much more attainable public favour and honour sometimes were to those who evinced no desire for them. The war was in no respect a memorable one. The enemy were beaten at Antium in one, and that an easy battle; the victorious army laid waste the Volscian territory; their fort at the lake Fucinus was taken by storm, and in it three thousand men made prisoners; the rest of the Volscians being driven within the walls, and not defending the lands. The dictator having conducted the war in such a manner as to show that he was not negligent of fortune's favours, returned to the city with a greater share of success than of glory, and resigned his office. The military tribunes, without making any mention of an election of consuls, (through pique, I suppose, for the appointment of a dictator,) issued a proclamation for the election of military tribunes. Then indeed the perplexity of the patricians became still greater, as seeing their cause betrayed by their own party. Wherefore, as on the year before, by bringing forward as candidates the most unworthy individuals from amongst the plebeians, they produced a disgust against all, even those who were deserving; so then by engaging such of the patricians as were most distinguished by the splendour of their character and by their influence to stand as candidates, they secured all the places; so that no plebeian could get in. Four were elected, all of them men who had already served the office, Lucius Furius Medullinus, Caius Valerius Potitus, Numerius Fabius Vibulanus, Caius Servilius Ahala. The last had the honour continued to him by re-election, as well in consequence of his other deserts, as on account of his recent popularity, acquired by his singular moderation.

In that year, because the term of the truce with the Veientian nation was expired, restitution began to be demanded through ambassadors and heralds, who on coming to the frontiers were met by an embassy from the Veientians. They requested that they would not proceed to Veii, until[Pg 317] they should first have access to the Roman senate. They obtained from the senate, that, because the Veientians were distressed by intestine dissension, restitution would not be demanded from them; so far were they from seeking, in the troubles of others, an opportunity for advancing their own interest. In the Volscian territory also a disaster was sustained in the loss of the garrison at Verrugo; where so much depended on time, that when the soldiers who were besieged there, and were calling for succour, might have been relieved, if expedition had been used, the army sent to their aid only came in time to surprise the enemy, who were straggling in quest of plunder, just after their putting [the garrison] to the sword. The cause of the dilatoriness was less referrible to the tribunes than to the senate, who, because word was brought that they were holding out with the most vigorous resistance, did not duly reflect that there is a limit to human strength, which no bravery can exceed. These very gallant soldiers, however, were not without revenge, both before and after their death. In the following year, Publius and Cneius Cornelius Cossus, Numerius Fabius Ambustus, and Lucius Valerius Potitus, being military tribunes with consular power, the Veientian war was commenced on account of an insolent answer of the Veientian senate, who, when the ambassadors demanded restitution, ordered them to be told, that if they did not speedily quit the city and the territories, they should give them what Lars Tolumnius had given them. The senate, indignant at this, decreed that the military tribunes should, on as early a day as possible, propose to the people the proclaiming war against the Veientians. When this was first made public, the young men expressed their dissatisfaction. "That the war with the Volscians was not yet over; that a little time ago two garrisons were utterly destroyed, and that [one of the forts] was with great risk retained. That there was not a year in which they had not to fight in the field: and, as if they were dissatisfied at the insufficiency of these toils, a new war was now set on foot with a neighbouring and most powerful nation, who were likely to rouse all Etruria." These discontents, first discussed among themselves, were further aggravated by the plebeian tribunes. These constantly affirm that the war of the greatest moment was that between the patricians and commons. That the latter[Pg 318] was designedly harassed by military service, and exposed to be butchered by the enemy; that they were kept at a distance from the enemy, and as it were banished, lest during the enjoyment of rest at home, mindful of liberty and of establishing colonies, they may form plans for obtaining some of the public land, or for giving their suffrages freely; and taking hold of the veterans, they recounted the campaigns of each, and their wounds and scars, frequently asking what sound spot was there on their body for the reception of new wounds? what blood had they remaining which could be shed for the commonwealth? When by discussing these subjects in private conversations, and also in public harangues, they produced in the people an aversion to undertaking a war, the time for proposing the law was adjourned; which would obviously have been rejected, if it had been subjected to the feeling of discontent then prevailing.

In the mean time it was determined that the military tribunes should lead an army into the Volscian territory. Cneius Cornelius alone was left at Rome. The three tribunes, when it became evident that the Volscians had not established a camp any where, and that they would not venture an engagement, separated into three different parties to lay waste the country. Valerius makes for Antium, Cornelius for Ecetræ. Wherever they came, they committed extensive devastations on the houses and lands, so as to separate the Volscians: Fabius, without committing any devastation, proceeded to attack Auxur, which was a principal object in view. Auxur is the town now called Tarracinæ; a city built on a declivity leading to a morass: Fabius made a feint of attacking it on that side. When four cohorts sent round under Caius Servilius Ahala took possession of a hill which commanded the city, they attacked the walls with a loud shout and tumult, from the higher ground where there was no guard of defence. Those who were defending the lower parts of the city against Fabius, astounded at this tumult, afforded him an opportunity of applying the scaling ladders, and every place soon became filled with the enemy, and a dreadful slaughter continued for a long time, indiscriminately of those who fled and those who resisted, of the armed or unarmed. The vanquished were therefore obliged to fight, there being no hope for those who gave way, when a pro[Pg 319]clamation suddenly issued, that no persons except those with arms in their hands should be injured, induced all the remaining multitude voluntarily to lay down their arms; of whom two thousand five hundred are taken alive. Fabius kept his soldiers from the spoil, until his colleagues should come; affirming that Auxur had been taken by these armies also, who had diverted the other Volscian troops from the defence of that place. When they came, the three armies plundered the town, which was enriched with wealth of many years' accumulation; and this generosity of the commanders first reconciled the commons to the patricians. It was afterwards added, by a liberality towards the people on the part of the leading men the most seasonable ever shown, that before any mention should be made of it by the commons or tribunes, the senate should decree that the soldiers should receive pay out of the public treasury, whereas up to that period every one had discharged that duty at his own expense.

It is recorded that nothing was ever received by the commons with so much joy; that they ran in crowds to the senate-house, and caught the hands of those coming out, and called them fathers indeed; acknowledging that the result of such conduct was that no one would spare his person or his blood, whilst he had any strength remaining, in defence of a country so liberal. Whilst the prospect of advantage pleased them, that their private property should remain unimpaired at the time during which their bodies should be devoted and employed for the interest of the commonwealth, it further increased their joy very much, and rendered their gratitude for the favour more complete, because it had been offered to them voluntarily, without ever having been agitated by the tribunes of the commons, or made the subject of a demand in their own conversations. The tribunes of the commons, the only parties who did not participate in the general joy and harmony prevailing through the different ranks, denied "that this measure would prove so much a matter of joy, or so honourable to the patricians,[159] as they themselves might imagine. That the measure at first sight was better than it would prove by experience. For from what source was that money to be raised, except by levying a tax on the people.[Pg 320] That they were generous to some therefore at the expense of others; and even though others may endure it, those who had already served out their time in the service, would never endure that others should serve on better terms than they themselves had served; and that these same individuals should have to bear the expense of their own service, and then that of others." By these arguments they influenced a part of the commons. At last, when the tax was now announced, the tribunes publicly declared, that they would afford protection to any one who should refuse to contribute his proportion for the pay of the soldiers. The patricians persisted in supporting a matter so happily commenced. They themselves were the first to contribute; and because there was as yet no coined silver, some of them conveying their weighed brass to the treasury in waggons, rendered their contribution very showy. After the senate had contributed with the utmost punctuality according to their rated properties, the principal plebeians, friends of the nobility, according to a concerted plan, began to contribute. And when the populace saw these men highly applauded by the patricians, and also looked up to as good citizens by men of the military age, scorning the support of the tribunes, an emulation commenced at once about paying the tax. And the law being passed about declaring war against the Veientians, the new military tribunes with consular power marched to Veii an army consisting in a great measure of volunteers.

The tribunes were Titus Quintius Capitolinus, Publius Quintius Cincinnatus, Caius Julius Julus a second time, Aulus Manlius, Lucius Furius Medullinus a second time, and Manius Æmilius Mamercinus. By these Veii was first invested. A little before the commencement of this siege, when a full meeting of the Etrurians was held at the temple of Voltumna, it was not finally determined whether the Veientians were to be supported by the public concurrence of the whole confederacy. The siege was less vigorous in the following year, some of the tribunes and their army being called off to the Volscian war. The military tribunes with consular power in this year were Caius Valerius Potitus a third time, Manius Largius Fidenas, Publius Cornelius Maluginensis, Cneius Cornelius Cossus, Kæso Fabius Ambustus, Spurius Nautius Rutilus a second time. A pitched battle[Pg 321] was fought with the Volscians between Ferentinum and Ecetra; the result of the battle was favourable to the Romans. Artena then, a town of the Volscians, began to be besieged by the tribunes. Thence during an attempt at a sally, the enemy being driven back into the town, an opportunity was afforded to the Romans of forcing in; and every place was taken except the citadel. Into the fortress, well protected by nature, a body of armed men retired. Beneath the fortress many were slain and made prisoners. The citadel was then besieged; nor could it either be taken by storm, because it had a garrison sufficient for the size of the place, nor did it hold out any hope of surrender, all the public corn having been conveyed to the citadel before the city was taken; and they would have retired from it, being wearied out, had not a slave betrayed the fortress to the Romans: the soldiers being admitted by him through a place difficult of access, took it; by whom when the guards were being killed, the rest of the multitude, overpowered with sudden panic, surrendered. After demolishing both the citadel and city of Artena, the legions were led back from the Volscian territory; and the whole Roman power was turned against Veii. To the traitor, besides his freedom, the property of two families was given as a reward. His name was Servius Romanus. There are some who think that Artena belonged to the Veientians, not to the Volscians. What occasions the mistake is that there was a city of the same name between Cære and Veii. But the Roman kings destroyed it; and it belonged to the Cæretians, not to the Veientians. The other of the same name, the demolition of which has been mentioned, was in the Volscian territory.

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