Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 7
Benjamin Oliver Foster, Ph.D., Ed.

Book VII

1. This year will stand out as the one in which a¹ “new man” held the consulship, and also for the establishment of two new magistracies, the praetorship and the curule aedileship. These dignities the patricians had devised for themselves, to compensate them for the second consulship, which they had granted to the commons. [2] The plebs bestowed their consulship on Lucius Sextius, by whose law it had been won. The patricians, through their influence in the Campus Martius,² obtained the praetorship for Spurius Furius Camillus, the son of Marcus, and the aedileship for Gnaeus Quinctius Capitolinus and Publius Cornelius Scipio, who belonged to their own houses. [3] Lucius Aemilius Mamercus was chosen from the patricians as colleague of Lucius Sextius. Early in the year there was some talk about the Gauls —who having at first scattered through Apulia were now rumoured to be gathering —and about a defection on the part of the Hernici. [4] The patricians purposely deferred all action, in order that the plebeian consul might have no hand in anything; [5] it seemed from the general hush and lack of bustle as though a cessation of the courts had been proclaimed; save that the tribunes would not suffer it to pass in silence that the nobles, in return for one plebeian consul, had got three patrician magistrates for themselves, who wore the purple-bordered toga and sat, like consuls, [p. 359]in curule chairs, while the praetor even dealt out³ justice —having [6] been elected as a colleague to the consuls and under the same auspices. In consequence of this criticism the senate was ashamed to order that the curule aediles be chosen from the patricians. [7] At first it was arranged to take them from the plebs in alternate years: later the election was thrown open without distinction.

Then came the consulship of Lucius Genucius and Quintus Servilius. There was neither party strife nor war to disturb the peace, but lest there should ever be freedom from fear and danger, a great pestilence broke out. [8] It is stated that a censor, a curule aedile, and three plebeian tribunes died, with a correspondingly large number from the rest of the population. But what chiefly made this pestilence noteworthy was the death of Marcus Furius, who, though ripe in years, was bitterly regretted. [9] For he was truly a man of singular excellence whether in good or evil fortune; foremost in peace and in war before his banishment, and in exile even more distinguished, whether one thinks of the yearning of his countrymen who called on him in his absence to save their captured City, or of the success with which on being restored to his country he restored the country itself at the same time; [10] after this for five and twenty years —for he survived so long —he maintained his glorious reputation, and was deemed worthy of being named next after Romulus, as Rome's second Founder.

2. The pestilence lasted during both this and the⁴ following year, the consulship of Gaius Sulpicius Peticus and Gaius Licinius Stolo. [2] In the latter year nothing memorable occurred, except that with the [p. 361]object of appeasing the divine displeasure they made⁵ a lectisternium, or banquet to the gods, being the third in the history of the City;⁶ [3] and when neither human wisdom nor the help of Heaven was found to mitigate the scourge, men gave way to superstitious fears, and, amongst other efforts to disarm the wrath of the gods, are said also to have instituted scenic entertainments. [4] This was a new departure for a warlike people, whose only exhibitions had been those of the circus; but indeed it began in a small way, as most things do, and even so was imported from abroad.⁷ Without any singing, without imitating the action of singers, players who had been brought in from Etruria danced to the strains of the flautist and performed not ungraceful evolutions in the Tuscan fashion. [5] Next the young Romans began to imitate them, at the same time exchanging jests in uncouth verses, and bringing their movements into a certain harmony with the words. [6] And so the amusement was adopted, and frequent use kept it alive. The native professional actors were called histriones, from ister, the Tuscan word for player; they no longer —as before —alternately [7] threw off rude lines hastily improvised, like the Fescennines,⁸ but performed medleys, full of musical measures, to melodies which were now written out to go with the flute, and with appropriate gesticulation.

[p. 363] Livius⁹ was the first, some years later, to abandon¹⁰ 364 saturae and compose a play with a plot. [8] Like everyone else in those days, he acted his own pieces; and the story goes that when his voice, owing to the frequent demands made upon it, had lost its freshness, he asked and [9??] obtained the indulgence to let a boy stand before the flautist to sing the monody, while he acted it himself, with a vivacity of gesture that gained considerably from his not having to use his voice. [10] From that time on actors began to use singers to accompany their gesticulation, reserving only the dialogue parts for their own delivery. When this type of performance had begun to wean [11??] the drama from laughter and informal jest, and the play had gradually developed into art, the young men abandoned the acting of comedies to professionals and revived the ancient practice of fashioning their nonsense into verses and letting fly with them at one another; this was the source of the after-plays which came later to be called exodia, and were usually combined with Atellan farces. [12] The Atellan was a species of comedy acquired from the Oscans,¹¹ and the young men kept it for themselves and would not allow it to be polluted by the professional actors; that is why it is a fixed tradition that performers of Atellan plays are not disfranchised, but serve in the army as though they had no connexion with the stage.¹² [13] Amongst the humble origins of other institutions it has seemed worth while to set down the early history of the play, that it might be seen how sober were the beginnings of [p. 365]an art that has nowadays reached a point where¹³ opulent kingdoms could hardly support its mad extravagance.

3. However, the plays thus for the first time¹⁴ introduced by way of expiation neither freed men's minds of religious fears nor their bodies of disease. [2] Indeed, it fell out quite otherwise; for the games were in full swing when an inundation of the Tiber flooded the circus and put a stop to them, an accident which —as though the gods had already turned away, rejecting the proffered appeasement of their anger —filled the people with fear. [3] And so when Gnaeus Genucius and Lucius Aemilius Mamercus (for the second time) were consuls, and men's minds were more troubled by the search for means of propitiation than were their bodies by disease, it is said that the elders recollected that a pestilence had once been allayed by the dictator's driving a nail.¹⁵ [4] Induced thereto by this superstition, the senate ordered the appointment of a dictator to drive the nail. [5] Lucius Manlius Imperiosus was appointed, and named Lucius Pinarius master of the horse.

There is an ancient law, recorded in archaic words and letters, that the chief magistrate shall on the thirteenth of September drive a nail; the tablet was formerly affixed to the right side of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, where Minerva's chapel is. [6] This nail served, they say, in those days of little writing, to mark the number of years, and the law was confided to the chapel of Minerva, for the reason [p. 367]that number was an invention of that goddess.¹⁶ [7] (Cincius, a careful student of such memorials, asserts¹⁷ that at Volsinii, too, nails may be seen in the temple of Nortia,¹⁸ an Etruscan goddess, driven in to indicate the number of [8] years.) Marcus Horatius the consul dedicated the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in accordance with this law, in the year after the expulsion of the kings;¹⁹ later the ceremony of driving the nail was transferred from consuls to dictators, because theirs was the higher authority. Then, after the custom had been allowed to lapse, it was thought to be of sufficient importance to warrant the appointment of a dictator for that very [9] purpose. It was for this reason that Manlius was designated, who, however, as though appointed to wage war and not to discharge a religious obligation, aspired to conduct the war with the Hernici, and hunted down the men of military age in a rigorous levy; but in the upshot, opposed by the united efforts of all the tribunes of the plebs, he yielded either to force or to a sense of shame, and resigned his dictatorship.

4. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the ensuing²⁰ year —the consulship of Quintus Servilius Ahala and Lucius Genucius —Manlius was put upon his trial by Marcus Pomponius, a tribune of the plebs. [2] The people hated him for the severity of his levy, in which they had endured not only fines but bodily distress, some having suffered stripes for failure to respond to their names and others having been dragged off to prison; [3] but more than all else they hated the man's cruel disposition and his surname, Imperiosus, which offended a free state and had been assumed in ostentation of the truculence which [p. 369]he used as freely with his nearest friends and his²¹ own family as with strangers. [4] Amongst other charges the tribune cited the man's behaviour to his son: the youth, he said, had been found guilty of no misconduct, yet Manlius had excluded him from the City, from his home and household gods, from the Forum, the light of day, and the fellowship of his young friends, [5??] consigning him to slavish drudgery in a kind of gaol or work-house, where a youth of distinguished birth and the son of a dictator might learn by his daily wretchedness how truly “imperious” was the father that had begot him. [6] Yes, but what was the young man's fault? Why, he had been a little slow of speech —unready with his tongue! But ought not his father to have healed and mended this infirmity of nature —if he had a particle of humanity about him —instead of chastising it and by persecution making it conspicuous? Why even the dumb brutes, if one of their young is unfortunate, do none the less cherish it and foster it. [7] But Lucius Manlius was aggravating his son's evil plight by evil treatment, and was doubling the burden on his heavy wits; and any spark of native talent that might be there he was quenching in the rustic life and clownish bringing up amongst the dumb brutes where he kept him.

5. Everyone was incensed by these charges, except the young man himself. He, on the contrary, was vexed to be the cause of additional dislike and accusation of his father; [2] and that all gods and men might know that he had rather help his father than his father's enemies, he conceived a plan, in keeping to be sure with his rude and uncouth spirit, which, though it set no pattern of civic conduct, was yet [p. 371]praiseworthy for its filial piety. [3] Without anybody's²² knowledge, he girded himself with a knife in the early morning, and coming to the City, made his way at once from the gate to the house of Marcus Pomponius, the tribune. There he told the porter that he must see his master instantly, and bade him say that it was Titus Manlius, the son of Lucius. [4] Being presently admitted —for it seemed likely that he was moved with wrath against his father, or was bringing some fresh charge or plan of action —he received and returned the salutation of his host, and then announced that there were matters of which he wished to speak to him without witnesses. [5] When they had all been sent away, he drew his knife, and standing over the tribune's couch with his weapon ready, he threatened that unless the man should swear, in the terms he himself should dictate, never to hold a council of the plebs for the purpose of accusing his father, he would immediately stab him. [6] The frightened tribune, seeing the blade flash in his face, and perceiving himself to be alone and unarmed, and the other to be a stalwart youth, and, what was no less terrifying, foolhardy by reason of his strength, took the oath that was required of him, and afterwards publicly declared that he had been compelled by force to relinquish his undertaking. [7] And the plebs, however much they would have liked to be given the opportunity to cast their votes in the case of so cruel and insolent a defendant, were yet not displeased that a son had dared such a deed in defence of his parent; and they praised it all the more, because the father's shocking harshness had made no difference in the son's filial devotion. [8] And so not only was the arraignment of the father [p. 373]dismissed, but the youth himself gained distinction from²³ the affair; [9] for in the election of military tribunes for the legions, which had that year for the first time been resolved upon —until then the generals themselves had nominated them, as they do to-day those who are known as Rufuli²⁴ —he was chosen second of the six, though neither at home nor in the field had he done aught to merit popularity, and no wonder, since his youth had been passed in the country, remote from the gatherings of men.

6. That same year, whether owing to an earthquake or to some other violent force, it is said that the ground gave way, at about the middle of the Forum, and, sinking to an immeasurable depth, left a prodigious chasm. [2] This gulf could not be filled with the earth which everyone brought and cast into it, until admonished by the gods, they began to inquire what it was that constituted the chief strength of the Roman People; [3] for this the soothsayers declared that they must offer up, as a sacrifice to that spot, if they wished the Roman Republic to endure. Thereupon Marcus Curtius, a young soldier of great prowess, rebuked them, so the story runs, for questioning whether any blessing were more Roman than arms and valour. [4] A hush ensued, as he turned to the temples of the immortal gods which rise above the Forum, and to the Capitol, and stretching forth his hands, now to heaven, and now to the yawning chasm and to the gods below, devoted himself to death. [5] After which, mounted on a horse caparisoned with all possible splendour, he plunged fully armed into the gulf; and crowds of men and women threw offerings and fruits in after him. It was he, they say, and not Curtius Mettius, the soldier [p. 375]of Titus Tatius in days of old, who gave his name to²⁵ the Curtian Lake.²⁶ [6] Diligence would not be wanting, were there any path which could lead the inquirer to the truth; as it is, one must hold by the tradition, where antiquity will not allow us to be certain; and the name of the pool is better known from this more recent legend.

[7] After the expiation of this great portent, the senate dealt in the same year with the question of the Hernici, and having dispatched fetials to demand reparations, without avail, resolved to submit to the people for their approval, at the earliest possible day, a declaration of war against that nation. In a crowded assembly the people voted for war, and the consul Lucius Genucius was by lot intrusted with the conduct of it. [8] The citizens were in a fever of suspense, since he would be the first plebeian consul to conduct a war under his own auspices, and they would judge by the sequel whether they had done well or ill to throw these honours open. [9] It so happened that Genucius, marching in great force against the enemy, plunged into an ambuscade. The legions, in a sudden panic, were put to flight, and the consul was surrounded and slain by men who knew not whom they had taken. [10] When the news reached Rome, the patricians, by no means so cast down by the general disaster as elated at the unlucky generalship of the plebeian consul, filled the City with their taunts. Let them go and choose consuls from the plebs! Let them transfer the auspices to those who might not have them without sin! [11] They had been able by a plebiscite to expel the patricians from their rightful honours: had their unsanctioned²⁷ law prevailed also against the immortal gods? The gods [p. 377]themselves had vindicated their divine authority and their²⁸ auspices; for these had no sooner been touched by one who had no legal or religious warranty for so doing, than the army and its general had been annihilated, as a lesson never again to overturn the rights of the patrician families in conducting an election. Such words as these resounded through the Curia and the Forum. [12] Appius Claudius had urged the rejection of the law, and this now gave his words the greater weight, as he denounced the outcome of a policy which he himself had censured. Him, therefore, the consul Servilius, with the approval of the patricians, appointed dictator. An enrolment was proclaimed, and the courts were suspended.

7. But before the dictator and his new levies were got to the country of the Hernici, the lieutenant Gaius Sulpicius, profiting by a favourable opportunity, had fought a brilliant engagement. [2] The Hernici, whom the consul's death had made contemptuous, approached the Roman camp with every expectation of taking it by storm; but the soldiers, heartened by their general and bursting with anger and resentment, made a sortie, and so far were the Hernici from attacking the stockade, as they had hoped to do, that they actually fell back in confusion from the ground. [3] Then came the dictator, and the new army was joined to the old and the forces doubled. Calling the men together, Appius lauded the lieutenant and his soldiers, by whose bravery the camp had been defended; thus at the same stroke he encouraged those who heard themselves deservedly commended, and stimulated the others to emulation of their conduct. [4] Nor were the enemy less energetic in making ready for the war; mindful of the glory they had won [p. 379]before, and aware that the forces of their adversaries²⁹ had been augmented, they also strengthened theirs. All who bore the name of Hernici and were of military age were called upon, and eight cohorts were formed, each numbering four hundred of their best men. [5] This choice flower of their manhood they inspired with additional hope and courage by a decree which allowed them double pay. They were exempted, also, from military tasks, in order that, being reserved for the one labour of fighting, they might be sensible of an obligation to exert themselves beyond the capacity of ordinary men. [6] Finally, they were assigned a post in the battle outside the line, to make their bravery the more conspicuous.

A plain extending for two miles separated the Roman camp from the Hernici. In the middle of this plain, at a spot almost equidistant from both camps, the battle was fought. [7] At first the event of the struggle was in doubt and nothing came of the oft-repeated attempts of the Roman horse to break the enemy's line. [8] Finding their charges ineffectual, despite their efforts, they consulted the dictator and with his permission left their horses, and, rushing to the front with a mighty cheer, inaugurated a new kind of fighting. [9] There would have been no stopping them, had it not been for the special cohorts, who flung themselves across their path with a vigour and gallantry equal to their own.

8. The struggle then lay between the best men of both nations, and whatever losses the chance of war inflicted on either side were serious out of all proportion to their number. The common herd of soldiers, as though they had made over the battle to their betters, rested their future on the bravery of [p. 381]others. Many on both sides were slain and more³⁰ were wounded. [2] At length the knights began to rail at one another. What else, they asked, was there to do, if they had neither beaten the enemy when mounted, nor were able to accomplish anything on foot? What third kind of battle were they waiting for? [3] What good had they done by dashing boldly out in front of the line and fighting in a place that belonged to others? Stirred by these mutual reproaches, they advanced with renewed cheering, and first they made the enemy yield, then forced them back, and finally routed them in no uncertain fashion. [4] What it was that turned the scale, where forces were so evenly matched, would be hard to say, unless the fortune regularly attendant on each nation had the power to quicken or to daunt their resolution. [5] The Romans chased the fleeing Hernici clear to their camp, which, owing to the lateness of the hour, they refrained from attacking; —the dictator had been unable to give the battle-signal before noon, having failed for a long time to obtain favourable omens, for which reason the struggle had been protracted until night. [6] —On the following day the camp was discovered to have been deserted by the fleeing Hernici, and a few of their wounded were found, whom they had left behind. The column of fugitives was passing the walls of Signia, when the townsfolk espied their thinly attended ensigns, and falling upon them, scattered them in headlong flight across the country. [7] Yet the Romans got no bloodless victory: they lost a fourth part of their foot, and a number of Roman horsemen fell, which was no less grave a loss.

9. Next year the consuls Gaius Sulpicius and³¹ Gaius Licinius Calvus led an army against the [p. 383]Hernici, and not finding the enemy abroad, captured³² their city of Ferentinum by assault. As they were returning thence, the men of Tibur closed their gates against them. [2] Many complaints had before this been bandied back and forth between the two peoples, but this new offence made the Romans finally determine that after sending the fetials to demand redress they would declare war on the Tiburtine people.

[3] It is well established that Titus Quinctius Poenus was dictator that year and that Servius Cornelius Maluginensis was master of the horse. [4] Licinius Macer³³ states that the appointment was for the purpose of holding an election and was made by Licinius the consul, who, because his colleague was in haste to hold the election before the campaign, so that he might succeed himself in the consulship, felt obliged to thwart his evil designs. [5] But the praise which he seeks to bestow on his own family makes the testimony of Licinius less weighty, and since I find no mention of the circumstance in the older annals, I am more disposed to think that it was a Gallic war which occasioned the appointment of a dictator. [6] In any case, this was the year in which the Gauls encamped at the third milestone on the Salarian road, beyond the bridge over the Anio.

The dictator having, by reason of the Gallic rising, proclaimed a suspension of the courts, administered the oath to all of military age. Then marching out of the City with a great army he pitched his camp on the hither bank of the stream. [7] The bridge lay between, and neither side would break it down, lest it be regarded as a sign of fear. There were frequent skirmishes for the possession of the bridge, and yet, so evenly matched were their forces, it could not be [p. 385]determined who were masters of it. [8] Then a Gaul³⁴ of extraordinary size advanced upon the empty bridge, and making his voice as loud as possible, cried out, “Let him whom Rome now reckons her bravest man come out and fight, that we two may show by the outcome which people is the superior in war.”

10. The young Roman nobles were for a long time silent. Ashamed to decline the challenge, they were loath to volunteer for a service of transcendent peril. [2] Then Titus Manlius, the son of Lucius, who had rescued his father from the persecution of the tribune, left his station and went to the dictator. “Without your orders, General,” he said, “I would fain never leave my place to fight, not though I saw that victory was assured; [3] but if you permit me, I would show that beast who dances out so boldly before the standards of the enemy, that I come of the family that hurled the column of Gauls from the Tarpeian Rock.” To whom the dictator made answer, “Success attend your valour, Titus Manlius, and your loyalty to father and to country! [4] Go, and with Heaven's help make good the unconquerable Roman name.” The young man's friends then armed him; he assumed the shield of a foot-soldier, and to his side he buckled a Spanish sword, convenient for close fighting.³⁵ Armed and accoutred, they led him forth to the Gaul, who in his stupid glee —for the ancients have thought even this worth mentioning —thrust his tongue out in derision. They then retired to their station, and the two armed men were left by themselves in the midst, like gladiators more than soldiers, and by no means evenly matched, to judge from [6] outward show. One [p. 387]had a body extraordinary for its size, and resplendent³⁶ in a coat of shifting hues and armour painted and chased with gold: the other was of a middling stature for a soldier, and his arms were but indifferent to look at, being suitable but [7] not ornate. He neither sang nor danced about with idle flourishes of his weapons, but his bosom swelled with courage and silent wrath, and all his ferocity was reserved for the crisis of [8] the combat. When they had taken their ground between the two embattled armies, while the hearts of the surrounding multitude were suspended betwixt hope and fear, the Gaul, whose huge bulk towered [9??] above the other, advanced his shield with the left arm, to parry the attack of his oncoming enemy, and delivered a slashing stroke with his sword, that made a mighty clatter but did [10] no harm. The Roman, with the point of his weapon raised, struck up his adversary's shield with a blow from his own against its lower edge; and slipping in between the man's sword and his body, so close that no part of his own person was exposed, he gave one thrust and then immediately another, and gashing the groin and belly of his enemy brought him headlong to the ground, where he lay stretched out over a [11] monstrous space. To the body of his fallen foe he offered no other indignity than to despoil it of one thing —a chain which, spattered with blood, he cast round his [12] own neck. The Gauls were transfixed with fear and wonder, while the Romans, quitting their station, ran eagerly to meet their champion and brought him with praise and gratulation to [13] the dictator. Amidst the rude banter thrown out by the soldiers in a kind of verse, was heard the appellation of Torquatus,³⁷ and thereafter [p. 389]this was given currency as an honoured surname,³⁸ used even by descendants of [14] the family. The dictator gave him, besides, a golden chaplet, and loudly extolled that fight of his in a public speech.

11. And in fact the combat was of so great³⁹ consequence to the issue of the whole war, that the army of the Gauls withdrew in trepidation from their camp on the succeeding night and crossed over into the territory of Tibur. There they formed a military alliance with the Tiburtes, and having been liberally assisted by them with provisions, they soon departed and went into Campania. [2] This was the reason why in the following year the consul Gaius Poetelius Balbus, when his colleague Marcus Fabius Ambustus had been appointed to the campaign with the Hernici, was commanded by the people to march against the men of Tibur. [3] To aid their allies, the Gauls returned from Campania, and the cruel devastations which ensued in the districts of Labici, Tusculum, and Alba were clearly instigated and directed by the Tiburtes. [4] Against the Tiburtine foe the state was satisfied to be commanded by a consul; but the Gallic invasion required the appointment of a dictator. The choice fell on Quintus Servilius Ahala, who designated Titus Quinctius master of the horse, and, instructed by the senate, made a vow to celebrate the great games, in the event of a successful termination of the war. [5] Directing the consular army to remain where they were, in order to confine the Tiburtes to their own field of action, the dictator administered the oath to all the young men, none of whom endeavoured to avoid the service. [6] The battle was fought not far from the Colline [p. 391]Gate. The Romans put forth all their strength⁴⁰ in full sight of their parents and their wives and children. These are powerful incentives to courage even when unseen, but being then in full view, set the soldiers on fire with a sense of honour and compassion. [7] The slaughter was great on both sides, but at last the Gallic army was driven off. In their flight they turned towards Tibur, as though it had been the stronghold of the Gallic war; as they straggled on, they encountered the consul Poetelius, not far from the town, and when the Tiburtes came out to their assistance they were beaten back through the gates along with the Gauls. [8] The affair was admirably handled by the consul as well as by the dictator. And the other consul Fabius defeated the Hernici —at first in little skirmishes, but ultimately in one remarkable battle, in which the enemy attacked with all their forces. [9] The dictator, having handsomely lauded the consuls in the senate and before the people, even giving them the credit for his own achievements, resigned his office. Poetelius celebrated a double triumph over the Gauls and the Tiburtes: it was thought enough for Fabius that he should enter the City in an ovation.

The Tiburtes ridiculed the triumph of Poetelius. Where was it, they asked, that he had fought a battle with them? [10] A handful of people had gone outside the gates to look on at the flight and panic of the Gauls, and finding that they too were attacked and that all who came in the way of the Romans were cut down without discrimination, had retired within their walls; this was the great achievement that the Romans had deemed worthy of a triumph! [11] That they might not regard it as too wonderful and [p. 393]great a thing to cause a flurry at their enemy's⁴¹ gates, they should themselves behold a greater panic in front of their own walls.

12. Accordingly, in the following year, when⁴² Marcus Popilius Laenas and Gnaeus Manlius were consuls, a hostile expedition set out from Tibur and arrived in the first silence of the night, at the walls of Rome. [2] It was terrifying to be suddenly waked out of sleep by a surprise and a night alarm; moreover many of the people knew not who their enemies were nor whence they had come; nevertheless the call to arms was quickly given, and watches were set at the gates and the walls were manned. [3] And when the first light showed the enemy before the City to be in no great force, and only the men of Tibur, the consuls sallied out at two gates and assailed them on both flanks as they were now drawing near the walls. [4] It was evident that in coming they had relied more on opportunity than on courage, for they scarcely withstood the first shock of the Roman onset. [5] In fact their expedition was confessedly a good thing for the Romans, and the fear occasioned by so near an enemy repressed a quarrel that was already in the air, between the patricians and the plebs.

[6] Another hostile incursion was more terrifying to the countryside. The Tarquinienses, bent on plundering, ranged over the Roman territory, particularly that part which adjoins Etruria; and demands for reparation proving futile, the new consuls, Gaius Fabius and Gaius Plautius, declared war against them, as commanded by the people. This campaign fell to Fabius, that against the Hernici to Plautius.

[7] [p. 395] Rumours of a Gallic war began also to be rife.⁴³ But with many perils, there was this consolation, that they had granted peace to the Latins, at their desire, and had received a large force of soldiers from them, under the terms of an ancient treaty which the Latins had for many years disregarded. [8] Thus strengthened, the Romans heard soon after with small concern that the Gauls had come to Praeneste and had then pitched their camp in the vicinity of Pedum. [9] They resolved on making Gaius Sulpicius dictator, and sent for Gaius Plautius the consul to appoint him; Marcus Valerius was named as his master of the horse. These two marched against the Gauls, with the choicest troops from both the consular armies.

[10] The war was considerably more protracted than was pleasing to either side. At first only the Gauls had been eager for battle; but later the Romans far exceeded the Gauls in the ardour with which they would run to arm themselves and fight. [11] Yet the dictator was by no means willing, being under no compulsion, to hazard his fortune against an enemy whom each day made less formidable, as he lingered on in an unfriendly country, without a magazine of food, and without adequate defences —an enemy, too, whose strength and courage lay wholly in attacking, and languished as soon as there came a slight delay.

[12] Upon these considerations the dictator spun out the war and threatened to punish anyone severely who should fight the enemy without his orders. The soldiers were mortified at this. At first they grumbled among themselves about the dictator, when on picket-duty or watching in the night, and [p. 397]sometimes railed at the senators collectively for not⁴⁴ having given the consuls charge of the war; a fine general they had chosen, a unique commander, who thought that without his lifting a finger victory would fly down from heaven into his lap! [13] But they presently began to utter these same sentiments quite openly and in the light of day, and even bolder things than these: they would not wait, they declared, for the general's orders, but would either fight or go in a body to Rome. [14] The centurions began to mingle with the soldiers; the murmuring was not confined to little knots of men, but in the main street and before the commander's tent there was now one general clamour; the throng increased to the bigness of an assembly, and on every side shouts were heard that they should go instantly to the dictator, and that Sextus Tullius should be spokesman for the army, as became his courage.

13. It was now the seventh campaign in which Tullius had served as first centurion, nor was there anyone in the army, at least among the foot-soldiers, more distinguished for his services. [2] At the head of the men, who followed in a body, he approached the platform, where the amazement of Sulpicius on seeing the mob was not greater than at seeing it led by Tullius, a soldier most obedient to authority. [3] “By your leave, Dictator,” he began, “the entire army, deeming itself condemned in your mind for cowardice and almost deprived of its arms by way of humiliation, has asked me to plead its cause with you. [4] For my part, even if we could be taunted with anywhere quitting a post, with turning our backs on the foe, with shamefully losing our standards, I should still think you ought to hearken [p. 399]to our entreaty that we be permitted to redeem our⁴⁵ fault with valour, and by winning new renown blot out the memory of our disgrace. [5] Even the legions that were routed at the Allia afterwards set out from Veii and by manful conduct won back the very City their cowardice had lost. In our case, thanks to the kindness of the gods and to your good fortune and that of the Roman People, both our cause and our glory are unimpaired. [6] Yet I hardly dare to mention glory, since the enemy flout us with every species of insult, as though we were women cowering behind our rampart; and since you, our general —a thing far harder to bear —regard us as an army without spirit, without swords, and without hands, and ere you have given us a trial, have so despaired of us as to reckon yourself a commander of cripples and weaklings. [7] For how else can we account for it, that you, an experienced and fearless general, should, as they say, be sitting down with folded hands? Indeed, however this may be, it is more reasonable that you should seem to distrust our bravery, than that we should seem to distrust yours. [8] But if this is not your own but public policy, and if some agreement amongst the senators, and not the Gallic war, keeps us in exile from the City and from our homes, then I beg you to hear what I have to say, as though it were spoken not by his soldiers to a general but by the plebs to the patricians —for if the plebs, even as you have your policies, should assert that they proposed likewise to have theirs, who, pray, could be angry with them? [9] I say, then, we are your soldiers, not your slaves; you have sent us to war, not into banishment; if anyone would give us the signal and lead us into battle, we are [p. 401]ready to quit us in the fight like men and Romans:⁴⁶ but if there be no occasion for our arms, we had rather spend our leisure in Rome than in a camp. [10] Thus much we would say to the patricians. But of you, our general, we, your soldiers, beg that you give us an opportunity of fighting. We are eager not only to conquer, but to conquer under your leadership; to win for you the glorious laurel; to enter the City with you in the march of triumph; and following your chariot, to approach the throne of Jupiter Optimus Maximus with gratulations and rejoicings.” [11] The speech of Tullius was supported by the entreaties of the crowd, who on all sides clamoured for the signal and the command to arm.

14. Though the dictator felt that a good thing had been carried out in a way to set a bad example, yet he undertook to do as the soldiers wished. [2] In private he questioned Tullius what this proceeding meant and on what precedent he had acted. Tullius earnestly besought the dictator not to believe that he had forgotten the training of a soldier, nor forgotten himself and the honour due to his commander: the crowd, he said, had become excited; crowds were generally like their leaders, and he had not refused to lead it, for fear that some other might come forward, of the sort that an unruly mob was likely to choose; for his own part he would do nothing without the approval of his general. [3] But Sulpicius, he continued, must none the less be very wary himself, to keep the army in hand; postponement would not do, where feelings were so exasperated; the men would choose for themselves a time and place for fighting, if their general did not provide them. [4] While they were talking thus, [p. 403]it chanced that a Gaul attempted to drive off certain⁴⁷ sumpter animals that were grazing outside of the stockade, and two Roman soldiers took them away from him. These men were stoned by the Gauls. Whereupon a shout arose in the Roman outpost, and men ran forward on both sides. [5] And now the mellay was likely to end in a regular battle, had not the centurions speedily parted the combatants. Sulpicius was assured by this incident that Tullius spoke truth, and, the situation admitting of no delay, he announced a general engagement for the morrow.

Yet the dictator was entering a struggle in which he relied more on the spirit of his troops than on their strength. [6] He began therefore to cast about and every way to consider how he might strike terror into the enemy by some stratagem. His cleverness produced a new expedient, which many generals both of our own and foreign countries —some even in the present age —have since employed.⁴⁸ [7] Commanding the muleteers to remove the packsaddles from the mules, leaving only a pair of saddle-cloths on each, and arming them, partly with captured weapons, partly with those belonging to the sick, he mounted them. [8] Having in this way made out near a thousand, he mixed a hundred cavalrymen with them and ordered them to go up by night on to the mountains above the camp and conceal themselves in the woods, and not to stir from thence until they received a signal from him. [9] The dictator himself, as soon as it was light, began to deploy his front along the lower slopes, on purpose to make the enemy take their stand facing the mountains where the preparations had been made for inspiring them with a fear which, groundless [p. 405]though it was, yet served the Romans almost better⁴⁹ than actual strength. [10] At first the Gallic leaders supposed that the Romans would not come down into the plain; then, when they saw that they had suddenly begun to descend, they also, being themselves eager for the combat, rushed into battle, and the fighting began before the signal could be given by the generals.

15. The right wing of the Gauls attacked fiercely, and it would have been impossible to stop them, if the dictator had not happened to be there. Calling out to Sextus Tullius by name, he chid him and asked if this was the kind of fighting he had promised that the men should do. [2] Where were those shouts with which they had called for arms? Where were their threats that they would begin the battle without the general's orders? Here was their general himself, who with a loud voice summoned them to fight, and advanced, sword in hand, in the very van! [3] Of those who but now were ready to lead, was there none to follow? They might swagger in camp; in the field they were arrant cowards. What he said was the truth, and so stung them with shame that they rushed on the weapons of the enemy in utter forgetfulness of danger. [4] This well-nigh frenzied onset first threw their enemies into disarray, and before they could recover their confusion the cavalry charged and routed them. The dictator himself, as soon as he saw that a part of their line was wavering, turned the infantry attack against their left, where he descried a throng of the enemy gathering, and made the appointed signal to those on the mountain. [5] And when they too raised a shout and were seen to [p. 407]be moving obliquely down the mountain in the⁵⁰ direction of the Gallic camp, the enemy, fearing to be shut out, ceased fighting and rushed pell-mell for their entrenchments. [6] There however they were met by Marcus Valerius, the master of the horse, who, having scattered the enemy's right wing, was then riding up to their works; [7] whereupon they turned and fled towards the mountains and the woods, where very many of them were intercepted by the muleteers masquerading as cavalry; and those whose fright had carried them into the woods were pitilessly slaughtered, after the battle had died down. [8] Not since the time of Marcus Furius has anyone celebrated a Gallic triumph that was better deserved than that of Gaius Sulpicius. He also collected from the spoils a considerable weight of gold, which he walled up with hewn stone in the Capitol, and so dedicated.

[9] In the same year the consuls, too, waged war with varying success. Gaius Plautius defeated the Hernici and reduced them to subjection; his colleague Fabius showed neither prudence nor skill in his battle with the Tarquinienses. [10] And yet the disaster experienced on the field was overshadowed by the fact that the Tarquinienses slew three hundred and seven captured Roman soldiers as a sacrifice —an act of savage cruelty that greatly emphasized the humiliation of the Roman People. [11] In addition to this defeat, the Romans suffered the devastation of their fields in sudden incursions made by the Privernates, and afterwards by the Veliterni.

[12] In the same year two tribes were added;⁵¹ the Pomptine and the Publilian; the votive games, [p. 409]which Marcus Furius had vowed as dictator, were⁵² given; and a statute against bribery was then for the first time laid before the people by Gaius Poetelius, tribune of the plebs, with the approbation of the senate. [13] By this measure they thought to have suppressed corrupt practices, particularly on the part of men risen from the people, who were wont to haunt the country fairs and gathering-places.

16. Less agreeable to the senate was a measure⁵³ which came up in the following year, in the consulship of Gaius Marcius and Gnaeus Manlius. It fixed the rate of interest at one per cent., and was carried through by Marcus Duillius and Lucius Menenius, tribunes of the plebs. [2] The commons ratified it much more eagerly than they had done the other law.⁵⁴

Besides the new wars determined on in the previous year, the Faliscans also rose up as enemies. They were charged with two offences: their youth had fought on the side of the Tarquinienses; and they had refused the demand of the fetials that they should give up the Romans who had taken refuge in Falerii, after the defeat. [3] This command was assigned to Gnaeus Manlius. Marcius led an army into the territory of Privernum, unravaged during a long period of peace, and loaded his troops with booty. This abundance he administered bountifully, and sequestering nothing to the public treasury, encouraged the men to augment their private fortunes. [4] The Privernates having encamped in front of their town, within strong intrenchments, Marcius called his soldiers together and thus addressed them: “I give you now for booty the camp and city of our enemies, if you promise me [p. 411]that in the battle you will play the part of men,⁵⁵ and be not more ready to plunder than to fight.” [5] They clamoured loudly for the signal and entered the battle with spirit, emboldened by no uncertain expectations. There in the fore-front Sextus Tullius, who has been mentioned before, cried out, “Look, general, and see how your army keeps the promises it gave you!” Then, laying down his javelin, he drew his sword and charged the foe. [6] All of the front line followed Tullius, and putting the enemy to flight at the first shock, pursued them to the town, where the Romans were already bringing up their scaling ladders to the wall, when the place surrendered. A triumph was celebrated over the Privernates.

[7] The other consul accomplished nothing worth recording, except that without precedent he got a law passed in his camp before Sutrium —the men voting by tribes —which levied a tax of one-twentieth on manumissions. The Fathers ratified this law, since it brought in no small revenue to the empty treasury; but the tribunes of the plebs, troubled less by the law than by the precedent established, had it made a capital offence for anyone thereafter to summon the people to the comitia away from Rome. [8] If this should be permitted, there was nothing, they argued, however baneful to the people, which could not be carried through by the votes of soldiers sworn to obey their consul.⁵⁶

[9] In the same year Gaius Licinius Stolo was prosecuted under his own statute by Marcus Popilius Laenas, and condemned to pay a fine of ten thousand asses, on the charge that he held with his son a thousand iugera of land, and by emancipating his son⁵⁷ had evaded the law.⁵⁸

[p. 413] 17. New consuls now came in, Marcus Fabius⁵⁹ Ambustus and Marcus Popilius Laenas, each for the second time. They had two wars. [2] One of these was easy; it was waged by Laenas against the Tiburtes, and he shut up the enemy within their city and pillaged their fields. The other consul was routed by the Faliscans and Tarquinienses in his first engagement. [3] The panic was chiefly due to this, that their priests, bearing serpents and blazing torches before them, came rushing on like Furies, and utterly dismayed the Roman soldiers with the extraordinary sight. At first they were like men frantic and distraught, and flung themselves in a disordered mob into their own works. [4] Then when the consul, the lieutenants and the tribunes laughed at them and upbraided them for being scared like children at idle tricks, shame caused a sudden revulsion in their feelings, and they rushed, as if blinded, on the very objects from which they had fled. [5] In this spirit they brushed aside the enemy's vain paraphernalia, and hurling themselves on his real fighting men, they routed the whole army, and even captured the camp that day. As they returned victorious with the rich plunder they had won, they jested in soldier-fashion and scoffed not only at the enemy's devices but at their own fright as well. [6] All who bore the Etruscan name then rose in arms, and led by the men of Tarquinii and Falerii, advanced as far as Salinae. To meet this fearful danger Gaius Marcius Rutulus was made dictator, the first that was ever appointed from the plebs, and he named a plebeian also, Gaius Plautius, to be master of the horse. [7] But the patricians thought it shameful that even the dictatorship should now [p. 415]be common; and they exerted all their influence⁶⁰ to prevent anything being decreed or made ready for the dictator, to carry on that war. [8] For which reason the people voted the more promptly everything that the dictator proposed. Marching out from the City and setting his army across the Tiber by means of rafts, wherever a rumour [9??] of the enemy called him, he surprised many straggling pillagers as they roamed about the fields, on both sides of the river; he also captured their camp in a surprise attack, and with it eight thousand soldiers; [10] and having slain the rest, or driven them out of Roman territory, was granted a triumph by the people, but without the authorization of the senate.⁶¹

[11] The patricians were not willing that a consular election should be held by a plebeian, whether dictator or consul, and the other consul being detained by the war, the state relapsed into an interregnum. The office of interrex was held successively by Quintus Servilius Ahala, Marcus Fabius,⁶² Gnaeus Manlius, Gaius Fabius, Gaius Sulpicius, Lucius Aemilius, Quintus Servilius, and Marcus Fabius Ambustus. [12] In the second interregnum a controversy arose because two patricians were on the point of being named as consuls; and when the tribunes sought to veto the announcement, the interrex Fabius declared that the Twelve Tables enacted that whatsoever the people decreed last should have the binding force of law, and their votes were also a decree. [13] The tribunes gained nothing more by their intervention than a postponement of the comitia, and two patrician consuls were elected, namely Gaius Sulpicius Peticus (for the third time) and Marcus Valerius Publicola. They entered office that very day,⁶³ 18. [p. 417]in the four hundredth year from the founding of Rome⁶⁴ and the thirty-fifth from its recovery from the Gauls, depriving the plebs of the consulship they had enjoyed for ten years. [2] Empulum was won that year from the Tiburtes without any memorable battle being fought; whether, as some writers state, the campaign was conducted there under the auspices of the two consuls; or whether the lands belonging to Tarquinii were ravaged by the consul Sulpicius at the same time that Valerius led his legions against the Tiburtes.

The consuls had a harder struggle at home, with the plebs and the tribunes. [3] They held that honour as well as courage required of them that, even as two patricians had received the consulship, so they should hand it over to successors who were both patricians: [4] indeed they ought rather to withdraw from the consulship altogether, that it might at once become a plebeian magistracy, or else retain undivided that control which they had inherited entire from their fathers. [5] On the other side, the plebeians were asking angrily why they lived, why they were counted a part of the state, if they were unable by their collective efforts to maintain what the courage of two men, Lucius Sextius and Gaius Licinius, had won for them. [6] It were better to put up with kings or decemvirs, or —if possible —a [7] more stern type of government than theirs, rather than see the consuls both patricians and have no turns at obeying and commanding, while a part of the people thought themselves established forever in authority and the commons born for no other end than servitude. [8] There was no lack of tribunes to promote disturbances, but where all were so excited, to begin with, the leaders were hardly to [p. 419]be discerned. [9] After the people had several times⁶⁵ gone down to the Campus Martius⁶⁶ to no purpose, and many meeting days had been spent in rioting, the persistence of the consuls finally prevailed. The plebs, thereupon, in a burst of resentment, followed their tribunes, who cried out that liberty was lost and that they ought now to leave not only the voting-field but the City, too, which was taken captive and enslaved by the tyranny of the patricians. [10] The consuls, being deserted by half the people, nevertheless, despite the paucity of voters, completed the election. The successful candidates were both patricians, Marcus Fabius Ambustus (for the third time) and Titus Quinctius. In certain annals I find Marcus Popilius given as consul instead of Titus Quinctius.

19. Two wars were successfully prosecuted this⁶⁷ year, and the Tarquinienses and Tiburtes were forced to make submission. From the latter their city of Sassula was taken, and the rest of their towns would have met with the same fortune, had the whole nation not laid down their arms and cast themselves upon the mercy of the consul. [2] A triumph was celebrated over them, but in all other respects the victory was used with clemency. The men of Tarquinii were shown no ruth; many were slain in the field of battle, and out of the vast number taken prisoners three hundred and fifty-eight were selected —the noblest of them all —to be sent to Rome, and the rest of the populace were put to the sword. [3] Neither were the People less stern towards those who had been sent to Rome, but scourged them all with rods in the middle of the Forum and struck off their heads. Such was the vengeance they exacted of their enemies for the Romans sacrificed [p. 421]in the market-place of Tarquinii.⁶⁸ [4] Their success in⁶⁹ war induced the Samnites also to apply for their friendship. The senate made a courteous answer to their ambassadors, and granted them a treaty of alliance.

[5] The Roman commons were not so fortunate at home as in the field. For notwithstanding they had been relieved of usury by the adoption of a one per cent. rate, the very poor found even the principal sum a crushing burden, and were being bound over to their creditors. Hence it was that neither the incumbency of two patrician consuls, nor concern for the elections or affairs of state, could divert the thoughts of the plebeians from their personal distresses. [6] Accordingly both consulships continued in the hands of the patricians; Gaius Sulpicius Peticus was elected for the fourth time, and Marcus Valerius Publicola for the second.

While the citizens were occupied with thoughts of an Etruscan war —for it was rumoured that the people of Caere, out of compassion for their kinsmen of Tarquinii, had made common cause with them —came envoys from the Latins and turned their thoughts upon the Volsci, with a report that they had mustered and equipped an army, which was even then descending upon Latium, from whence it would invade and devastate the territory of the Romans. [7] The senate therefore resolved that neither threat must be neglected; and ordered that legions should be enrolled for both campaigns, and that the consuls should decide the commands by lot. [8] But the Etruscan war afterwards came to be their chief concern, on the receipt of a dispatch from the consul Sulpicius, who had received the assignment [p. 423]to Tarquinii, with the news that the countryside⁷⁰ lying near the Roman salt-works had been pillaged, and a part of the booty carried into the borders of the Caerites, whose soldiers had, without question, been amongst the depredators. [9] And so the senate recalled Valerius the consul, who was opposing the Volsci and had his camp close to the Tusculan frontier, and ordered him to nominate a dictator. [10] His choice fell upon Titus Manlius,⁷¹ the son of Lucius, who appointed as master of the horse Aulus Cornelius Cossus. Asking for no more than the consular army, the dictator, by the senate's authority, and at the bidding of the people, proclaimed war on the Caerites.

20. It was then that the Caerites realized for the first time the full danger of war, as if the words of their enemies conveyed a more emphatic hint of it than their own acts, though they had pillaged the Romans and harried them. Beginning then to perceive how inadequate was their strength to such a quarrel, they repented of their raid, and cursed the Tarquinienses, who had encouraged them to fall away. [2] Nobody made ready his arms and prepared for war, but one and all bade dispatch ambassadors to Rome, to beg forgiveness for their error. The envoys, having approached the senate, were sent by them to be dealt with by the people. [3] Calling on the gods whose sacred emblems they had received and religiously protected in the Gallic war, they besought them to inspire the Romans in their prosperity with such compassion for the men of Caere as they themselves had formerly shown for Rome in her time of tribulation.⁷² Then, turning to the shrine of Vesta, they invoked the flamens and Vestals whom they had [p. 425]entertained with a pure and scrupulous hospitality.⁷³ [4] Could anyone, they asked, believe that those who had deserved so well of the Romans had suddenly turned enemies without reason? [5] or that if they had in fact committed an act of hostility, it had been deliberately planned, and had not rather been owing to a fit of madness? Would they undo their own kindness of old, especially kindness to such grateful friends, with new misdeeds; and choose to be enemies of the Roman People in their flourishing state and at the height of their success in war, when they had sought their friendship in the hour of their adversity? Let them not give the name of “purpose” to what should properly be called “force” and “necessity.” [6] The Tarquinienses, marching in hostile array through their territories, had sought nothing of them save permission to pass, but had drawn certain rustics after them in their train, who had borne a part in the pillaging with which the people of Caere were now taxed. [7] If it pleased the Romans that these men should be surrendered, they would surrender them; if they would have them punished, they should be made to suffer. But Caere, the sanctuary of the Roman People, the hostel of its priests and refuge of the Roman religion, let them preserve intact and unstained by the imputation of making war, for the sake of the hospitality it had shown their Vestals and the reverence it had paid their gods. [8] The people were moved, not so much by their present claims as by their ancient merits, and chose rather to forget an injury than a kindness. So peace was granted to the people of Caere, and it was resolved that a truce of a hundred years be made, and recorded on a table of bronze. [9] The [p. 427]brunt of the war was turned against the Faliscans,⁷⁴ who lay under the same accusation; but the enemy were nowhere encountered. Having ranged over their lands and laid them waste, the Romans refrained from attacking their cities, and led their legions home. The rest of the year was consumed in repairing the walls and towers, and a temple was dedicated to Apollo.

21. In the latter part of the year the consular⁷⁵ election was broken off by a quarrel between the patricians and the plebs: the tribunes refused to permit the assembly to be held unless it were held agreeably to the Licinian law, and the dictator was obstinately determined rather to remove the consulship root and branch out of the state than to throw it open to patricians and plebs without distinction. [2] The assembly was therefore repeatedly adjourned, until the dictator's term had expired, and the state reverted to an interregnum. The interreges found the commons hostile to the patricians, and the factional struggle continued until there had been eleven interreges. [3] The tribunes continually vaunted their backing of the Licinian law: the plebs were more concerned with the distress they suffered from the increasing weight of usury, and their private worries broke out into public quarrels. [4] Worn out with these, the senate ordered Lucius Cornelius Scipio, the interrex, for harmony's sake to observe the Licinian law at the consular election. Publius Valerius Publicola⁷⁶ was elected, with a plebeian colleague named Gaius Marcius Rutulus. [5] Now that the minds of men were once inclined to concord, the new consuls set themselves to obtain relief in the matter of usury also, which appeared to be the sole [p. 429]obstacle to harmony. They made the discharge of⁷⁷ debts a concern of the state, appointing five commissioners, whom they called bankers, from their having the disposition of the money. [6] These men by their impartiality and diligence fairly earned the distinction which attaches, in all the histories, to the names of Gaius Duillius, Publius Decius Mus, Marcus Papirius, Quintus Publilius, and Titus Aemilius. [7] In the discharge of a very difficult duty, involving always a hardship for one of the parties, and in most instances for both, they managed matters wisely in other respects, and, in particular, they expended without throwing away the public funds. [8] For with long-standing accounts, embarrassed more by the debtors' neglect than by their lack of means, they dealt in one of the following ways: either they paid them out of the treasury —taking security for the people first —at the banking tables they had set up in the Forum; or they settled them upon a valuation, at fair prices, of the debtor's effects. And so, not only without injustice, but even without complaint from either side, a vast amount of indebtedness was cleared off.

[9] A groundless fear of war with Etruria, on a report that the twelve nations had conspired, compelled the appointment of a dictator. The appointment was made in camp —for thither had the resolution of the senate been sent to the consuls —and Gaius Julius became dictator, with Lucius Aemilius for master of the horse. But abroad all was serene, 22. while at home an attempt, made through the⁷⁸ dictator, to obtain the return of patricians to both consulships, brought the state to an interregnum. [2] The two interreges who were put in, Gaius Sulpicius [p. 431]and Marcus Fabius, brought to pass what the⁷⁹ dictator had vainly striven for; and the plebs being now grown more tractable, thanks to the help lately granted them in the relief of debt, both men elected consuls were patricians. [3] These were that very Gaius Sulpicius Peticus, who was the earlier of the two interreges, and Titus Quinctius Poenus. (Some give Caeso, others Gaius, as the praenomen of Quinctius.) [4] Both marched out to fight, Quinctius against the Faliscans, Sulpicius against the Tarquinienses; but nowhere encountering their enemies in battle, they warred rather with the land, which they burnt and pillaged, than with men; [5] until the obstinacy of both peoples was overcome, as by the wasting of a lingering illness, and they requested a truce, first of the consuls, and later, by their permission, of the senate. They were granted one for forty years.

[6] The anxiety arising from two threatening wars being thus allayed, it was resolved that while there was some rest from arms they would take the census; for the settlement of debts had brought about the change of ownership in many properties. [7] But when notice had been given of an assembly for the election of censors, an announcement that he should be a candidate on the part of Gaius Marcius Rutulus, who had been the first plebeian dictator, played havoc with the harmony of the orders; [8] for he seemed to have taken this step at an untoward time, since both the consuls, as it fell out, were then patricians, who declared that they would receive no votes for him; [9] but Rutulus himself held firmly to his purpose, and the tribunes aided him with all their power, in the hope of [p. 433]recovering what they had lost in the election of⁸⁰ consuls; and not only was the man's own greatness equal to any honour, however lofty, but the plebs desired that they might be called to share the censorship by the same man who had opened up for them a path to the dictatorship. [10] There was no dissenting opinion shown at the assembly, and Marcius was elected, along with Manlius Naevius.

There was a dictator in this year also, namely, Marcus Fabius, not because of any threatened war, but to prevent the observance of the Licinian law in the consular election. [11] Quintus Servilius was assigned to the dictator as master of the horse. But the dictatorship made the unanimity of the patricians no more potent in the election of consuls than it had been in the election of censors.⁸¹ 23. Marcus Popilius Laenas was chosen from the plebs, Lucius Cornelius Scipio from the patricians.

[2] Fortune even made the plebeian consul the more illustrious, for the news that a huge army of Gauls had encamped in Latium found Scipio afflicted with a grave disorder, and the conduct of the war was entrusted by special arrangement to Popilius. [3] He levied troops with energy, and ordered all the young men to assemble under arms outside the Porta Capena, at the temple of Mars, commanding the quaestors to convey the standards thither, from the treasury. After filling up four legions, he turned over the supernumeraries to the praetor, Publius Valerius Publicola, urging the senators to enroll [p. 435]a second army as a national reserve against the⁸² uncertain emergencies of war. [4] Having at length concluded all the necessary preparations, he himself marched against the enemy; [5] and that he might first learn their strength before putting it to the test of a decisive battle, he seized and began to fortify an eminence as close as he could find to the camp of the Gauls. [6] These, being a fierce people and by nature eager for the combat, on beholding the Roman ensigns in the distance, at once drew out their line, as if for instant battle. But perceiving that the Romans did not descend into the plain, but sought to protect themselves not only by their position but even with a rampart, they supposed them to be panic-stricken and at the same time the more open to attack for being just then taken up with their task. They advanced, therefore, with hideous yells. [7] The Romans without a pause in their work, on which the reserves were engaged, began the action with their troops of the first and second lines, who had been standing alert and armed in front of the working party. [8] Besides their valour, they had an advantage from the elevation, for their javelins and spears, instead of falling without effect, as they mostly do when thrown on a level field, were steadied by their own weight and all struck home. [9] The Gauls were burdened with the missiles which had either transfixed their bodies, or, sticking in their shields, had made them very heavy; their dash had carried them almost up the slope, but first they halted, uncertain what to do, and then —for [10] the mere delay had abated their ardour and increased that of their foes —they were thrown back, and falling one upon [p. 437]another wrought greater carnage than even their⁸³ enemies had done; for so headlong was the rout, that more were trodden under foot than slain with the sword.

24. But the Romans were not yet sure of victory; on descending into the plain they found another fight awaiting them. [2] For the Gallic host, superior to any feeling for such losses, sprang up like a new army, and urged their fresh troops against the victorious foe. [3] The Romans, slowing down, came to a halt, for they were confronted, weary as they were, with a second struggle, and the consul, rashly exposing himself in the van, had received a javelin in his left shoulder that had like to have gone clean through it, and had withdrawn for a brief space from the fight. [4] And now the delay had almost lost them the victory, when the consul, whose wound had been dressed, rode up again to the front. “Why are you standing there, my men?” he exclaimed. “You have no Latin or Sabine foe to deal with, whom you may overcome in fight and transform from an enemy into an ally; we have drawn the sword against wild beasts, and we must have their blood or yield them ours. [5] You have repulsed them from your camp, you have driven them headlong down a sloping valley, you stand on heaps of your slain enemies; cover the plain with the same carnage you have spread upon the mountains. [6] Do not wait for the enemy to flee from you, while you stand still; you must move forward and attack them.” [7] Roused once more to action by these exhortations, they drove back the foremost of the Gallic maniples, and then, forming in wedges, burst through into the midst of the main [p. 439]array; [8] whereat the barbarians were thrown into⁸⁴ confusion, having no definite orders nor commanders, and, turning, charged upon their fellows; and so, dispersed about the fields, and even carried past their own camp in the rout, they made for the highest point in the range of hills that met their eyes, namely, the Alban Citadel.⁸⁵ [9] The consul did not pursue them beyond their camp, for his wound was troubling him, and he was unwilling to send his troops against the hills which the enemy had occupied. Giving over to his soldiers the entire booty of the camp, he led back his army, flushed with victory and enriched with the Gallic spoils, to Rome. [10] The consul's triumph was delayed by reason of his wound, which also made the senate wish for a dictator, that there might be someone —in the illness of the consuls —who could hold the election. [11] Lucius Furius Camillus was appointed to that office, and Publius Cornelius Scipio was made his master of the horse. Camillus restored to the patricians their ancient possession of the consulship, and in recognition of this service was himself, with their warm support, elected consul, and announced the election of Appius Claudius Crassus as his colleague.

25. Before the new consuls entered office,^{86 87} Popilius celebrated his triumph over the Gauls, with great enthusiasm on the part of the plebeians, who, muttering low, would often ask each other if anyone regretted the choice of a plebeian [2] consul. At the same time they railed against Camillus, who by declaring himself elected consul, when he was dictator, had got a reward, they said, for his contempt of the Licinian law more disgraceful for his personal cupidity than for the injury done the [3] commonwealth.

[p. 441] The year was signalized by many and various⁸⁸ disturbances. The Gauls came down from the Alban hills, having been unable to endure the sharpness of the winter, and ranging over the plains and sea-coast, laid waste the [4] country. The sea was infested by fleets of Greeks, and so were the seaboard of Antium, the Laurentine district, and the mouth of the Tiber. It happened once that the sea-robbers encountered the land-raiders, and a hard-fought battle ensued, from which the Gauls withdrew to their camp and the Greeks to their ships, alike uncertain whether they had been defeated or [5] victorious. But by far the greatest of these alarms was occasioned by councils of the Latin tribes, assembled at the grove of Ferentina, and the unambiguous reply vouchsafed by them to a demand for [6] soldiers. Let the Romans, they said, have done with issuing commands to those whose assistance they required: the Latins would sooner bear arms in behalf of their own liberty than of an alien [7] domination. Involved in two foreign wars at once, and worried besides by the defection of their allies, the senate perceived that those whom loyalty had not restrained must be restrained by fear, and bade the consuls exert the full extent of their authority in levying troops: for they must depend on a soldiery of citizens, when their allies were leaving [8] them. They say that soldiers were enlisted everywhere, not in the City alone but in the country, and ten legions were embodied, each of four thousand two hundred foot and three hundred [9] horse. The raising of a new army of this size to-day, in case of any aggression from abroad, could not easily be compassed by the concentration on one object of the [p. 443]existing resources of the Roman People, though⁸⁹ the world hardly contains them; so strictly has our growth been limited to the only things for which we strive, —wealth and [10] luxury.

Among the untoward occurrences of this year was the death of one of the consuls, Appius Claudius, in the midst of the preparations for [11] war. The administration of the state passed to Camillus, over whom, as sole consul, —whether owing to his general high standing, which deserved not to be subordinated to the dictatorship, or to the happy omen, in a Gallic rising, of his surname,⁹⁰ —the Fathers concluded it not meet to set a [12] dictator. The consul appointed two legions to defend the City, and divided the other eight with Lucius Pinarius the praetor. Having a lively recollection of his father's prowess, he took upon himself, without drawing lots, the conduct of the Gallic war, and commanded the praetor to secure the seaboard and prevent the Greeks from [13] landing. Then, marching down into the Pomptine district, he chose a suitable site for a permanent camp; for he had no mind to meet the enemy in the field, unless compelled to do so, believing that he should effectually subdue them if he kept them from making raids, since they subsisted necessarily on plunder.

26. While they were there quietly passing the time in guard-duty, a Gaul came out to them, remarkable for his great stature and his armour, and, smiting his spear against his shield and thereby obtaining silence, challenged the Romans, through an interpreter, to send a man to fight with him. [2] There was a young tribune of the soldiers, named Marcus Valerius, who, regarding himself as no less [p. 445]worthy of that honour than Titus Manlius had been,⁹¹ first ascertained the consul's wishes, and then armed himself and advanced into the midst. [3] But the human interest of the combat was eclipsed by the intervention of the gods; for the Roman was in the very act of engaging, when suddenly a raven alighted on his helmet, facing his adversary. [4] This the tribune first received with joy, as a heaven-sent augury, and then prayed that whosoever, be it god or goddess, had sent the auspicious bird might attend him with favour and protection. [5] Marvellous to relate, the bird not only held to the place it had once chosen, but as often as the combatants closed, it rose on its wings and attacked the enemy's face and eyes with beak and talons, till he was terror-struck with the sight of such a portent, and bewildered at once in his vision and his mind, was dispatched by Valerius, —whereupon the raven flew off towards the east and was lost to sight. [6] Hitherto the outguards on either side had stood quietly by; but when the tribune began to despoil the corpse of his fallen foe, the Gauls remained no longer at their station, and the Romans ran up even more swiftly to the victor. [7] There a scuffle, arising over the body of the prostrate Gaul, led to a desperate fight that was not long confined to the maniples of the nearest outposts, for the legions, rushing out on both sides, carried on the battle. Camillus ordered his soldiers to fall on, elated as they were by the tribune's victory, elated too by the present assistance of the gods; and pointing to the tribune, decked out in his spoils, he cried, “Here is your pattern, soldiers! [8] Bring down the Gauls in troops around their prostrate leader!” [p. 447]Both gods and men helped in that battle, and they⁹² fought it out with the Gauls to a conclusion that was never doubtful, so clearly had each side foreseen the result implicit in the outcome of the single combat. [9] Between those who began the fray, and by their conflict drew in the others, there was a bitter struggle; but the rest of the Gallic host turned tail ere they came within the cast of a javelin. At first they scattered among the Volsci and through the Falernian countryside; from there they made their way into Apulia or to the Tuscan Sea.

[10] The consul assembled his soldiers, and having eulogized the tribune, bestowed on him ten oxen and a golden coronet; Camillus himself was commanded by the senate to take charge of the operations on the coast, and accordingly joined forces with the praetor. [11] The campaign there seemed likely to be long drawn out, for the Greeks were poltroons and refused to risk an engagement. [12] He therefore, on the authorization of the senate, appointed Titus Manlius Torquatus to be dictator, that an election might be held. The dictator, after naming Aulus Cornelius Cossus master of the horse, presided over a consular election, and announced, amid great popular rejoicings, that the choice had fallen —in his absence —upon a youth of twenty-three, the Marcus Valerius Corvus —for this was his surname from that time —who had rivalled Manlius's own glorious achievement. [13] As colleague of Corvus they elected the plebeian Marcus Popilius Laenas to be for the fourth time consul. With the Greeks, Camillus fought no memorable action; they were no warriors on land, nor were the Romans on the sea. [14] In the end, being kept off shore, and their [p. 449]water giving out, as well as other necessaries, they⁹³ abandoned Italy. [15] To what people or race their fleet belonged is uncertain. I am most inclined to think that they were Sicilian tyrants; for Greece proper was at that time exhausted with civil wars and trembled, even then, at the power of the Macedonians.

27. When the armies had been disbanded,⁹⁴ and there was peace with other nations, and —thanks to the goodwill betwixt the orders —quietness at home, that the happiness of the citizens might not pass all bounds, a pestilence attacked them and the senate was compelled to order the ten commissioners⁹⁵ to consult the Sibylline Books. [2] By their direction a lectisternium⁹⁶ was held. In the same year a colony was sent out to Satricum by the Antiates, and that city, which had been destroyed by the Latins, was rebuilt. [3] Further, a treaty was entered into at Rome with envoys of the Carthaginians, who had come seeking friendship and an alliance.⁹⁷

The same peaceful conditions continued at home and abroad during the consulship of Titus Manlius Torquatus and Gaius Plautius. But the rate of interest was reduced from one to one-half per cent.,⁹⁸ [4] and debts were made payable, one-fourth down and the remainder in three annual instalments; even so some of the plebeians were distressed, but the public credit was of greater concern to the senate than were the hardships of single persons. What did the most to lighten the burden was the omission of the war-tax and the levy.

[5] In the second year after the rebuilding of Satricum by the Volsci, Marcus Valerius Corvus became consul for the second time, with Gaius Poetelius. [6] A report having come out of Latium that emissaries of the [p. 451]Antiates were circulating amongst the Latin peoples⁹⁹ with a view to stir up war, Valerius was ordered to deal with the Volsci before more enemies should arise, and marched to the attack of Satricum. There he was opposed by the Antiates and the other Volsci, with forces which they had levied in advance, in case any measures should be taken by the Romans; and both sides being actuated by inveterate hatred, the battle was joined without delay. [7] The Volsci, a race more spirited in beginning than in prosecuting war, were defeated in the struggle and fled in disorder to the walls of Satricum. Indeed, they put no great reliance even in their walls, for when the city had been encircled with troops and was on the point of being escaladed, they surrendered, being in number about four thousand soldiers, besides the unarmed populace. [8] The town was dismantled and burnt; only the temple of Mater Matuta¹⁰⁰ was saved from the flames. All the booty was given to the soldiers. The four thousand who had surrendered were not reckoned a part of the spoils; these the consul sent in chains before his chariot when he triumphed, and they were subsequently sold, and brought in a great sum to the treasury. [9] Some think that this multitude of captives consisted of slaves, and this is more likely than that surrendered men were sold.

28. These consuls were succeeded by Marcus¹⁰¹ Fabius Dorsuo and Servius Sulpicius Camerinus. War then broke out with the Aurunci, in consequence of a raid which they unexpectedly executed. [2] It was feared that this act of a single nation might be the joint design of all of the Latin name, and a dictator was appointed —as though to [p. 453]oppose a Latium already up in arms —in the person¹⁰² of Lucius Furius. [3] After naming Gnaeus Manlius Capitolinus to be his master of the horse, he suspended the courts, and having levied troops without exemptions —as was customary in great emergencies —he led them with all possible speed against the Aurunci. These he discovered to possess the spirit of freebooters rather than of enemies, and so brought the war to a conclusion in the first engagement. [4] Howbeit the dictator, considering that they had been the aggressors in the war and were accepting battle without shrinking, saw fit to summon even the gods to help him, and in the heat of the encounter vowed a temple to Juno Moneta. This vow the result made binding, and the dictator having returned to Rome victorious, resigned his authority. [5] The senate ordered that two commissioners should be designated to erect the temple in a style becoming to the grandeur of the Roman People, and a site was appointed for it in the Citadel, where once had stood the house of Marcus Manlius Capitolinus. [6] The consuls, employing the dictator's army for the Volscian war, made a surprise attack upon the enemy and captured Sora.

The temple of Moneta was dedicated the next year after it was vowed, when Gaius Marcius Rutulus was consul for the third time and Titus Manlius Torquatus for the second. [7] The dedication was immediately followed by a prodigy like the one which had happened long before on the Alban Mount;¹⁰³ for a shower of stones fell, and a curtain of night seemed to stretch across the sky; and when the Books¹⁰⁴ had been consulted and the City was filled with forebodings of divine displeasure, the [p. 455]senate resolved on the appointment of a dictator, to¹⁰⁵ establish days of worship. [8] The choice fell on Publius Valerius Publicola, who was given Quintus Fabius Ambustus as master of the horse. They determined that not only the Roman tribes but the neighbouring peoples also should offer supplications; and they appointed an order for them, on what day each should make entreaty. [9] It is handed down that during this year the people rendered severe judgments against usurers, who had been brought to trial by the aediles. [10] The state —for no specially memorable reason —reverted to an interregnum, which was followed —so that this might appear to have been intended —by the election to both consulships of patricians, namely Marcus Valerius Corvus, for the third time, and Aulus Cornelius Cossus.

29. Wars of greater magnitude, in respect both of the forces of our enemies and of the remoteness of their countries and the long periods of time involved, now fall to be related. [2] For in that year the sword was drawn against the Samnites, a people powerful in arms and in resources; and hard upon the Samnite war, which was waged with varying success, came war with Pyrrhus, and after that with the Carthaginians. How vast a series of events! How many times the extremity of danger was incurred, in order that our empire might be exalted to its present greatness, hardly to be maintained! [3] Now the cause of the war between the Romans and the Samnites, who had been united in friendship and alliance, was of external origin and not owing to themselves. [4] The Samnites had unjustly attacked the Sidicini, because they happened to be more powerful than they, and the Sidicini, driven in their [p. 457]need to fly for succour to a more wealthy nation,¹⁰⁶ had attached themselves to the Campanians. [5] The Campanians had brought reputation rather than real strength to the defence of their allies; enervated by luxury, they had encountered a people made hardy by the use of arms, and being defeated in the territory of the Sidicini, had then drawn down the full force of the war upon themselves. [6] For the Samnites, disregarding the Sidicini and attacking the Campanians —the very stronghold of their neighbours, —from whom they would gain full as easy a victory and more plunder and renown, had seized and with a strong force occupied Tifata — a range of hills looking down on Capua —and thence had descended in battle-order into the plain that lies between. [7] There a second battle had been fought, and the Campanians, being worsted, had been shut up within their walls; and having, after the loss of their choicest troops, no prospect of relief at hand, had been driven to seek assistance of the Romans.

30. Their ambassadors, on being introduced into the senate, spoke substantially as follows: "The Campanian people has sent us to you as ambassadors, Conscript Fathers, to solicit your lasting friendship and present help. [2] Had we sought this amity when our affairs were prosperous, though it had been begun more quickly, yet had it been contracted with a weaker bond; for in that case, as those who remembered that they had joined with you in friendship on an equal footing, though perhaps as much your friends as now, we should have been less subject and beholden to you; [3] as it is, attached to you by your compassion [p. 459]and defended in our time of trouble by your aid,¹⁰⁷ we must lovingly remember the benefit also, lest we appear as ingrates and undeserving of any help, divine or human. [4] Nor do I think, in sober truth, that the circumstance of the Samnites having become your allies and friends before ourselves should make against our being received into your friendship, though it entitle them to an advantage over us in respect of priority and rank; and indeed there was no stipulation in your treaty with the Samnites that you should make no further treaties.

[5] "It has ever been with you a sufficiently just cause for friendship that he who sought you desired to be friends with you. [6] We Campanians, though our present plight will not suffer us to boast, are inferior neither in the splendour of our city, nor yet in the fertility of our soil, to any people but yourselves; and in associating ourselves with you we bring, as I think, no small accession to your prosperity. [7] As often as the Aequi and the Volsci —perpetual enemies of this city —shall stir abroad, we shall be upon their backs, and what you will have done first for our preservation, that we will ever do for your empire and your glory. [8] When once you have subdued these nations that lie between our boundaries and your own —a thing which your valour and good fortune guarantee will speedily come to pass —your rule will extend unbroken all the way to our frontier. [9] Grievous and pitiful is the confession that our misfortune obliges us to make: to that pass, Conscript Fathers, are we Campanians come that we must be the chattels either of our friends or of our enemies. [10] Defend us, and we are yours; desert us, and the Samnites will possess us. Consider [p. 461]therefore whether it be your preference that Capua and¹⁰⁸ all Campania augment Rome's power, or that of Samnium.

[11] "It is meet that your compassion, Romans, and your succour should be open to all mankind, but especially to those who in endeavouring beyond their strength to grant these blessings to the prayers of others, have come themselves to require them most of all. [12] And yet we fought but ostensibly for the Sidicini, in reality for ourselves, since we saw that a people on our borders was being cruelly despoiled by the brigand Samnites, and that, once that conflagration had consumed the Sidicini, it would spread to us. [13] Nor at this very moment are the Samnites come to attack us out of resentment for any injury received, but rejoicing rather that a pretext has been afforded them. [14] Otherwise, if this were the satisfaction of revenge and not an opportunity to appease their greed, was it not enough that first in the territory of Sidicinum, and again in Campania itself, they made slaughter of our legions? [15] What wrath is this, that is so implacable that the blood two armies have poured out cannot appease it? Add to this the devastation of our lands and the booty they have driven off, both men and cattle; add the burning and destruction of our farm-houses and the general havoc fire and sword have wrought. [16] Could not all this placate their wrath? Nay, but their greed must be appeased. It is this that hurries them to the siege of Capua; they must needs either destroy the fairest of cities, or themselves become its masters. [17] But do you, Romans, sooner gain it by your generosity than suffer them to have it by their malice. I am not speaking before a people that [p. 463]refuses righteous wars; still, if you make but a show¹⁰⁹ of helping us, you will have, I think, no need of going to war. [18] As far as to ourselves does the scorn of the Samnites reach, it mounts not higher; accordingly the shadow of your help is able, Romans, to protect us, and whatever thereafter we shall have, whatever we ourselves shall be, we shall consider wholly yours. [19] For you shall be ploughed the Campanian plain, for you shall the city of Capua be crowded; you shall be to us as founders, parents, and immortal gods; you shall have no colony that surpasses us in obedience and loyalty.

[20] “Grant the favour of your countenance, Conscript Fathers, and of your unconquered might, to the Campanians, and bid them hope that Capua will be saved. [21] With what thronging crowds of every sort were we accompanied, think you, at our setting out? How did we leave on every hand prayers and tears! [22] In what suspense are now the senate and the people of Campania, our wives and our children! Well I know that all the people are standing at the gates, their eyes fixed on the northern road. What message, Conscript Fathers, do you hid us carry back to their perplexed and troubled spirits? [23] One answer would bring salvation, victory, light, and liberty; the other —I shrink from the ominous prediction! Do you therefore deliberate regarding us, as regarding those who shall either be your allies and friends, or else have no being anywhere.”

31. The ambassadors were then made to withdraw while the senate considered their request. It was evident to many that the largest and wealthiest city of Italy, with a very fertile territory near the [p. 465]sea, would in times of scarcity be a store-house for¹¹⁰ the Roman People. [2] Yet this great advantage was of less moment with them than their honour, and the consul, being so instructed by the senate, returned the following answer to the ambassadors: “Men of Campania, the senate holds you worthy of assistance; but on such terms only can we become your friends as shall not violate an older friendship and alliance. The Samnites and we are united by a covenant; we must therefore refuse to make war in your behalf upon the Samnites, for this would be to wrong first gods,¹¹¹ and then men; we will, however, dispatch envoys, as is right and just, to entreat our allies and friends to do you no violence.” [3] To this the leader of the delegation answered —in accordance with instructions they had brought with them: —“Since you decline to use a righteous violence to protect from violence and injustice what belongs to us, you will at least defend your own; [4] to your sovereignty, therefore, Conscript Fathers, and to the sovereignty of the Roman People, we surrender the people of Campania and the city of Capua, with our lands, the shrines of our gods, and all things else, whether sacred or profane; whatever we endure henceforth, we shall endure as your surrendered subjects.”

[5] When these words had been pronounced, they all stretched forth their hands in supplication to the consul, and weeping bitterly, threw themselves face downwards on the floor of the entrance to the Curia. [6] The Fathers were profoundly moved by the vicissitudes of human fortune, considering how that great and opulent people, famed for its luxury and pride, of whom a little while before its neighbours [p. 467]had sought assistance, was become so broken in¹¹² spirit as to yield itself up with all its possessions to the dominion of another. [7] They now held it to be a point of honour not to betray those who were become their subjects; neither did they think that the Samnite people would deal justly, if they attacked a country and a city, which, by surrendering, had become the property of the Roman People. [8] The senate accordingly voted to dispatch ambassadors to the Samnites, without loss of time. Their instructions were to inform the Samnites what the Campanians had asked, how the senate, mindful of the friendship of the Samnites, had replied to them, and lastly how they had surrendered; [9] they were then to request that the Samnites, out of regard for the friendship and alliance of the Romans, would spare their subjects, and make no hostile incursion into a territory which belonged now to the Roman People; [10] if soft words proved ineffectual, they were to warn the Samnites, in the name of the Roman People and the senate, not to meddle with the city of Capua or the Campanian domain. [11] But the Samnites, when these things were represented to them in their council¹¹³ by the envoys, behaved so insolently as not only to declare that they meant to carry on the war, but their magistrates stepping out of the senate-house —while the envoys stood by —summoned [12] the commanders of their cohorts, and with a loud voice gave them orders to proceed at once to make a raid upon Campania.

32. When the news of this embassy reached Rome, the Fathers, putting aside all other business, sent fetials to demand redress, and failing to obtain it, declared war after the customary fashion.¹¹⁴ [2] They [p. 469]then voted that the people be asked to ratify this¹¹⁵ action at the earliest possible moment; and being commanded so to do, both consuls took the field; and Valerius marching into Campallia and Cornelius into Samnium, the one encamped at the foot of Mount Gaurus, the other near Saticula. It was Valerius whom the Samnite levies encountered first —for that was the direction which they expected the invasion to take. [3] The Campanians moreover had incurred their sharp resentment, having been so ready now to render aid against them, now to invoke it. [4] But when they beheld the Roman camp, they began, every man for himself, to call loudly on their leaders for the battle-signal, affirming that the Romans would have no better fortune in helping the Campanians than these had experienced in helping the Sidicini.

Valerius, having delayed not many days for the purpose of testing the enemy in small skirmishes, hung out the signal for a battle. [5] But first he spoke a few words of encouragement to his soldiers, bidding them have no fear of a strange war and a strange enemy. [6] With every advance of their arms from Rome, he said, they came to nations that were more and more unwarlike. [7] They must not judge of the courage of the Samnites by the defeats they had administered to the Sidicini and Campanians. Whatever their respective qualities, it was inevitable that when they fought together, one side should be vanquished. As for the Campanians, there was no question they had been beaten rather by the enervation resulting from excessive luxury and by their own effeminacy, than by the strength of their enemies. [8] Furthermore, what were the Samnites' two successful wars in so many ages, as [p. 471]against the many glorious achievements of the¹¹⁶ Roman People, who could count almost more triumphs than the years since their City had been founded; [9] who had subjugated by their arms all the nations round about them, the Sabines, Etruria, the Latins, the Hernici, the Aequi, the Volsci, and the Aurunci; who after beating the Gauls time after time in battle, had ended by compelling them to flee to the sea-board and their ships? [10] He said that they ought, as they went into action, not only to rely every man on his own courage and martial glory, but also to consider under whose command and auspices they would have to fight; [11] whether he were one who only merited a hearing as a brilliant orator, warlike only in his words, and ignorant of military operations, or one who knew himself how to handle weapons, to advance before the standards, and to play his part in the press and turmoil of a battle. [12] “Soldiers,” he cried, “it is my deeds and not my words I would have you follow, and look to me not only for instruction but for example. Not with factions, nor with the intrigues common amongst the nobles, but with this right hand, have I won for myself three consulships and the highest praise. [13] Time was when it might have been said: Ah, but you were a patrician and sprung from the liberators of your country, and your family held the consulship in the very year that saw the institution of that office.' [14] But now the consulship lies open on equal terms to us, the nobles, and to you plebeians, nor is it any longer a reward of birth, but of merit. Have regard, therefore, soldiers, in every instance, to great honours. [15] Though you men have given me, with Heaven's sanction, my surname of Corvinus,¹¹⁷ I have [p. 473]not forgot the ancient surname of our family —the¹¹⁸ [16] Publicolae:¹¹⁹ at home and in the field, as a private citizen, in little magistracies and in great ones, as consul no less than as tribune, and with the same undeviating course through all my successive consulships, have I cherished, and cherish still, the Roman plebs. [17] Now, with Heaven's good help, to the work we have in hand! Seek with me a novel triumph never yet won from the Samnites!”

33. There was never a commander who more endeared himself to his men by cheerfully sharing all their duties with the meanest of the soldiers. [2] At the military sports, too, in which those of a like age contend with one another in strength and swiftness, he was easy-going and good-natured; he would win or lose without changing countenance, nor did he scorn to match himself with anyone who challenged him; [3] in his acts his kindness was suited to the circumstances, in his speech he had regard to the liberty of others no less than to his own dignity; finally —and nothing can be more popular than this —he [4] was the same in office that he had been while a candidate. [5] It was therefore with incredible eagerness that the whole army, after listening to the general's speech, marched out of camp.

The battle began, if ever battle did, with like hopes on both sides and equal strength, and a self-confidence which yet was not mixed with contempt for the enemy. [6] The Samnites were' emboldened by their recent exploits and by their double victory of a few days before, the Romans on their part by the glories of four centuries and a victorious career that dated from the founding of [p. 475]the City; [7] each side nevertheless experienced some¹²⁰ anxiety at meeting an untried foe. The engagement testified how resolute they were, for they so fought that for some time neither battle-line gave ground. [8] Then the consul, thinking that he must inspire his enemies with fear, since he could not drive them back by force, attempted by sending in the cavalry to 'throw their front ranks into disorder. [9] But when he saw that nothing came of the confused fighting of the squadrons, as they tried to manœuvre in a narrow space, and that they could not break the enemy's line, he rode back: to the front ranks of his legions, and, dismounting from his horse, exclaimed, “Soldiers, it is for us, the infantry, to accomplish yonder task! [10] Come, as you shall see me making a path for myself with my sword wherever I advance against the enemy's line, so do you every man strike down whom you encounter; all that array where now uplifted spears are glancing you shall see laid open with great carnage.” [11] No sooner had he said these words, than the horsemen, by the consul's order, drew off towards the wings and left the legions room to attack the centre. [12] The consul was the very foremost in the charge, and slew the man he chanced to meet with. Kindled by this sight, the Romans on the right and on the left pushed forward, every man of them, and fought a memorable combat; the Samnites stood manfully at bay, but they took more strokes than they delivered.

[13] The battle had now lasted a considerable time; there was dreadful slaughter about the standards of the Samnites, but as yet no retreating anywhere, so determined were they to be overcome by naught but death. [14] And so the Romans, who saw that their [p. 477]strength was fast ebbing away in weariness and¹²¹ that little daylight yet remained, were filled with rage, and hurled themselves against the enemy. [15] Then for the first time were there signs of giving way and the beginning of a rout; then were the Samnites captured or slain; nor would many have survived, if night had not ended what was now a victory rather than a battle. [16] The Romans admitted that never had they fought with a more stubborn adversary; [17] and the Samnites, on being asked what it was that first had turned them, resolute as they were, to flight, replied that it was the eyes of the Romans, which had seemed to blaze, and their frenzied expression and infuriated looks; this it was more than anything else that had caused their panic. And this panic stood confessed not alone in the outcome of the fight but in the night-retreat that followed. [18] On the morrow the Romans took possession of the deserted camp, and thither the whole population of Capua streamed out to congratulate them.

34. But this rejoicing came near to being marred by a great reverse in Samnium. For the consul Cornelius, marching from Saticula, had unwarily led his army into a forest which was penetrated by a deep defile, and was there beset on either hand by the enemy; [2] nor, until it was too late to withdraw with safety, did he perceive that they were posted on the heights above him. [3] While the Samnites were only holding back till he should send down the whole column into the bottom of the valley, Publius Decius, a tribune of the soldiers, espied a solitary hill, which rising above the pass, commanded the enemy's camp, and though arduous [p. 479]of access to an army encumbered with baggage, was¹²² not difficult for men in light marching order. [4] He accordingly said to the consul, who was much perturbed: “Do you see, Aulus Cornelius, that summit that rises above the enemy? [5] It is the fortress of our hope and safety, if we are prompt to seize it, since the Samnites have been so blind as to neglect it. Give me no more than the first and second lines of a single legion;¹²³ when with these I have mounted to the top, do you go forward fearlessly and save yourself and the army; for the enemy, exposed to all our missiles, will not be able to stir without bringing destruction on themselves. [6] As for us, thereafter the fortune of the Roman People or our own manhood will extricate us.” [7] Being commended by the consul and receiving his detachment, he advanced under cover through the wood, nor did the enemy perceive him till he had nearly reached the place which he wished to gain. [8] They were then all overcome with astonishment and dread, and while they turned, every man of them, and gazed at him, the consul was given time to withdraw his army to more favourable ground, and Decius himself took his post on the top of the hill. [9] The Samnites, turning their standards now this way and now that, threw away both opportunities; they could not pursue the consul, except through the same defile where a little before they -had held him at the mercy of their javelins, nor could they charge up the hill which Decius had captured over their heads. [10] But not only did their resentment urge them rather against those who had snatched victory from their grasp, but so also did the nearness of the place and the fewness of its [p. 481]defenders; [11] and first they would be for surrounding¹²⁴ the hill with troops, so as to cut Decius off from the consul, and next for leaving his road open, so that they might attack him when he was got down into the valley. [12] Before they had made up their minds, night overtook them.

Decius at first had hopes of fighting from the higher ground, as they mounted the hill; then he marvelled that they neither began to attack, nor, if they were deterred from that design by the difficulty of the ground, attempted to shut him in with trench and rampart. [13] Then, calling the centurions to him, he said: “What want of military skill, what slothfulness can that be? How did those people conquer the Sidicini and Campanians? You see their standards moving now this way, now that, first closing in together, then deploying, while no man falls to work, though we might ere this have been fenced in with a palisade. [14] Then in truth should we be no better than they, were we to tarry here longer than suits our interest. Come on then and follow me, so that while there is yet a little light we may find out where they post their guards, and where the way out from this place lies open.” [15] Wrapped in a common soldier's cloak and accompanied by his centurions, who were also dressed like privates, lest the enemy should notice that the general was on his rounds, he investigated all these matters.

35. Next, having disposed the sentries, he commanded that the word be passed to everybody, that on hearing the trumpet sound for the second watch they should silently arm and present themselves before him. [2] When they had assembled there [p. 483]without a word, as he had ordered, he thus began:¹²⁵ “You must preserve this silence, soldiers, as you listen to me, omitting all soldier-like acclaim. When I have finished explaining my plan, then those of you who find it good will quietly pass over to the right; on whichever side the majority shall be, we will abide by their decision. [3] Hear now what I have in mind. The enemy has not invested you here as men who ran away or were left behind through laziness: it was by valour that you took the place, and by valour you must escape from it. [4] By coming hither you saved a splendid army for the Roman People; save yourselves by breaking out. You are worthy to have carried help, though few, to greater numbers, and to have needed no man's help yourselves. [5] You have an enemy to deal with who neglected yesterday through indolence an opportunity of destroying our whole army; who failed to see the importance of this hill by which he is commanded, until we had taken it; who, though we were so few and his own thousands so many, neither kept us from gaining the ascent, nor, when the place was ours and much daylight still remained, surrounded us with entrenchments. [6] An enemy whom you thus eluded while he was wide awake and watching, you ought to baffle when he is overcome with sleep. [7] Indeed it is necessary that you do so, for our situation is such that I am rather pointing out your necessity to you than advocating a plan. [8] Nor truly can it be a debatable question whether you should stay or go away from here, since Fortune has left you nothing but your arms and the spirit to employ them, and we must die of hunger and thirst, if we dread the [p. 485]sword's point more than it is fitting men and Romans¹²⁶ should. [9] Our one way of safety, then, is to break through and get away. We must do this either in the day-time or at night. [10] But this, look you, is a question that is even less in doubt, for if we should wait for dawn, what hope is there that the enemy would not hem us in with a continuous trench and rampart, who has now, as you see, encompassed the hill on every hand with the bodies of his men lying below us. And yet, if night is favourable for our sally, as it is, this is surely the fittest hour of the night. [11] You have come together on the signal of the second watch, when sleep lies heaviest on mortals;: you will make your way among drowsy forms, either eluding them unsuspected in your silence, or ready, if they should perceive you, to affright them with a sudden shout. [12] Do but follow me, whom you have followed hitherto; I will follow that same Fortune that has led us hither. Now then let those who approve my plan step over-to the right.”

36. They all crossed over. Decius then made his way through the spaces left unguarded, and they followed him. [2] They had already got half way through the camp, when a soldier in stepping over the bodies of some sleeping sentries struck his shield and made a sound. A sentry was awakened by this, and having shaken his neighbour, they stood up and began to rouse the rest, not knowing whether they had to do with friends or foes, whether the party on the hill were escaping, or the consul had captured the camp. [3] Decius, seeing that they were discovered, gave the order to his men, and they set up such a shout that the Samnites, [p. 487]who had been stupefied with sleep, were now in¹²⁷ addition [4??] breathless with terror, which prevented them from either arming promptly or making a stand against the Romans or pursuing them. [5] During the fright and confusion amongst the Samnites, the Romans cut down such guards as they came across, and proceeded towards the consul's camp.

It wanted yet some time till daylight, and they now appeared to be in safety, when Decius said, “All honour to your courage, Roman soldiers! [6] Your expedition and return shall be renowned through all the ages. But the light of day is needed to set off such gallantry, nor do you merit that your glorious return to camp should be accomplished in silence and under cover of night. Let us wait here quietly until the dawn.” [7] They did as he sail. With the first rays of light they sent forward a courier to the consul, and the camp was woke with loud rejoicings. When word was sent round that those were returning safe and sound, who in behalf of the general safety, had exposed their bodies to no uncertain peril, they all poured out to meet them, and, each for himself, praised and congratulated them, calling them their saviours, one and all. To the gods they offered praise and thanks, and Decius they extolled to the skies. [8] Now followed a triumph for Decius in the camp, as he marched through the midst with his battalion under arms. All eyes were directed towards him, and paid the tribune equal homage with the consul. [9] When they reached headquarters, the consul bade the trumpet sound an assembly, and fell to lauding Decius, as he deserved. But Decius, interrupting him, induced him to defer his speech; [p. 489]then, urging that all other considerations should¹²⁸ be postponed whilst they had such an opportunity at hand, he persuaded him to attack the enemy. [10] They were now, he said, bewildered by the night alarm and dispersed about the: hill in separate detachments, and he doubted not that a party would have been sent out after him and would be wandering through the forest. [11] The troops were commanded to arm, and marching out of camp, were led by a more open route —for, thanks to their scouts, the forest was now better known to them —in the direction of the enemy. [12] These they caught quite off their guard by a surprise attack, for the Samnite soldiers were scattered far and wide, and most of them were without their weapons, Unable either to assemble or to arm or to regain their works, they were first driven headlong into their camp, and then the outposts were routed and the camp itself was taken. The shouting was heard all round the hill and sent the detachments flying from their several stations. [13] Thus a great part of the Samnites fled without coming into contact with the enemy. Those whom panic had driven within the? enclosure —to the number of some thirty thousand —were all put to the sword, and the camp was spoiled.

37. The battle having sped thus, the consul called an assembly, and pronounced a panegyric upon Decius, in which he rehearsed, in addition to his former services, the fresh glories which his bravery had achieved. Besides other military gifts, he bestowed on him a golden chaplet and a hundred oxen, and one choice white one, fat, and with gilded horns. [2] The soldiers who had been on the [p. 491]hill with him were rewarded with a double: ration¹²⁹ in perpetuity, and for the present an ox apiece and two tunics. Following the consul's award, the legions, accompanying the gift with their cheers, placed on Decius's head a wreath of grass,¹³⁰ to signify his rescuing them from a siege; and his own detachment crowned him with a second wreath, indicative of the same honour. [3] Adorned with these insignia, he sacrificed the choice ox to Mars, and presented the hundred others to the soldiers who had served with him on the expedition. To these same soldiers the legions contributed a pound of spelt and a pint of wine for each man. All these awards were carried out amid the greatest cheerfulness, the shouts of the soldiers testifying to the general approval.

[4] A third engagement was fought at Suessula, for the Samnites, after the rout inflicted on them by Marcus Valerius, had called out all the men they had of military age, determined to try their fortune in a final encounter. [5] From Suessula the alarming news was carried to Capua, whence gallopers were dispatched to Valerius the consul, to implore assistance. [6] The troops were immediately set in motion, and leaving behind the baggage and a strong garrison for the camp, made a rapid march, and being got within a short distance of the enemy, encamped in a very small compass, for they had only their horses with them and neither beasts of burden nor a crowd of camp-followers.

[7] The Samnites, assuming that the battle would not be delayed, formed up in line; then, as no one came out to meet them, they advanced against the enemy's camp. [8] When they saw the soldiers on the rampart, and when the scouts whom they had [p. 493]dispatched to spy out the camp on every hand¹³¹ reported how straitened its dimensions were, inferring thence the paucity of their foes, the whole army began to murmur that they ought to fill up the trenches, breach the rampart, and burst into the enclosure; [9] and their rashness would have brought the war to a conclusion, had not the commanders restrained the ardour of their men. [10] But since their numbers were a burden on the commissariat, and since, owing first to their sitting down before Suessula and afterwards to the delay in fighting, they were almost reduced to want for everything, they decided that while the enemy were cowering within their works, they would send their soldiers over the country-side to forage: [11] meantime the Romans, remaining inactive, would be reduced to destitution, for they had come in light marching order, with only so much corn as they could carry, along with their armour, on their shoulders.

[12] Seeing the Samnites dispersed about the fields, and their stations thinly manned, the consul addressed a few words of encouragement to his soldiers and led them to the assault of the enemy's camp. [13] Having taken it at the first shout and rush, and slain more men in their tents than at the gates and on the breastworks, he ordered the captured standards to be collected in one spot. [14] Then, leaving two legions to guard them and defend the place, — with strict injunctions to refrain from spoiling until he himself returned, —he marched out in serried column, and sending the cavalry on before to surround the scattered Samnites, as with a cordon of hunters, and so drive them in, he made a prodigious slaughter of them. [15] For in their terror they were [p. 495]unable to agree either under what standard they¹³² should rally, or whether they should make for their camp or direct their flight towards some more remote place; [16] and so great was their discomfiture and panic, that the Romans brought in to the consul no less than forty thousand shields —though not near so many men were slain —and of military standards, including those which had been captured in the camp, no fewer than a hundred and seventy. [17] The victors then returned to the enemy's camp and there the plunder was all given to the soldiers.

38. The fortunate outcome of this war not¹³³ only impelled the Faliscans, with whom there was a truce, to ask the senate for a treaty, but caused the Latins, whose armies were ready to take the field, to transfer their attack from Rome to the Paeligni. [2] Nor was the fame of this success confined to Italy; even the Carthaginians sent their envoys to Rome, with congratulations and the gift of a golden crown, weighing five and twenty pounds, to be placed in the shrine of Jupiter on the Capitol. [3] Both consuls triumphed over the Samnites, and after them came Decius, conspicuous in his decorations and so renowned, that the soldiers in their rude jests named the tribune no less often than the consuls.

[4] The deputations of the Campanians and the Suessulani were then heard, and a favourable reply was made to their petition that a garrison should be dispatched, to remain through the winter with them and protect them against inroads by the Samnites.

[5] Capua was even then a far from wholesome place for military discipline, and with its means for [p. 497]gratifying every pleasure proved so fascinating to the¹³⁴ soldiers that they forgot their native land, and formed a project, while in winter quarters, for taking the city away from the Campanians by the same wicked practice by which the Campanians had taken it from its ancient inhabitants.¹³⁵ [6] There would be a certain justice, they argued, in turning their own example against them. Besides, why should the most fertile land in Italy, and a city worthy of the land, belong to the Campanians, who were incapable of defending either themselves or their possessions? Why, rather, should it not belong to the conquering army, which had toiled and bled to drive the Samnites out of it? [7] Was it fair that their surrendered subjects should enjoy that fertile and agreeable tract, while they, exhausted with campaigning, wrestled with the arid and noxious soil in the neighbourhood of Rome, or endured the ruinous usury that had fastened on the City and was increasing from one day to the next?

[8] These schemes, discussed in secret cabals and not yet communicated to all the troops, were discovered by the new consul, Gaius Marcius Rutulus, to whom the lot had assigned Campania for his province, leaving Quintus Servilius, his colleague, in charge at Rome. [9] And so having found out through his tribunes exactly what had taken place, Rutulus, who was of ripe years and experience, —for the present consulship was his fourth and he had been both dictator and censor —thought that his best course would be to frustrate the men's impetuosity, by encouraging the hope that they would be able at any time they chose to carry out their plan. [10] He accordingly set on foot a rumour that the garrisons [p. 499]would winter in the same towns in the following¹³⁶ year also, —for they had been distributed among the cities of Campania and from Capua their designs had spread to the entire army, —and the conspirators being thus afforded time for breathing, the sedition subsided for the present.

39. The consul having led out his troops to the summer encampment, and finding the Samnites quiet, resolved to purge the army of its troublemakers by discharging them.: Of some of them he said that they had served out their time; of others, that they were now too old or deficient in sturdiness. [2] To some he granted furlough, singling out individuals at first, but later dismissing certain cohorts, on the ground that they had passed the winter far from their homes and their affairs. Many, too, were sent off on some pretext of military employment, some one way, some another. [3] All these the other consul and the praetor detained at Rome, alleging a variety of reasons. And at first, not suspecting a trick, they were far from sorry to visit their homes again. [4] Later on, when they saw that the first to go failed to rejoin the colours, and that practically none were dismissed but those who had wintered in Campania, and particularly such of these as had encouraged the conspiracy, they marvelled at first, and presently began to entertain very definite fears that their designs had come to light: [5] soon there would be investigations, soon informations would be lodged, they would soon be punished in secret, one by one, and would be made to feel the unrestrained and cruel despotism with which the consuls and the senate governed them. [6] Such were the fears that were secretly put about by the soldiers [p. 501]in the camp, for they saw that the sinews of their¹³⁷ plot had been plucked out by the consul's artifice.

[7] One cohort which was stationed not far from Anxur¹³⁸ went into camp near Lautulae, in the narrow pass between the sea and the mountains, where they could intercept those whom the consul continued to dismiss, on one pretext or another, as has been said before. [8] They were soon a very numerous body, and lacked no essential element of an army except a general. And so, without order, and pillaging as they went, they proceeded as far as the Alban country, and under the ridge of Alba Longa encamped and threw up a rampart. [9] Having finished the work, they employed the remainder of the day in wrangling over the choice of a general, for they had no great confidence in anyone there present. [10] But whom could they summon from Rome? What patrician or plebeian was there who would wittingly expose himself to so great a danger, or to whom the cause of the army, maddened by its wrongs,¹³⁹ could fitly be committed? [11] On the following day, while-they were debating the same question, certain of their roving foragers reported having learned that Titus Quinctius was living on a farm near Tusculum, with no thoughts of the City or its honours. [12] This man, who belonged to a noble family, had won great distinction in the wars, but a lameness in one of his feet, resulting from a wound, had put an end to his campaigning, and had determined him to take up his residence in the country, far from the Forum and from politics. [13] On hearing his name they remembered the man at once, and bade send for him, invoking a blessing on this step. But there being little prospect that [p. 503]he would voluntarily assist them, they resolved on¹⁴⁰ employing threats and violence. [14] Coming therefore to his farm-house in the silence of the night, those who had been dispatched upon this errand caught Quinctius sound asleep, and offering him no choice but authority and rank, or death, —with which, when he held back, they threatened him, unless he would go along with them —they carried him off to the camp. [15] Once there they immediately hailed him General, and dazed as he was by the astounding suddenness of it all, conferred on him the insignia of that office and bade him lead them to the City. [16] Then, more on their own impulse than by the counsel of their general, they pulled up their standards and marched in warlike array as far as the eighth milestone, on what is now the Appian Way; [17] whence they would at once have gone on to the City, had they not learned that an army was coming to oppose them, under Marcus Valerius Corvus, who had been created dictator for that purpose, with Lucius Aemilius Mamercus as master of the horse.

40. As soon as they came within sight of one another and recognized one another's arms and ensigns, all were at once reminded of their fatherland, and their anger cooled. [2] Men were not yet so hardy in shedding the blood of countrymen; they knew no wars but those with outside nations, and thought that frenzy could go no further than secession from their people. [3] And so on either side both the leaders and their men began to seek for ways to meet and confer together. For Quinctius was sated with war, even war in behalf of his country, to say nothing of fighting against it; [p. 505]and the affection of Corvinus embraced all his¹⁴¹ fellow-citizens, particularly the soldiers, and above all others, his own army. [4] He now came forward to parley, and being recognized, was instantly accorded a silent attention, in which his opponents showed as great respect for him as did his followers.

“Soldiers,” he began, “as I was setting forth from the City, I adored your gods and mine, and humbly besought them of their goodness to vouchsafe to me the glory of reconciling, not of conquering you. [5] There have been wars in plenty, and will be others, where men may win renown: in this crisis we must seek for peace. [6] The petition which I made to the immortal gods, as I offered up my prayer, you are able of yourselves to grant me, if you are willing to reflect that your camp is pitched not in Samnium nor among the Volsci, but on Roman soil; that those hills which you see are in your native land; that this army is made up of your fellow-citizens; that I am your consul, under whose command and auspices you twice last year defeated the Samnite legions, and twice stormed their camp. [7] I am Marcus Valerius Corvus, soldiers, whose patrician blood has declared itself in kindnesses done you, not in injuries; I have urged no insolent law against you, no cruel senatorial resolution; in every position of authority I have been sterner to myself than to you. [8] And in truth if any man's family, if any man's own worth, if any man's dignities and honours have been able to inspire pride in him, my birth was such, I had given such proof of my capacity, and had achieved so young the highest magistracy, that I might easily, on becoming consul at the age of three and twenty, [p. 507]have been overbearing even towards the nobles, not¹⁴² merely towards the plebs. [9] But what have you heard that I said or did, when consul, more tyrannical than my words and deeds as tribune? In that same spirit I administered two subsequent consulships; in that same spirit shall this dictatorship with its dread power be administered; so that I shall be no gentler to these my soldiers and the soldiers of my country, than to you —I shudder to say the word, —our enemies. [10] You shall therefore sooner draw sword on me than I on you. It is on your side that the trumpets will sound, on your side that the battle-cry will be raised and the attack begin, if fight we must. [11] Steel your hearts to do that which neither your fathers nor yet your grandfathers could resolve upon —neither those who seceded to the Sacred Mount, nor those who later encamped upon the Aventine.¹⁴³ [12] Wait until to each of you —as once to Coriolanus¹⁴⁴ —your mothers and wives come forth from the City with dishevelled hair. On that day the legions of the Volsci ceased fighting, because they had a Roman leader: will you, an army of Romans, not relinquish this impious war? [13] Titus Quinctius, whatever be your position over there —whether you have taken it voluntarily or against your will, —if we must do battle, do you retire to the rear; you will even flee with less discredit, turning your back upon your fellow-citizens, than you will incur in fighting against your country. [14] Now, however, to make peace you will stand with honour and credit amongst the foremost, and will be a salutary mediator at this conference. Let your men ask what is reasonable, and receive it; yet must we rather put up with what is not, than join together in impious strife.”

[15] [p. 509] Titus Quinctius turned with streaming eyes and¹⁴⁵ addressed his people: “I, too, soldiers, if I am of any use to you, can better lead you to peace than into war. [16] For it was no Volscian or Samnite that just spoke those words, but a Roman. It was your consul, your general, soldiers. You have proved his auspices in your own behalf; seek not to prove their worth against you. [17] The senate had other leaders who would have made more ruthless war on you; but they have chosen him who would deal most mercifully with you, his men; one in whom, as in your general, you might place the most utter confidence. [18] Peace is the goal desired even by those who are able to conquer: what then ought our desire to be? [19] Nay, let us abandon wrath and hope —deceitful counsellors —and commit ourselves and all our cause to a man of known fidelity!”

41. A shout of approval burst from every throat, and Titus Quinctius, advancing in front of the standards, announced that the soldiers would submit to the dictator's authority. He begged him to undertake the cause of his wretched fellow-citizens, and having done so to forward it with the same fidelity with which he had been used to deal with the interests of the state. [2] For himself privately, he said, he demanded no assurance, he had no wish to found a hope on aught but innocence. But the soldiers must be assured, as in their fathers' day the plebs had been, and, on a second occasion, the legions, that they should not be punished for secession.¹⁴⁶

[3] After praising Quinctius and bidding the rest be of good cheer, the dictator galloped back to the City, and having secured the authority of the [p. 511]Fathers, got the people to enact a law, in the¹⁴⁷ Peteline Wood,¹⁴⁸ that none of the soldiers should be held to answer for the secession. [4] He begged them also, as citizens, to grant him the favour that none would make the incident a matter of reproach to any, either in jest or in earnest. There was also passed a military law, under penalty of devotion,¹⁴⁹ to the effect that the name of no one enrolled as a soldier might be struck off the list, except with his own consent. [5] To this a provision was added that no one might later command a century in the legion where he had been a military tribune.¹⁵⁰ [6] This clause was demanded by the conspirators on account of Publius Salonius, who in almost regular alternation was tribune of the soldiers one year, and chief centurion —whom they now call “centurion of the first javelin” —the next. The men were incensed at Salonius because lie had always opposed their mutinous schemes, and had fled from Lautulae that he might not share in them. [7] And so, when this one provision would have failed of enactment by the senate, out of consideration for Salonius, he himself besought the Fathers not to think more highly of his distinction than of harmony in the state, and induced them to pass this also. [8] An equally shameless demand was made that the pay of the cavalry should be reduced —they served at that time for treble pay —on the ground that they had opposed the conspiracy.

42. In addition to these transactions, I find in certain writers that Lucius Genucius, a tribune of the plebs, proposed to the plebs that it should be [p. 513]unlawful to lend at interest. [2] Also that it was¹⁵¹ provided in other plebiscites that no one might hold the same office twice within ten years, nor two offices in one year; and that it should be legal for both consuls to be chosen from the plebs. If all these concessions were made to the commons, it is evident that the revolt possessed no little strength. [3] Other annalists have recorded that Valerius was not made dictator, but that the whole affair was managed through the consuls, and that it was not before they came to Rome, but in Rome, that this great company of conspirators was dismayed into arming; [4] further, that the night attack was made, not on the farm of Titus Quinctius, but on the town house of Gaius Manlius, and that it was he whom the conspirators seized and made their leader. Thence they proceeded —according to this account —to the fourth milestone, where they entrenched a camp. [5] Nor was it the leaders who suggested a reconciliation, but suddenly, when the two armies had marched out in [6??] battle array, salutations were exchanged, and the soldiers, mingling together, began tearfully to clasp hands and embrace each other, so that the consuls, seeing the men to be in no mood for fighting, had been compelled to lay proposals before the senate for the re-establishment of harmony. [7] Thus in no single instance do the ancient authorities agree, except that there was a sedition, and that it was composed.

[8] The report of this sedition, in conjunction with the dangerous war entered upon with the Samnites, caused several nations to forsake their alliance with the Romans, and not only were the Latins unfaithful to the treaty —as they had been for some time —but the Privernates even, in a sudden raid, laid waste the neighbouring Roman colonies of Norba and Setia.