The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08
city, Spurius Mælius conceived a hope of attaining regal power. And who
was this man? Although no nobility, no honours, no deserts should open
to any man the road to domination, yet still the Claudii and Cassii, by
reason of the consulates, the decemvirates, the honours of their own and
those of their ancestors, and from the splendour of their families, had
raised their aspiring minds to heights to which it was impious to raise
them: that Spurius Mælius, to whom a tribuneship of the commons should
rather be an object of wishes than of hope, a wealthy corn-merchant, had
conceived the hope to purchase the liberty of his countrymen for two
pounds of corn; had supposed that a people victorious over all their
neighbours could be cajoled into servitude by throwing them a morsel of
food; so that a person whom the state could scarcely digest as a
senator, it should tolerate as king, possessing the ensigns and
authority of Romulus their founder, who had descended from and had
returned to the gods. This was to be considered not more criminal than
it was monstrous: nor was it sufficiently expiated by his blood; unless
the roof and walls within which so mad a project had been conceived,
should be levelled to the ground, and his effects were confiscated, as
being contaminated with the price of purchasing kingly domination. He
ordered, therefore, that the quæstors should sell this property and
deposit the proceeds in the treasury."
16. He then ordered his house to be immediately razed, that the vacant
ground might serve as a monument of nefarious hopes destroyed. This was
called Æquimælium. Lucius Minucius was presented with a gilded ox on the
outside of the gate Trigemina, and this not even against the will of the
commons, because he distributed Mælius's corn, after valuing it at one
_as_ per bushel. In some writers I find that this Minucius had changed
sides from the patricians to the commons, and that having been chosen as
eleventh tribune of the people, he quieted a commotion which arose on
the death of Mælius. But it is scarcely credible that the patricians
would have suffered the number of the tribunes to be increased, and that
such a precedent should be introduced more particularly in the case of a
man who was a patrician; or that the commons did not afterwards
maintain, or at least attempt, that privilege once conceded to them. But
the legal provision made a few years before, viz. that it should not be
lawful for the tribunes to choose a colleague, refutes beyond every
thing else the false inscription on the statue. Quintus Cæcilius,
Quintus Junius, Sextus Titinius, were the only members of the college of
tribunes who had not been concerned in passing the law for conferring
honours on Minucius; nor did they cease both to throw out censures one
time on Minucius, at another time on Servilius, before the commons, and
to complain of the unmerited death of Mælius. They succeeded, therefore,
in having an election held for military tribunes rather than for
consuls, not doubting but that in six places, for so many were now
allowed to be elected, some plebeians also might be appointed, by their
professing to be avengers of the death of Mælius. The commons, though
they had been agitated that year by many and various commotions, neither
elected more than three tribunes with consular power; and among them
Lucius Quintius, son of Cincinnatus, from the unpopular nature of whose
dictatorship an occasion for disturbance was sought. Mamercus Æmilius, a
man of the highest dignity, was voted in, prior to Quintius. In the
third place they appoint Lucius Julius.
17. During their office Fidenæ, a Roman colony, revolted to Lars
Tolunmius, king of the Veientians, and to the Veientians. To the revolt
a more heinous crime was added. By order of Tolumnius they put to death
Caius Fulcinius, Clælius Tullus, Spurius Antius, Lucius Roscius, Roman
ambassadors, who came to inquire into the reason of this new line of
conduct. Some palliate the guilt of the king; that an ambiguous
expression of his, during a lucky throw of dice, having been mistaken by
the Fidenatians, as if it seemed to be an order for their execution, had
been the cause of the ambassadors' death. An incredible tale; that his
thoughts should not have been drawn away from the game on the arrival of
the Fidenatians, his new allies, when consulting him on a murder tending
to violate the law of nations; and that the act was not afterwards
viewed by him with horror. It is more probable that he wished the state
of the Fidenatians to be so compromised by their participation in so
great a crime, that they might not afterwards look to any hope from the
Romans. Statues of the ambassadors, who were slain at Fidenæ, were set
up in the rostra at the public expense. A desperate struggle was coming
on with the Veientians and Fidenatians, who, besides that they were
neighbouring states, had commenced the war with so heinous a
provocation. Therefore, the commons and their tribunes being now quiet,
so as to attend to the general welfare, there was no dispute with
respect to the electing of Marcus Geganius Macerinus a third time, and
Lucius Sergius Fidenas, as consuls; so called, I suppose, from the war
which he afterwards conducted. For he was the first who fought a
successful battle with the king of the Veientians on this side of the
Anio, nor did he obtain an unbloody victory. Greater grief was therefore
felt from the loss of their countrymen, than joy from the defeat of the
enemy: and the senate, as in an alarming crisis, ordered Mamercus
Æmilius to be appointed dictator. He appointed as his master of the
horse from the college of the preceding year, in which there had been
tribunes of the soldiers with consular power, Lucius Quintius
Cincinnatus, a youth worthy of his parent. To the levy held by the
consuls were added the old centurions well versed in war, and the number
of those lost in the late battle was made up. The dictator ordered
Lucius Quintius Capitolinus and Marcus Fabius Vibulanus to attend him as
his lieutenants-general. Both the higher powers, and the man suitable to
such powers, caused the enemy to move from the Roman territory to the
other side of the Anio, and continuing their retrograde movement, they
took possession of the hills between Fidenæ and the Anio, nor did they
descend into the plains until the troops of the Faliscians came to their
aid; then at length the camp of the Etrurians was pitched before the
walls of Fidenæ. The Roman dictator took his post at no great distance
from thence at the conflux on the banks of both rivers, lines being run
across between them, as far as he was able to follow by a fortification.
Next day he marched out his army into the field.
18. Among the enemy there was a diversity of opinion. The Faliscians,
impatient of the hardships of war at a distance from home, and
sufficiently confident of their own strength, earnestly demanded
battle; the Veientians and Fidenatians placed more hope in protracting
the war. Tolumnius, though the measures of his own subjects were more
agreeable to him, proclaims that he would give battle on the following
day, lest the Faliscians might not brook the service at so great a
distance from their home. The dictator and the Romans took additional
courage from the fact of the enemy having declined giving battle: and on
the following day, the soldiers exclaiming that they would attack the
camp and the city, if an opportunity of fighting were not afforded them,
the armies advance on both sides into the middle of a plain between the
two camps. The Veientians, having the advantage in numbers, sent around
a party behind the mountains to attack the Roman camp during the heat of
the battle. The army of the three states stood drawn up in such a
manner, that the Veientians occupied the right wing, the Faliscians the
left, whilst the Fidenatians constituted the centre. The dictator
charged on the right wing against the Faliscians, Quintius Capitolinus
on the left against the Veientians, and the master of the horse with the
cavalry advanced in the centre. For a short time all was silence and
quiet, the Etrurians being determined not to engage unless they were
compelled, and the dictator looking back towards a Roman fort, until a
signal should be raised, as had been agreed on, by the augurs, as soon
as the birds had given a favourable omen. As soon as he perceived this,
he orders the cavalry first to charge the enemy, after raising a loud
shout; the line of infantry following, engaged with great fury. In no
quarter did the Etrurian legions withstand the shock of the Romans. The
cavalry made the greatest resistance; and the king himself, far the
bravest of the cavalry, charging the Romans whilst they were pursuing in
disorder in every direction, prolonged the contest.
19. There was then among the cavalry, Aulus Cornelius Cossus, a tribune
of the soldiers, distinguished for the beauty of his person, and equally
so for courage and great strength of body, and mindful of his rank,
which, having received in a state of the highest lustre, he left to his
posterity still greater and more distinguished. He perceiving that the
Roman troops gave way at the approach of Tolumnius, wherever he directed
his charge, and knowing him as being remarkable by his royal apparel, as
he flew through the entire line, exclaims, "Is this the infringer of
human treaties and the violator of the law of nations? This victim I
shall now slay, (provided the gods wish that there should be any thing
sacred on earth,) and shall offer him up to the manes of the
ambassadors." Having clapped spurs to his horse, he advances against
this single foe with spear presented; and after having struck and
unhorsed him, he immediately, by help of his lance, sprung on the
ground. And as the king attempted to rise, he throws him back again with
the boss of his shield, and with repeated thrusts pins him to the earth.
He then stripped off the spoils from the lifeless body; and having cut
off his head and carrying it on the point of his spear, he puts the
enemy to rout through terror on seeing their king slain. Thus the line
of cavalry, which alone had rendered the combat doubtful, was beaten.
The dictator pursues closely the routed legions, and drove them to their
camp with slaughter. The greater number of the Fidenatians, through
their knowledge of the country, made their escape to the mountains.
Cossus, having crossed the Tiber with the cavalry, carried off great
plunder from the Veientian territory to the city. During the battle
there was a fight also at the Roman camp against a party of the forces,
which, as has been already mentioned, had been sent by Tolumnius to the
camp. Fabius Vibulanus first defends his lines by a ring; then, whilst
the enemy were wholly taken up with the entrenchment, sallying out from
the principal gate on the right, he suddenly attacks them with the
triarii: and a panic being thus struck into them there was less
slaughter, because they were fewer, but their flight was no less
disorderly than it had been on the field of battle.
20. Matters being managed successfully in every direction, the dictator,
by a decree of the senate and order of the people, returned to the city
in triumph. By far the most remarkable object in the triumph was Cossus,
bearing the _spolia opima_ of the king he had slain. The soldiers
chaunted their uncouth verses on him, extolling him as equal to Romulus.
With the usual form of dedication, he presented, as an offering, the
spoils in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, near the spoils of Romulus,
which, having been the first called _opima_, were the only ones at that
time; and he attracted the eyes of all the citizens from the dictator's
chariot to himself, and enjoyed almost solely the honour of that day's