The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08
camp also on that day, and obtained great booty, they returned
victorious, uttering military jests, both on the stratagem of the enemy
as also on their own panic. Then the whole Etruscan nation is aroused,
and under the conduct of the Tarquinians and Faliscians, they come to
Salinæ. To meet this alarm, Caius Marcius Rutilus, being appointed
dictator, the first plebeian who was so, named Caius Plautius, also a
plebeian, master of the horse. This was deemed an indignity by the
patricians, that the dictatorship also was now become common, and with
all their exertions they prevented any thing from either being decreed
or prepared for the dictator, for the prosecution of that war. With the
more promptitude, on that account, did the people order things, as
proposed by the dictator. Having set out from the city, along both sides
of the Tiber, and transporting his army on rafts whithersoever his
intelligence of the enemy led him, he surprised many of them straggling
about in scattered parties, laying waste the lands. Moreover, he
suddenly attacked their camp and took it; and eight thousand of the
enemy being made prisoners, all the rest being either slain or driven
out of the Roman territory, he triumphed by order of the people, without
the sanction of the senate. Because they neither wished that the
consular elections should be held by a plebeian dictator or consul, and
the other consul, Fabius, was detained by the war, matters came to an
interregnum. There were then interreges in succession, Quintus
Servilius Ahala, Marcus Fabius, Cneius Manlius, Caius Fabius, Caius
Sulpicius, Lucius Æmilius, Quintus Servilius, Marcus Fabius Ambustas. In
the second interregnum a dispute arose, because two patrician consuls
were elected: and the tribunes protesting, Fabius the interrex said,
that "it was a law in the twelve tables, that whatever the people
ordered last should be law and in force; that the suffrages of the
people were their orders." When the tribunes by their protest had been
able to effect nothing else than to put off the elections, two
patricians were chosen consuls, Caius Sulpicius Peticus a third time,
Marcus Valerius Publicola; and on the same day they entered into office.
18. On the four hundredth year after the building of the city of Rome,
and the thirty-fifth after its recovery from the Gauls, the consulship
being taken away from the commons after eleven years, consuls, both
patricians, entered into office after the interregnum, Caius Sulpicius
Peticus a third time, and Marcus Valerius Publicola. During this year
Empulum was taken from the Tiburtians with a struggle not worth
mentioning; whether the war was waged there under the auspices of the
two consuls, as some have stated; or whether the lands of the
Tarquinians were laid waste by the consul Sulpicius about the same time
that Valerius led the troops against the Tiburtians. The consuls had a
more arduous contest at home with the commons and tribunes. As two
patricians had received the consulship, they considered that not only
their resolution, but their honour also, was involved in their
consigning it to two patricians. For if the consulship were made a
plebeian magistracy, they must either yield it up entirely, or possess
it entire, which possession they had received from their fathers
unimpaired. The commons on the other hand loudly remonstrate; "Why did
they live; why were they reckoned in the number of citizens; if they
collectively cannot maintain that which was acquired by the firmness of
two men, Lucius Sextius and Caius Licinius? That either kings, or
decemvirs, or, if there be any denomination of power more offensive,
would be submitted to rather than see both the consuls patricians, or
rather than not obey and rule in turn; but the one half, located in
perpetual power, thinks the commons born for no other purpose than to be
subservient." The tribunes are not remiss in encouraging the
disturbances; but amid the excited state of all scarcely any are
distinguished as leaders. When they had several times gone down to the
Campus Martius to no purpose, and when many days of meeting had been
spent in seditious movements; at length the resentment of the commons,
overcome by the perseverance of the consuls, broke out to such a degree,
that the commons followed in sorrow the tribunes, exclaiming, that there
was an end of liberty; that not only the Campus should be relinquished,
but the city also as being held captive and oppressed by the tyranny of
the patricians. The consuls, deserted by a part of the people, finish
the election nevertheless with the small number [who attended]. Both the
consuls elected were patricians, Marcus Fabius Ambustus a third time,
Titus Quinctius. In some annals I find Marcus Popilius mentioned as
consul instead of Titus Quinctius.
19. Two wars were conducted with success on that year: and they forced
the Tiburtians by force of arms to a surrender. The city of Sassula was
taken from them; and the other towns would have shared the same fate,
had not the entire nation laid down their arms, and put themselves under
the protection of the consul. A triumph was obtained by him over the
Tiburtians: in other respects the victory was a mild one. Rigorous
severity was practised against the Tarquinians. A great many being
slaughtered in the field, out of a great number of prisoners three
hundred and fifty-eight were selected, all of the highest rank, to be
sent to Rome; the rest of the multitude were put to the sword. Nor were
the people more merciful towards those who had been sent to Rome. They
were all beaten with rods and beheaded in the middle of the forum. That
was the punishment retaliated on the enemy for their butchering the
Romans in the forum of Tarquinii. The successes in war induced the
Samnites to seek their friendship. A courteous answer was returned to
their ambassadors by the senate: they were received into an alliance by
a treaty. The Roman commons had not the same success at home as in war.
For though the burden of interest money had been relieved by fixing the
rate at one to the hundred, the poor were overwhelmed by the principal
alone, and submitted to confinement. On this account, the commons took
little heed either of the two consuls being patricians, or the
management of the elections, by reason of their private distresses.
Both consulships therefore remained with the patricians. The consuls
appointed were Caius Sulpicius Pæticus a fourth time, Marcus Valerius
Publicola a second time. Whilst the state was occupied with the Etrurian
war, [entered into] because a report prevailed that the people of Cære
had joined the Tarquinians through compassion for them from their
relationship, ambassadors from the Latins drew their attention to the
Volscians, bringing tidings that an army enlisted and fully armed was
now on the point of attacking their frontiers; from thence that they
were to enter the Roman territory in order to commit depredations. The
senate therefore determined that neither affair should be neglected;
they ordered that troops should be raised for both purposes, and that
the consuls should cast lots for the provinces. The greater share of
their anxiety afterwards inclined to the Etrurian war; after it was
ascertained, from a letter of the consul Sulpicius, to whom the province
of Tarquinii had fallen, that the land around the Roman Salinæ had been
depopulated, and that part of the plunder had been carried away into the
country of the people of Cære, and that the young men of that people
were certainly among the depredators. The senate therefore, having
recalled the consul Valerius, who was opposed to the Volscians, and who
had his camp on the frontiers of Tusculum, ordered him to nominate a
dictator. He nominated Titus Manlius, son of Lucius. He, after he had
appointed Aulus Cornelius Cossus his master of the horse, content with
the consular army, declared war against the Cæritians by order of the
people, with the sanction of the senate.
20. Then for the first time were the Cæritians seized with a real dread
of war, as if there was greater power in the words of the enemy to
indicate war than in their own acts, who had provoked the Romans by
devastation; and they perceived how ill suited the contest was to their
strength. They repented of their depredations, and cursed the
Tarquinians as the instigators of the revolt. Nor did any one think of
preparing arms and hostilities; but each strenuously urged the necessity
of sending ambassadors to sue for pardon for their error. When their
ambassadors applied to the senate, being referred by the senate to the
people, they implored the gods, whose sacred utensils they had received
in the Gallic war and treated with all due ceremony, that the same
compassion for them might influence the Romans now in a flourishing
condition, which had formerly influenced themselves when the state of
the Roman people was distressed; and turning to the temple of Vesta,
they invoked the bonds of hospitality subsisting [between themselves]
and the flamens and vestals entered into by them with holy and religious
zeal: "Would any one believe that persons, who possessed such merits,
had suddenly become enemies without cause? or if they had committed any
act in a hostile manner, that they had, through design rather than under
the influence of error from frenzy, so acted, as to cancel their former
acts of kindness by recent injuries, more especially when conferred on
persons so grateful, and that they would choose to themselves as enemies
the Roman people, now in the most flourishing state and most successful
in war, whose friendship they had cultivated when they were distressed?
That they should not call it design, which should rather be called force
and necessity. That the Tarquinians, passing through their territory
with a hostile army, after they had asked for nothing but a passage,
forced with them some of their peasants, to accompany them in that
depredation, which was charged on them as a crime. That they were
prepared to deliver them up, if it pleased them that they should be
delivered up; or that they should be subjected to punishment, if [they
desired] that they should be punished. That Cære, the sanctuary of the
Roman people, the harbourer of its priests, the receptacle of the sacred
utensils of Rome, they should suffer to escape, in regard to the ties of
hospitality contracted with the vestals, and in regard to the religious
devotion paid to their gods, intact and unstained with the charge of
hostilities committed." The people were influenced not so much by [the
merits of] the present case, as by their former deserts, so as to be
unmindful rather of the injury than of the kindness. Peace was therefore
granted to the people of Cære, and it was resolved that the making of a
truce for one hundred years should be referred to a decree of the
senate. Against the Faliscians, implicated in the same charge, the force
of the war was turned; but the enemy was no where found. Though their
territories were visited in all directions with devastation, they
refrained from besieging the towns; and the legions being brought back
to Rome, the remainder of the year was spent in repairing the walls and
the towers, and the temple of Apollo was dedicated.
21. At the close of the year a dispute between the patricians and
commons suspended the consular elections, the tribunes refusing to allow
the elections to be held, unless they were held conformably to the
Licinian law; the dictator being determined to do away with the
consulate altogether from the state, rather than to make it common to
the patricians and the commons. Accordingly when, the elections being
repeatedly adjourned, the dictator resigned his office, matters came to
an interregnum. Upon this, when the interreges found the commons