Ab urbe condita

“Well then,” said Appius, “go, let nobody keep you here for it is by no means right that whilst perhaps you are hardly able to cope with your own war you should boast of having come to the assistance of others.”

“May Hercules guide all for the best,” replied Volumnius. “I would rather have taken all this trouble in vain than that anything should happen which would make one consular army insufficient for Etruria.”

As the consuls were parting from each other, the staffofficers and military tribunes stood round them; some of them implored their own commander not to reject the assistance of his colleague, assistance which he himself ought to have invited and which was now spontaneously offered;

many of the others tried to stop Volumnius as he was leaving and appealed to him not to betray the safety of the republic through a wretched quarrel with his colleague.

They urged that if any disaster occurred the responsibility for it would fall on the one who abandoned the other, not on the other who was abandoned; it came to this —all the glory of success and all the disgrace of failure in Etruria was transferred to Volumnius.

People would not inquire what words Appius had used, but what fortune the army was meeting with; he may have been dismissed by Appius, but his presence was demanded by the republic and by the army.