Ab urbe condita

They entered office on August II, and the State was now strong enough not only to defend its frontiers, but to take the offensive.

Consequently, when the Hernici announced that the enemy had crossed their frontiers, help was promptly sent. Two consular armies were enrolled.

Veturius was sent to act against the Volsci, Tricipitinus had to protect the country of the allies from predatory incursions, and did not advance beyond the Hernican frontier.

In the first battle Veturius defeated and routed the enemy. Whilst Lucretius lay encamped amongst the Hernici, a body of plunderers evaded him by marching over the mountains of Praeneste, and descending into the plains devastated the fields of the Praenestines and Gabians, and then turned off to the hills above Tusculum.

Great alarm was felt in Rome, more from the surprising rapidity of the movement than from insufficiency of strength to repel any attack. Quintus Fabius was prefect of the City. By arming the younger men and manning the defences, he restored quiet and security everywhere.

The enemy did not venture to attack the City, but returned by a circuitous route with the plunder they had secured from the neighbourhood. The greater their distance from the City the more carelessly they marched, and in this state they fell in with the consul Lucretius, who had reconnoitred the route they were taking and was in battle formation, eager to engage.

As they were on the alert and ready for the enemy, the Romans, though considerably fewer in numbers, routed and scattered the vast host, whom the unexpected attack had thrown into confusion, drove them into the deep valleys and prevented their escape.

The Volscian nation was almost wiped out there. I find in some of the annals that 13,470 men fell in the battle and the pursuit, and 1750 were taken prisoners, whilst twenty-seven military standards were captured.

Although there may be some exaggeration, there certainly was a great slaughter. The consul, after securing enormous booty, returned victorious to his camp. The two consuls then united their camps; the Volscians and Aequi also concentrated their shattered forces. A third battle took place that year; again fortune gave the victory to the Romans, the enemy were routed and their camp taken.

[*](The Terentilian Law.)Matters at home drifted back to their old state; the successes in the war forthwith evoked disorders in the City. Gaius Terentilius Harsa was a tribune of the plebs that year.

Thinking that the absence of the consuls afforded a good opportunity for tribunitian agitation, he spent several days in haranguing the plebeians on the overbearing arrogance of the patricians.

In particular he inveighed against the authority of the consuls as excessive and intolerable in a free commonwealth, for whilst in name it was less invidious, in reality it was almost more harsh and oppressive than that of the kings had been, for now, he said, they

had two masters instead of one, with uncontrolled, unlimited powers, who, with nothing to curb their licence, directed all the threats and penalties of the laws against the plebeians.

To prevent this unfettered tyranny from lasting for ever, he said he would propose an enactment that a commission of five should be appointed to draw up in writing the laws which regulated the power of the consuls. Whatever jurisdiction over themselves the people gave the consul, that and that only was he to exercise; he was not to regard his own licence and caprice as law.

When this measure was promulgated, the patricians were apprehensive lest in the absence of the consuls they might have to accept the yoke. A meeting of the senate was convened by Q. Fabius, the prefect of the City. He made such a violent attack upon the proposed law and its author, that the threats and intimidation could not have been greater even if the two consuls had been standing by the tribune, threatening his life.

He accused him of plotting treason, of seizing a favourable moment for compassing the ruin of the commonwealth. “Had the gods,” he continued, “given us a tribune like him last year, during the pestilence and the war, nothing could have stopped him.