Ab urbe condita

men. When the plebeians began to be respected, every plebeian would respect himself. Surely they might now try the experiment in one or two cases, to prove whether any plebeian is capable of holding high office, or whether it would be little short of a miracle for any one sprung from the plebs to be at the same time a strong and energetic

man. After a desperate fight, they had secured the election of military tribunes with consular powers, for which plebeians were eligible. Men of tried ability, both at home and in the field, became candidates. For the first few years they were knocked about, rejected, treated with derision by the patricians; at last they declined to expose themselves to these

affronts. They saw no reason why a law should not be repealed which simply legalised what would never happen. They would have less to be ashamed of in the injustice of the law than in being passed over in the elections as though unworthy to hold office.

Harangues of this sort were listened to with approval, and some were induced to stand for a consular tribuneship, each of them promising to bring in some measure in the interest of the plebs.

Hopes were held out of a division of the State domain and the formation of colonies, whilst money was to be raised for the payment of the soldiers by a tax on the occupiers of

the public land. The consular tribunes waited till the usual exodus from the City allowed a meeting of the senate to be held in the absence of the tribunes of the plebs, the members who were in the country being recalled by private notice.

A resolution was passed that owing to rumours of an invasion of the Hernican territory by the Volscians the consular tribunes should go and find out what was happening, and that at the forthcoming elections consuls should be chosen.

On their departure they left Appius Claudius, the son of the decemvir, to act as warden of the City, a young man of energy, and imbued from his infancy with a hatred of the plebs and its tribunes. The tribunes had nothing on which to raise a contest either with the consular tribunes, who were absent, the authors of the decree, or with Appius, as the matter had been settled.

The[*](The seiure of Capua —War with the Volscians.) consuls elected were C. Sempronius Atratinus and Q. Fabius Vibulanus. There is recorded under this year an incident which occurred in a foreign country, but still important enough to be mentioned, namely, the capture of Volturnus, an Etruscan city, now called Capua, by the

Samnites. It is said to have been called Capua from their general, but it is more probable that it was so called from its situation in a champaign country (campus). It was after the Etruscans, weakened by a long war, had granted them a joint occupancy of the city and its territory that they seized

it. During a festival, whilst the old inhabitants were overcome with wine and sleep, the new settlers attacked them in the night and massacred them. After the proceedings described in the last chapter, the above-named consuls entered on office in the middle of

December. By this time intelligence as to the imminence of a Volscian war had been received not only from those who had been sent to investigate, but also from the Latins and Hernicans, whose envoys reported that the Volscians were devoting greater energy than they had ever done before to the selection of their generals and the levying of their

forces. The general cry amongst them was that either they must consign all thoughts of war to eternal oblivion and submit to the yoke, or else they must in courage, endurance, and military skill be a match for those with whom they were fighting for

supremacy. These reports were anything but groundless, but not only did the senate treat them with comparative indifference, but C. Sempronius, to whom that field of operations had fallen, imagined that as he was leading the troops of a victorious people against those whom they had vanquished, the fortune of war could never

change. Trusting to this, he displayed such rashness and negligence in all his measures that there was more of the Roman discipline in the Volscian army than there was in the Roman army

itself. As often happens, fortune waited upon desert. In the very first battle Sempronius made his dispositions without plan or forethought, the fighting line was not strengthened by reserves, nor were the cavalry placed in a suitable