Veientes as partisans in the confederacy, are instigated to declare war and take up arms under a compact of desertion on the part of the Albans. When Fidenæ had openly42 revolted, Tullus, after summoning Mettus and his army from Alba, marches against the enemy. When he crossed the Anio, he pitches his camp at the43conflux of the rivers. Between that place and Fidenæ, the army of the Veientes had crossed the Tiber. These, in line of battle, occupied the right wing near the river; the Fidenates are posted on the left nearer the mountains. Tullus stations his own men opposite the Veientian foe; the Albans he opposes to the legion of the Fidenates. The Alban had not more courage than fidelity. Neither daring therefore to keep his ground, nor to desert openly, he files off slowly to the mountains. After this, when he supposed he had gone far enough, he44 halts his entire army; and being still irresolute in mind, in order to waste time, he opens his ranks. His design was, to turn his forces to that side to which fortune should give success. At first the Romans who stood nearest were astonished, when they perceived their flanks were uncovered by the departure of their allies; then a horseman in full gallop announces to the king that the Albans were moving off. Tullus, in this perilous juncture, vowed twelve Salii, and temples to Paleness and Panic. Rebuking the horseman in a loud voice, so that the enemy might hear him, he orders him to return to the fight, "that there was no occasion for alarm; that by his order the Alban army was marching round to fall on the unprotected rear of the Fidenates." He likewise commands him to order the cavalry to raise their spears aloft; this expedient intercepted from a great part of the Roman infantry the view of the Alban army retreating. Those who saw it, believing what they had heard the king say, fought with the greater ardour. The alarm is now transferred to the enemy; they had both heard what had been pronounced so audibly, and a great part of the Fidenates, as having been joined as colonists to the Romans, understood Latin. Therefore, that they might not be intercepted from the town by a sudden descent of the Albans from the hills, they take to flight. Tullus presses forward, and having routed the wing of the Fidenates, returned with greater fury against the Veientes, disheartened by the panic of the others: nor did they sustain his charge; but the river, opposed to them behind, prevented a precipitate flight. Whither when their flight led, some, shamefully throwing down their arms, rushed blindly into the river; others, while they linger on the banks, doubting whether to fly or fight, were overpowered. Never before had the Romans a more desperate battle.
28
Then the Alban army, that had been spectators of the fight, was marched down into the plains. Mettus congratulates Tullus on his defeat of the enemy; Tullus on his part addresses Mettus with great civility. He orders the Albans to unite their camp with the Romans, which he prayed might prove beneficial to both; and prepares a sacrifice of purification for the next day. As soon as it was light, all things being in readiness, according to custom, he commands both armies to be summoned to an assembly. The heralds,45 beginning at the outside, summoned the Albans first. They, struck46 too with the novelty of the thing, in order to hear the Roman king harangue, crowded next to him. The Roman legions, under arms, by concert surrounded them; a charge had been given to the centurions to execute their orders without delay. Then Tullus begins as follows: "Romans, if ever before at any other time in any war there was (an occasion) on which you should return thanks, first to the immortal gods, next to your own valour, that occasion was yesterday's battle. For the contest was not more with enemies than with the treachery and perfidy of allies, a contest which is more serious and more dangerous. For that a false opinion may not influence you, the Albans retired to the mountains without my orders, nor was that my command, but a stratagem and the pretence of a command: that so your attention might not be drawn away from the fight, you being kept in ignorance that you were deserted, and that terror and dismay might be struck into the enemy, conceiving themselves to be surrounded on the rear. Nor does that guilt, which I now state, extend to all the Albans. They followed their leader; as you too would have done, if I had wished my army to make a move to any other point from thence. Mettus there is the leader of that march, the same Mettus is the contriver of this war; Mettus is the violator of the treaty between Rome and Alba. Let another hereafter attempt the like conduct, unless I now make of him a signal example to mankind." The centurions in arms stand round Mettus, and the king proceeds with the rest as he had commenced: "It is my intention, and may it prove fortunate, auspicious, and happy to the Roman people, to myself, and to you, O Albans, to transplant all the inhabitants of Alba to Rome: to grant your people the rights of citizenship, and to admit your nobles into the rank of senators: to make one city, one republic; that as the Alban state was formerly divided from one people into two, so it may now return into one." On hearing this the Alban youth, unarmed, surrounded by armed men, however divided in their sentiments, yet restrained by the common apprehension, continue silent. Then Tullus proceeded: "If, Mettus Fuffetius, you were capable of learning fidelity, and how to observe treaties, that lesson would have been taught you by me, while still alive. Now, since your disposition is incurable, do you at least by your punishment teach mankind to consider those things sacred which have been violated by you. As therefore a little while since you kept your mind divided between the interest of Fidenæ and of Rome, so shall you now surrender your body to be torn asunder in different directions." Upon this, two chariots drawn by four horses being brought, he ties Mettus extended at full length to their carriages: then the horses were driven on in different directions, carrying off the mangled body on each carriage, where the limbs had been fastened by the cords. All turned away their eyes from so shocking a spectacle. That was the first and last instance of a punishment among the Romans regardless of the laws of humanity. In other cases we may boast that no nation whatever adopted milder forms of punishment.
29
During these occurrences the cavalry had been despatched onward to Alba to remove the multitude to Rome. The legions were next led thither to demolish the city. When they entered the gates, there was not indeed that tumult nor panic, such as usually takes place with captured cities when the gates being burst open, or the walls levelled by the ram, or the citadel taken by assault, the shouts of the enemy and rush of armed men through the city throws every thing into confusion by fire and sword: but gloomy silence and speechless sorrow so absorbed the minds of all, that, through fear, forgetting what they should leave behind, what they should take with them, all concert failing them, and frequently making inquiries of each other, they now stood at their thresholds, now wandering about they strayed through their houses, doomed to see them for that the last time. But as soon as the shouts of the horsemen commanding them to depart now urged them on, the crashing of the dwellings which were being demolished, was now heard in the remotest parts of the city, and the dust, rising in distant places, had filled every quarter as with a cloud spread over them; hastily snatching up whatever each of them could, whilst they went forth leaving behind them their guardian deity and household gods, and the homes in which each had been born and brought up, a continued train of emigrants soon filled the ways, and the sight of others through mutual commiseration renewed their tears, and piteous cries too were heard, of the women more especially, when they passed by their revered temples now beset with armed men, and left their gods as it were in captivity. After the Albans had evacuated the town, the Roman soldiery level all the public and private edifices indiscriminately to the ground, and one short hour consigned to demolition and ruin the work of four hundred years, during which Alba had stood. The temples of the gods, however, for such had been the orders given by the king, were spared.
30
In the mean time Rome increases by the demolition of Alba. The number of citizens is doubled. The Cœlian mount is added to the city, and in order that it might be inhabited more populously, Tullus selects that situation for his palace and there took up his abode. The leading persons among the Albans he enrols among the patricians, that that branch of the state also might increase, the Julii, Servilii, Quinctii, Geganii, Curiatii, Clœlii; and as a consecrated place of meeting for the order augmented by him he built a senate-house, which was called Hostilia even down to the age of our fathers. And that every rank might acquire some additional strength from the new people, he formed ten troops of horsemen from among the Albans: he likewise recruited the old, and raised new legions from the same source. Confiding in this increase of strength, Tullus declares war against the
