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.
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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
