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Updated: June 12, 2025
Meanwhile, ambassadors from the Hernicans and Latins came to Rome to offer their congratulations on the harmony existing between the patricians and commons, and as an offering on that account to Jupiter, best and greatest, they brought into the Capitol a golden crown, of small weight, as money at that time was not plentiful, and the duties of religion were performed rather with piety than splendour.
While they were hardly able to endure the calamities that pressed upon them, ambassadors from the Hernicans suddenly brought word that the Aequans and Volscians had united their forces, and pitched their camp in their territory: that from thence they were devastating their frontiers with an immense army.
Else why were it that the allies were thus included, and the Latin nation? What was the object of a third of the land that had been taken being restored to the Hernicans, so lately their enemies, except that those nations might have Cassius for their leader instead of Coriolanus? The dissuader and opposer of the agrarian law now began to be popular.
The tribunes loudly declared openly in the forum that the story of the Volscian war was nothing but a got-up farce: that the Hernicans had been trained to act their parts: that the liberty of the Roman people was now not even crushed by manly efforts, but was baffled by cunning; because it was now no longer believed that the Volscians and the Æquans who were almost utterly annihilated, could of themselves begin hostilities, new enemies were sought for: that a loyal colony, and one in their very vicinity, was being rendered infamous: that war was proclaimed against the unoffending people of Antium, in reality waged with the commons of Rome, whom, loaded with arms, they were determined to drive out of the city with precipitous haste, wreaking their vengeance on the tribunes by the exile and expulsion of their fellow-citizens.
Quinctius having allayed the confusion which the sudden panic had occasioned, and ordered the soldiers to remain quiet in their tents, led out a cohort of the Hernicans for an advance guard: the trumpeters and horn blowers he mounted on horseback, and commanded them to sound their trumpets before the rampart, and to keep the enemy in suspense till daylight: during the rest of the night everything was so quiet in the camp, that the Romans had even the opportunity of sleeping.
But if there were no refuge for suppliants among them, he would traverse all Latium, and would apply next to the Volscians, Aequans, and Hernicans, until he should come to people who knew how to protect children from the impious and cruel persecutions of parents.
The Hernicans came to hear of it, and warned the Romans that the Ecetrans had revolted to the Æquans: the colony of Antium also was suspected, because, after the town had been taken a great number of the inhabitants had fled thence for refuge to the Æquans: and these soldiers behaved with the very greatest bravery during the course of the war.
The statement of Diodorus that all men were called to arms to resist the Gauls, and that the number amounted to forty thousand, is by no means improbable: according to the testimony of Polybius, Latins and Hernicans also were enlisted.
The Hernicans brought news both that an unsuccessful battle had been fought, and that the consul and army were besieged; and inspired the senate with such terror, that the other consul Postumius was charged to see to it that the commonwealth took no harm, a form of decree which has ever been deemed to be one of extreme urgency.
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