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In the mean time the Hernicians and Latins, influenced not only by compassion but by shame, if they neither gave opposition to the common enemy, when making for the city of Rome with a hostile army, nor afforded any aid to their allies when besieged, march to Rome with their forces united.
On the Hernicians, who after the death of the consul came up contemptuously to the Roman camp with the certainty of taking it, a sally was made by the exhortations of the consul, the minds of the soldiers also being full of rage and indignation. The Hernicians were much disappointed in their hopes of approaching the rampart; in such complete confusion did they retire from thence.
And the other consul, Fabius, at first in slight skirmishes, and at length in one single battle, defeated the Hernicians, when they attacked him with all their forces. The dictator, after passing the highest encomiums on the consuls in the senate and before the people, and yielding up the honour of his own exploits to them, resigned his dictatorship.
The Hernicians brought an account both that a defeat had taken place, and that the army was besieged: and they struck such terror into the senate, that a charge was given to the other consul Posthumius, that he should "take care that the commonwealth sustained no injury," which form of a decree has ever been deemed to be one of extreme exigency.
But he concluded a league with the Latins, and also with the Hernicians—a Sabine people, who dwelt in one of the valleys of the Appenines, by which the power of Rome was threatened. He is also known as the first who proposed an agrarian law. It seems that the patricians had occupied the public lands to the exclusion of the plebeians.
Veturius was sent against the Volscians to carry on an offensive war. Tricipitinus being appointed to protect the territory of the allies from devastation, proceeds no further than into the country of the Hernicians. Veturius routs and puts to flight the enemy in the first engagement.
The consul P. Valerius, after auxiliaries were sent for from the Latins and Hernicians, being despatched to Veii with an army, immediately attacks the Sabine camp, which had been pitched before the walls of their allies: and occasioned such great consternation, that while, dispersed in different directions, they sally forth to repel the assault of the enemy, the gate which the Romans first attacked was taken; then within the rampart there was rather a carnage than a battle.
Quintius having allayed the confusion which the sudden panic had occasioned, after ordering the soldiers to remain quiet in their tents, leads out a cohort of the Hernicians for an advance guard: the trumpeters and horneteers he mounts on horseback, and commands them to sound their trumpets before the rampart, and to keep the enemy in suspense till daylight: during the rest of the night every thing was so quiet in the camp, that the Romans had even the advantage of sleep.
They were referred back to Marcius by the senate, whom by a decree they empowered to determine regarding the Hernicians, and he accepted their submission.
The Roman arms were then turned against the Aequans, their old enemies, but who had, for many years past, remained quiet, under the guise of a treacherous peace, because, while the Hernicians were in a state of prosperity, these had, in conjunction with them, frequently sent aid to the Samnites; and after the Hernicians were subdued, almost the whole nation, without dissembling that they acted by public authority, had revolted to the enemy; and when, after the conclusion of the treaty with the Samnites at Rome, ambassadors were sent to demand satisfaction, they said, that "this was only a trial made of them, on the expectation that they would through fear suffer themselves to be made Roman citizens.
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