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Updated: May 31, 2025
What courage would that expression afford, not to the Roman commons, but to the Volscians, Æquans, and the Veientians! would they not hope that, under the generalship of Canuleius, they should be able to scale the Capitol and citadel, if with the deprivation of privilege and majesty, the tribunes should rob the patricians of their courage also?
There had been battles fought lately with the Veientians at Nomentum and Fidenæ; and after that a truce, not a peace, had been concluded; of which both the time had expired and they had renewed hostilities before the expiration. Heralds however were sent; and when, according to ancient usage, they were sworn and demanded restitution, their application was not listened to.
That both the Romans and the enemies were the same as they were for so many ages: that they retained the same spirits, the same bodily strength, the same arms. That he himself, Mamercus Æmilius, was also the same dictator, who formerly defeated the armies of the Veientians and Fidenatians, with the additional support of the Faliscians, at Nomentum.
He successfully opposes the design of removing to Veii. Peace being established in every other quarter, the Romans and Veientians were still in arms with such rancour and animosity, that it was evident that ruin awaited the vanquished party. The elections in the two states were conducted in very different methods. The Romans augmented the number of military tribunes with consular power.
We are told that the Romans surrounded the city, five miles in circumference, with a double wall, but it could not have been complete, or the Veientians could not have held out against starvation so long. For the end of the siege and the taking of the city we must revert to the legendary tale. For seven years and more, so the legend says, the Romans had been besieging Veii.
The Faliscians, impatient of the hardships of war at a distance from home, and sufficiently confident of their own strength, earnestly demanded battle; the Veientians and Fidenatians placed more hope in protracting the war.
Therefore when word was brought by certain traders, that aid was refused to the Veientians, and that they were bid to prosecute with their own strength a war entered into on their own separate views, and not to seek out persons as sharers in their distresses, to whom they had not communicated their hopes when flourishing; the dictator, that his appointment might not be in vain, all opportunity of acquiring military glory being now taken from him, desirous of performing during peace some work which might serve as a memorial of his dictatorship, sets about limiting the censorship, either judging its powers excessive, or disapproving of the duration rather than the extent of the office.
From the camp the alarm spreads into the city; the Veientians run to arms in as great a panic as if Veii had been taken: some come up to the support of the Sabines, others fall upon the Romans, who had directed all their force against the camp.
The dictator charged on the right wing against the Faliscians, Quintius Capitolinus on the left against the Veientians, and the master of the horse with the cavalry advanced in the centre.
At which spectacle, a crowd of people being assembled, afterwards the senate being convened by the magistrates on the extraordinary circumstance, so great a change was produced in their sentiments, that the entire state earnestly demanded peace at the hands of those, who lately, outrageous by hatred and anger, almost preferred the fate of the Veientians to the peace of the Capenatians.
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