Ab urbe condita

Samnites. It is said to have been called Capua from their general, but it is more probable that it was so called from its situation in a champaign country (campus). It was after the Etruscans, weakened by a long war, had granted them a joint occupancy of the city and its territory that they seized

it. During a festival, whilst the old inhabitants were overcome with wine and sleep, the new settlers attacked them in the night and massacred them. After the proceedings described in the last chapter, the above-named consuls entered on office in the middle of

December. By this time intelligence as to the imminence of a Volscian war had been received not only from those who had been sent to investigate, but also from the Latins and Hernicans, whose envoys reported that the Volscians were devoting greater energy than they had ever done before to the selection of their generals and the levying of their

forces. The general cry amongst them was that either they must consign all thoughts of war to eternal oblivion and submit to the yoke, or else they must in courage, endurance, and military skill be a match for those with whom they were fighting for

supremacy. These reports were anything but groundless, but not only did the senate treat them with comparative indifference, but C. Sempronius, to whom that field of operations had fallen, imagined that as he was leading the troops of a victorious people against those whom they had vanquished, the fortune of war could never