Ab urbe condita

After[*](Unrest in the City —War with Praeneste.) thus distinguishing himself by his skill and courage in the Volscian war and bringing the expedition against Tusculum to such a happy termination, and on both occasions treating his colleague with singular consideration and forbearance, Camillus went out of

office. The consular tribunes for the next year were: Lucius Valerius (for the fifth time) and Publius (for the third time), C. Sergius (also for the third time), L. Menenius (for the second time), P. Papirius, and Ser. Cornelius

Maluginensis. This year it was found necessary to appoint censors, mainly owing to the vague rumours which were afloat about the burden of debt. The plebeian tribunes, in order to stir up ill-feeling, exaggerated the amount, while it was underestimated by those whose interest it was to represent the difficuity as due to the unwillingness rather than the inability of the debtor to

pay. The censors appointed were C. Sulpicius Camerinius and Sp. Postumius Regillensis. [*](These appear to have been the first censors appointed since the Gaulish invasion.) They commenced a fresh assessment, but the work was interrupted by the death of Postumius, because it was doubtful whether the co-optation of a colleague, in the case of the censors,

was permissible. Sulpicius accordingiy resigned, and fresh magistrates were appointed, but owing to some flaw in their election did not act. Religious fears deterred them from proceding to a third election; it seemed as though the gods would not allow a censorship for

that year. The tribunes declared that such mockory was intolerable. “The senate,” according to them, “dreaded the publication of the assessment lists, which supplied information as to every man's property, because they do not wish the amount of the debtor to be brought to light for it would show how one half of the community was being ruined by the other balf, while the debt-burdened plebs were all the time being exposod to one enemy

after another. Excuses for war were being sought indiscriminately in every direction; the legions were marched from Antium to Satricum, from Satricum to Velitrae, from there to Tusculum. And now the Latins, the Hernici, and the Praenestines were being threatened with hostilities in order that the patricians might wreak their vongeance on their fellow-citizens more even than upon the enemy. They were wearing out the plebs by keeping them under arms and not allowing them any breathing time in the City or any leisure for thoughts of liberty, or any possibility for taking their place in the Assembly, where they might listen to the voice of a tribune urging the reduction of interest and the redress of

other grievances. Why, if the plebs had spirit enough to recall to mind the liberties which their fathers won, they would never suffer a Roman citizen to be made over to his creditors, nor would they permit an army to be raised until an account was taken of the existing debt and some method of reducing it discovered, so that each man might know what he actually owed, and what was left for himself —whether his person was free or whether that, too, was due to

the stocks.” The premium thus put upon sedition made it at once more active. Many cases were occurring of men being made over to their creditors, and in view of a war with Praeneste, the senate, had resolved that fresh legions should be enrolled, but both these proceedings were arrested by the intervention of the tribunes, supported by the whole body of the plebs The tribunes refused to allow the judgment debtors to be

carried off; the men whose names were called for enrolment refused to answer. The senate was less concerned to insist upon the rights of creditors than to carry out the enlistment, for information had been received that the enemy had advanced from Praeneste and were encamped in the district

of Gabii. This intelligence however, instead of deterring the plebeian tribunes from opposition, only made them more determined, and nothing availed to quiet the agitation in the City but the approach of war to its very walls.

A report had reached Praeneste that no army had been raised in Rome and no commander-in-chief selected, and that the patricians and plebeians had turned against one another.

Seizing the opportunity, their generals had led their army by rapid marches through fields which they had utterly laid waste and appeared before the Colline Gate. There was wide-spread alarm in the City.

A general cry arose, “To arms!” and men hurried to the walls and gates. At last, abandoning sedition for war, they nominated T. Quinctius Cincinnatus as Dictator.

He named A. Sempronius Atratinus as his Master of the Horse. No sooner did they hear of this —so great was the terror which a Dictatorship inspired —than the enemy retired from the wails, and the men liable for active service assembled without any hesitation at the Dictator's orders.

Whilst the army was being mobilised in Rome, the camp of the enemy had been fixed not far from the Alia. From this point they spread devastation far and wide, and congratulated themselves that they had chosen a position of fatal import for the City of Rome; they expected that there would be the same panic and flight as in the Gaulish war.

For, they argued if the Romans regarded with horror even the day which took its name from that spot and was under a curse, how much more would they dread the Alia itself, the memorial of that great disaster. They would most assuredly have the appalling sight of the Gauls before their eyes and the sound of their voices in their ears. Indulging in these idle dreams, they placed all their hopes in the fortune of the place.

The Romans, on the other hand, knew perfectly well that wherever he was, the Latin enemy was the same as the one who had been conquered at Lake Regillus and kept in peaceable subjection for a hundred years.

The fact that the place was associated with the memories of their great defeat would sooner stimulate them to wipe out the recollection of that disgrace than make them feel that any place on earth could be of ill omen for their success.

Even if the Gauls them- selves were to appear there, they would fight just as they fought when they recovered their City, just as they fought the next day at Gabii, when they did not leave a single enemy who had entered Rome to carry the news of their defeat and the Roman victory to their countrymen.