Ab urbe condita

Nothing worth recording was done by the other consul, except his unprecedented action in getting a law passed in camp by the tribes levying 5 per cent. on the value of every slave who was manumitted.[*]( “One of the consuls, Cn. Manlius, was in the field with a consular army to carry on the war against the Tarquiniensians and Faliscans: his colleague, C. Marcius Rutilus was engaged with the Privernatians and enriching his army, it is said, with the plunder of the enemy's country, for many years untouched by the ravages of war. It is probable that the soldiers on this occasion made prisoners of many Privernatian families, and released them again on payment of a large ransom. But prisoners taken in war becoming, according to ancient law, the slaves of the captor, his release of a prisoner upon ransom was, in fact, the manumission of a slave. Accordingly Cn. Manlius called his soldiers together in the camp near Sutrium according to their tribes, and as they were assembled in regular comitia he proposed to them a law that five per cent. on the value of any emancipated slave should be paid by his master into the public treasury. It might be argued that the State ought not to lose all benefit from the plunder acquired by its soldiers; and that especially if a soldier set an enemy at liberty for the sake of his ransom some compensation should be made to his country whom his act might be supposed to injure. There was some plausibility in this, and the army of Manlius might have felt also some jealousy at the better fortune of their comrades, and might have known that their own general would not, like C. Marcius, give up to them the full benefit of such plunder as they might acquire from the Etruscans.” —Arnold's History of Rome, II. 78-9. )As the money raised under this law would be a handsome addition to the exhausted treasury, the senate confirmed

it. The tribunes of the plebs, however, looking not so much to the law as to the precedent set, made it a capital offence for any one to convene the Assembly outside their usual place of meeting. If it were once legalised, there was nothing, however injurious to the people, which could not be carried through men who were bound by the oath of military

obedience. In this year C. Licinius Stolo was impeached by M. Popilius Laenas for having violated his own law; he and his son together occupied a thousand jugera of land, and he had emancipated his son in order to evade the law. He was condemned to pay a fine of 10,000 ases.

The new consuls were M. Fabius Ambustus and M. Popilius Laenas, each for the second time. They had two wars on hand.

The one which Laenas waged against the Tiburtines presented little difficulty; after driving them into their city he ravaged their fields. The other consul, who was operating against the Faliscans and Tarquinians, met with a defeat in the first battle.

What mainly contributed to it and produced a real terror amongst the Romans was the extraordinary spectacle presented by their priests who, brandishing lighted torches and with what looked like snakes entwined in their hair, came on like so many Furies.

At this sight the Romans were like men distraught or thunderstruck and rushed in a panic-stricken mass into their entrenchments. The consul and his staff officers and the military tribunes laughed at them and scolded them for being terrified by conjuring tricks like a lot of boys.

Stung by a feeling of shame, they suddenly passed from a state of terror to one of reckless daring, and they rushed like blind men against what they had just fled from. When, after scattering the idle pageantry of the enemy, they got at the armed men behind, they routed the entire army.

The same day they gained possession of the camp, and after securing an immense amount of booty returned home flushed with victory, jesting as soldiers do, and deriding the enemy's contrivance and their own panic. This led to a rising of the whole of Etruria, and under the leadership of the Tarquinians and Faliscans they marched to the salt-works.