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.

In this emergency C. Marcius Rutilus was nominated Dictator —the first Dictator nominated from the plebs —and he appointed as Master of the Horse C. Plautius, also a plebeian. The patricians were indignant at even the dictatorship becoming common property, and they offered all the resistance in their power to any decree being passed or any preparations made to help the Dictator in prosecuting that war.

This only made the people more ready to adopt every proposal which the Dictator made.

On leaving the City he marched along both banks of the Tiber, ferrying the troops across in whichever direction the enemy were reported to be; in this way he surprised many of the raiders scattered about the fields. Finally he surprised and captured their camp; 8ooo prisoners were taken, the rest were either killed or hunted out of the Roman territory.

By an order of the people which was not confirmed by the senate a triumph was awarded him.

As the senate would not have the elections conducted by a plebeian Dictator or a plebeian consul, they fell back on an interregnum. There was a succession of interreges —Q. Servilius Ahala, M. Fabius, Cn. Manlius, C. Fabius, C. Sulpicius, L. Aemilius, Q. Servilius, and M. Fabius Ambustus.

In the second of these interregna a contest arose because two patrician consuls were elected. When the tribunes interposed their veto and appealed to the Licinian Law, Fabius, the interrex, said that it was laid down in the Twelve Tables that whatever was the last order that the people made that should have the force of law, and the people had made an order by electing the two consuls.

The tribunes' veto only availed to postpone the elections, and ultimately two patrician consuls were elected, namely C. Sulpicius Peticus (for the third time) and M. Valerius Publicola. They entered upon their office the day they were elected.

So in the 4ooth year from the foundation of the City and the 35th after its capture by the Gauls, the second consulship was wrested from the plebs, for the first time since the passing of the Licinian Law seven years previously. Empulum was taken this year from the Tiburtines without any serious fighting.

It seems uncertain whether both consuls held joint command in this campaign, as some writers assert, or whether the fields of the Tarquinians were ravaged by Sulpicius at the same time that Valerius was leading his legions against the Tiburtines. The[*](Contest over the Consulship.) consuls had a more serious conflict at home with the plebs and their tribunes.

They considered it as a question not only of courage but of honour and loyalty to their order that as two patricians had received the consulship so they should hand it on to two patricians.

They felt that they must either renounce all claims to it, if it became a plebeian magistracy, or they must keep it in its entirety as a possession which they had received in its entirety from their fathers. The plebs protested:“What were they living for?