Ab urbe condita

to renew hostilities. The better part of the senate, however, put a more favourable construction on his reply, and declared that it was an utterance worthy of a man and a man who loved liberty. Was it, they asked, to be supposed that any people or, for that matter, any individual would remain longer than he could help under conditions which

made him discontented? Peace would only be faithfully kept where those who accepted it did so voluntarily; they could not hope that it would be faithfully kept where they sought to reduce men to servitude. The senate was brought to adopt this view mainly by the consul himself who kept repeating to the consulars —the men who had to state their opinions first —in a tone loud enough for many to hear, “Men whose first and last thought is their liberty deserve to become Romans.” Thus they gained their cause in the senate, and the proposal to confer full citizenship on the Privernates was submitted to the people.

The new consuls were P. Plautius Proculus and P. Cornelius Scapula. The year was not remarkable for anything at home or abroad beyond the fact that a colony was sent to Fregellae which was in the territory of Sidicum and had afterwards belonged to the Volscians.

There was also a distribution of meat made to the people by M. Flavius on the occasion of his mother's funeral.

There were many who looked upon this as the payment of a bribe to the people under the pretext of honouring his mother's memory.

He had been prosecuted by the aediles on the charge of seducing a married woman, and had been acquitted, and this was considered in the light of a dole given in return for the favour shown him at the trial.

It proved also to be the means of his gaining office, for at the next election he was made a tribune of the plebs in his absence and over the heads of competitors who had personally canvassed. Palaeopolis[*](War with Palaeopolis.) was a city not far from the present site of Neapolis The two cities formed one community.

The original inhabitants came from Cumae; Cumae traced its origin to Chalcis in Euboea. The fleet in which they had sailed from home gave them the mastery of the coastal district which they now occupy, and after landing in the islands of Aenaria and Pithecusae they ventured to transfer their settlements to the mainland.

This community, relying on their own strength and on the lax observance of treaty obligations which the Samnites were showing towards the Romans, or possibly trusting to the effect of the pestilence which they had heard was now attacking the City, committed many acts of aggression against the Romans who were living in Campania and the Falernian country.