Ab urbe condita

Nor were the only traces left those of ramparts and fosses, more conspicuous still were those which attested the devastation and depopulation of all the country round.

Fabius also captured the city of Cimetra, where 2900 became prisoners of war, 830 having been killed during the assault.

After this he returned to Rome for the elections and arranged for them to be held at an early date. The centuries who voted first declared without exception for Fabius. Amongst the candidates was the energetic and ambitious Appius Claudius.

Anxious to secure the honour for himself, he was quite as anxious that both posts should be held by patricians, and he brought his utmost influence, supported by the whole of the nobility, to bear upon the electors so that they might return him together with Fabius.

At the outset Fabius refused, and alleged the same grounds for his refusal as he had alleged the year before. Then all the nobles crowded round his chair and begged him to extricate the consulship from the plebeian mire and restore both to the office itself and to the patrician houses the august dignity which they possessed of old.

As soon as he could obtain silence he addressed them in terms which calmed their excitement. He would, he said, have arranged to admit votes for two patricians if he saw that any one else than himself was

being elected, but as matters were he would not allow his name to stand, since it would be against the law and form a most dangerous precedent.

So L. Volumnius, a plebeian, was elected together with Appius Claudius; they had already been associated in a previous consulship. The nobles taunted Fabius and said that he refused to have Appius Claudius as a colleague because he was unquestionably his inferior in eloquence and state-craft.

When the elections were over, the previous consuls received a six months' extension of their command and were ordered to prosecute the war in Samnium.

P. Decius, who had been left by his colleague in Samnium and was now proconsul, continued his ravages of the Samnite fields until he had driven their army, which nowhere ventured to encounter him, outside their frontiers. They made for Etruria, and were in hopes that the object which they had failed to secure by their numerous deputations might be achieved now that they had a strong force and could back up their appeals by intimidation.

They insisted upon a meeting of the Etruscan chiefs being convened.

When it had assembled they pointed out how for many years they had been fighting with the Romans, how they had tried in every possible way to sustain the weight of that war in their own strength, and how they had proved the assistance of their neighbours to be of small value.

They had sued for peace because they could no longer endure war, they had taken to war again because a peace which reduced them to slavery was heavier to bear than a war in which they could fight as free men. The only hope left to them now lay in the Etruscans.

They knew that they of all the nations of Italy were the richest in arms and men and money, and they had for their neighbours the Gauls, trained to arms from the cradle, naturally courageous to desperation and especially against the Romans, a nation whom they justly boast of having captured and then allowing them to ransom themselves with gold.