Ab urbe condita

As the outposts, who had been all but cut off, were now relieved at the last moment, they were all allowed a respite from further exertions. The fresh troops took up the fighting, and the result did not long remain in doubt.

The routed enemy sought their camp, and as they retreated before the Romans who were attacking it, they became crowded together in the furthest part.

In trying to escape, they became blocked in the narrow gates, and a good many climbed on to the mound and stockade in the hope of defending themselves on higher ground, or possibly of crossing ramparts and fosse and so escaping.

In one part the mound had been built up too loosely, and, owing to the weight of those standing on it, crumbled down into the fosse, and many, both soldiers and non-combatants, exclaiming that the gods had cleared the passage for their flight, made their escape that way.

In this battle the power of the Etruscans was broken up for the second time. After undertaking to provide a year's pay for the army and a two months' supply of corn, they obtained permission from the Dictator to send envoys to Rome to sue for peace.

A regular treaty of peace was refused, but they were granted a two years' truce. The Dictator returned in triumphal procession to the City. Some of my authorities aver that Etruria was pacified without any important battle being fought simply through the settlement of the troubles in Arretium and the restoration of the Cilnii to popular favour. No sooner had M. Valerius laid down the Dictatorship than he was elected consul.

Some have thought that he was elected without having been a candidate and, therefore, in his absence, and that the election was conducted by an interrex. There is no question, however, that he held the consulship with Apuleius Pansa.

During[*](The Ogulnian Law.) their year of office foreign affairs were fairly peaceful; the ill-success the Etruscans had met with in war and the terms of the truce kept the Etruscans quiet;

the Samnites, after their many years of defeat and disaster, were so far quite satisfied with their recent treaty with Rome. In the City itself the large number of colonists sent out made the plebs less restless and lightened their financial burdens.

But to prevent anything like universal tranquillity a conflict between the most prominent plebeians and the patricians was started by two of the tribunes of the plebs, Quintus and Cnaeus Olgunius.

These men had sought everywhere for an opportunity of traducing the patricians before the plebs, and after all other attempts had failed they adopted a policy which was calculated to inflame the minds, not of the dregs of the populace, but of the actual leaders of the plebs, men who

had been consuls and enjoyed triumphs, and to whose official distinctions nothing was lacking but the priesthood.

This was not yet open to both orders. The Ogulnii accordingly gave notice of a measure providing that as there were at that time four augurs and four pontiffs, and it had been decided that the number of

priests should be augmented, the four additional pontiffs and five augurs should all be co-opted from the plebs How the college of augurs could have been reduced to four, except by the death of two of their number, I am unable to discover.