Ab urbe condita

Each of the commanders were encouraging his men. Then the enemy lost heart, their only confidence was in the strength of their position; whilst thus demoralised the Romans and allies advanced to the charge.

They had already forced their way into the vestibule of the temple, when P. Valerius, who was in the front, cheering on his men, was killed. P. Volumnius, a man of consular rank, saw him fall. Directing his men to protect the body, he ran to the front and took the consul's place. In the heat of their charge the soldiers were not aware of the loss they had sustained; they gained the victory before they knew that they were fighting without a general.

Many of the exiles defiled the temple with their blood, many were taken prisoners, Herdonius was killed. So the Capitol was recovered. Punishment was inflicted on the prisoners according to their condition, whether slave or freeman; a vote of thanks was accorded to the Tusculans; the Capitol was cleansed and solemnly purified.

It is stated that the plebeians threw quadrantes into the consul's house that he might have a more splendid funeral.

No[*](The Terentilian Law —Fresh Troubles.) sooner were order and quiet restored than the tribunes began to press upon the senators the necessity of redeeming the promise made by Publius Valerius; they urged Claudius to free his colleague's manes [*](manes=“the pure, the bright, the good.” They were thought of as disembodied spirits, immortal as the gods. Their dwelling was in the depths of the earth, from which at certain seasons they emerged and flitted in circles beneath the moon. Their position in Roman mythology might possibly be understood as pointing to a prehistoric ancestor-worship. On epitaphs they are described as “the Divine Manes.” ) from the guilt of deception by allowing the Law to be proceeded with. The consul refused to allow it until he had secured the election of a

colleague. The contest went on till the election was held. In the month of December, after the utmost exertions on the part of the patricians, L. Quinctius Cincinnatus, the father of Caeso, was elected consul, and at once took up his

office. The plebeians were dismayed at the prospect of having as consul a man incensed against them, and powerful in the warm support of the senate, in his own personal merits, and in his three children, not one of whom was Caeso's inferior in loftiness of mind, while they were his superiors in exhibiting the prudence and moderation where

necessary. When he entered on his magistracy he continually delivered harangues from the tribunal, in which he censured the senate as energetically as he put down the

plebs. It was, he said, through the apathy of that order that the tribunes of the plebs, now perpetually in office, acted as kings in their speeches and accusations, as though they were living, not in the commonwealth of Rome, but in some wretched ill-regulated family. Courage, resolution, all that makes youth distinguished at home and in the battlefield, had been expelled and banished from Rome with his son

Caeso. Loquacious agitators, sowers of discord, made tribunes for the second and third time in succession, were living by means of infamous practices in regal licentiousness. “Did that fellow,” he asked, “Aulus Verginius, because he did not happen to be in the Capitol, deserve less punishment than Appius Herdonius? Considerably more, by Jove, if any choose to form a true estimate of the

matter. Herdonius, if he did nothing else, avowed himself an enemy and in a measure summoned you to take up arms; this man, by denying the existence of a war, deprived you of your arms, and exposed you defenceless to the mercy of your slaves and exiles. And did you —without disrespect to C. Claudius and the dead P. Valerius, I would ask —did you advance against the Capitol before you cleared these enemies out of the Forum? It is an outrage on gods and men, that when there were enemies in the Citadel, in the Capitol, and the leader of the slaves and exiles, after profaning everything, had taken up his quarters in the very shrine of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, it should be at Tusculum, not at Rome, that arms were first taken