Ab urbe condita

The Aequi, advancing in a different direction, had entrenched themselves on Algidus, and from there were making predatory incursions into the territory of Tusculum. The news was brought by envoys from Tusculum who implored assistance. The panic created unnerved the decemvirs, and seeing the City encompassed by two separate wars they were driven to consult the senate.

They gave orders for the senators to be summoned, quite realising what a storm of indignant resentment was awaiting them, and that they would be held solely responsible for the wasted territory and the threatening dangers.

This, they expected, would lead to an attempt to deprive them of office, unless they offered a unanimous resistance, and by a sharp exercise of authority on a few of the most daring spirits repress the attempts of the others.

When the voice of the crier was heard in the Forum calling the patricians to the Senate-house to meet the decemvirs, the novelty of it, after so long a suspension of the meetings of the senate, filled the plebeians with astonishment. “What,” they asked, “has happened to revive a practice so long disused? We ought to be grateful to the enemy who are menacing us with war, for causing anything to happen which belongs to the usage of a free State.”

They looked in every part of the Forum for a senator, but seldom was one recognised; then they contemplated the Senate-house and the solitude round the decemvirs.