Ab urbe condita

He then appointed a day for the enrolment of troops, and in the interim went to Veii to encourage the soldiers, after which he returned to Rome to raise a fresh army. Not a man tried to escape enlistment. Even foreign troops —Latins and Hernicans —came to offer assistance for the war.

The Dictator formally thanked them in the senate, and as all the preparations for war were now sufficiently advanced, he vowed, in pursuance of a senatorial decree, that on the capture of Veii he would celebrate the Great Games and restore and dedicate the temple of Matuta the Mother, which had been originally dedicated by Servius Tullius.

He left the City with his army amid a general feeling of anxious expectation rather than of hopeful confidence on the part of the citizens, and his first engagement was with the Faliscans and Capenates in the territory of Nepete.

As usual where everything was managed with consummate skill and prudence, success followed. He not only defeated the enemy in the field, but he stripped them of their camp and secured immense booty. The greater part was sold and the proceeds paid over to the quaestor, the smaller share was given to the soldiers. From there the army was led to Veii.

The forts were constructed more closely together. Frequent skirmishes had occurred at random in the space between the city wall and the Roman lines, and an edict was issued that none should fight without orders, thereby keeping the soldiers to the construction of the siege works.

By far the greatest and most difficult of these was a mine which was commenced, and designed to lead into the enemies' citadel.

That the work might not be interrupted, or the troops exhausted by the same men being continuously employed in underground labour, he formed the army into six divisions. Each division was told off in rotation to work for six hours at a time; the work went on without any intermission until they had made a way into the citadel.

When the Dictator saw that victory was now within his grasp, that a very wealthy city was on the point of capture, and that there would be more booty than had been amassed in all the previous wars taken together, he

was anxious to avoid incurring the anger of the soldiers through too niggardly a distribution of it on the one hand, and the jealousy of the senate through too lavish a grant of it on the other.

He sent a despatch to the senate in which he stated that through the gracious favour of heaven, his own generalship, and the persevering efforts

of his soldiers, Veii would in a very few hours be in the power of Rome, and he asked for their decision as to the disposal of the booty. The senate were divided. It is reported that the aged P. Licinius, who was the first to be asked his opinion by his son, urged that the people should receive public notice that whoever wanted to share in the spoils should go to the camp at Veii.

Appius Claudius took the opposite line. He stigmatised the proposed largesse as unprecedented, wasteful, unfair, reckless. If, he said, they once thought it sinful for money taken from the enemy to lie in the treasury, drained as it had been by the wars, he would advise that the pay of the soldiers be supplied from that source, so that the plebs might have so much less tax to pay.

“The homes of all would feel alike the benefit of a common boon, the rewards won by brave warriors would not be filched by the hands of city loafers, ever greedy for plunder, for it so constantly happens that those who usually seek the foremost place in toil and danger are the least active in appropriating the spoils.”

Licinius on the other hand said that “this money would always be regarded with suspicion and aversion, and would supply material for indictments before the plebs, and consequently bring about disturbances and revolutionary measures.

It was better, therefore, that the plebs should be conciliated by this gift, that those who had been crushed and exhausted by so many years of taxation should be relieved and get some enjoyment from the spoils of a war in which they had almost become old men. When any one brings home something he has taken from the enemy with his own hand, it affords him more pleasure and gratification than if he were to receive many times its value at the bidding of another.

The Dictator had referred the question to the senate because he wanted to avoid the odium and misrepresentations which it might occasion; the senate, in its turn, ought to entrust it to the plebs and allow each to keep what the fortune of war has given him.” This was felt to be the safer course, as it would make the senate popular.

Notice accordingly was given that those who thought fit should go to the Dictator in camp to share in the plunder of Veii.