Ab urbe condita

In this emergency C. Marcius Rutilus was nominated Dictator —the first Dictator nominated from the plebs —and he appointed as Master of the Horse C. Plautius, also a plebeian. The patricians were indignant at even the dictatorship becoming common property, and they offered all the resistance in their power to any decree being passed or any preparations made to help the Dictator in prosecuting that war.

This only made the people more ready to adopt every proposal which the Dictator made.

On leaving the City he marched along both banks of the Tiber, ferrying the troops across in whichever direction the enemy were reported to be; in this way he surprised many of the raiders scattered about the fields. Finally he surprised and captured their camp; 8ooo prisoners were taken, the rest were either killed or hunted out of the Roman territory.

By an order of the people which was not confirmed by the senate a triumph was awarded him.

As the senate would not have the elections conducted by a plebeian Dictator or a plebeian consul, they fell back on an interregnum. There was a succession of interreges —Q. Servilius Ahala, M. Fabius, Cn. Manlius, C. Fabius, C. Sulpicius, L. Aemilius, Q. Servilius, and M. Fabius Ambustus.

In the second of these interregna a contest arose because two patrician consuls were elected. When the tribunes interposed their veto and appealed to the Licinian Law, Fabius, the interrex, said that it was laid down in the Twelve Tables that whatever was the last order that the people made that should have the force of law, and the people had made an order by electing the two consuls.

The tribunes' veto only availed to postpone the elections, and ultimately two patrician consuls were elected, namely C. Sulpicius Peticus (for the third time) and M. Valerius Publicola. They entered upon their office the day they were elected.

So in the 4ooth year from the foundation of the City and the 35th after its capture by the Gauls, the second consulship was wrested from the plebs, for the first time since the passing of the Licinian Law seven years previously. Empulum was taken this year from the Tiburtines without any serious fighting.

It seems uncertain whether both consuls held joint command in this campaign, as some writers assert, or whether the fields of the Tarquinians were ravaged by Sulpicius at the same time that Valerius was leading his legions against the Tiburtines. The[*](Contest over the Consulship.) consuls had a more serious conflict at home with the plebs and their tribunes.

They considered it as a question not only of courage but of honour and loyalty to their order that as two patricians had received the consulship so they should hand it on to two patricians.

They felt that they must either renounce all claims to it, if it became a plebeian magistracy, or they must keep it in its entirety as a possession which they had received in its entirety from their fathers. The plebs protested:“What were they living for?

Why were they enrolled as citizens if they could not with their united strength maintain the right to what had been won for them by the courage of those two men, L. Sextius and C. Licinius?

It were better to put up with kings or decemvirs or any other form of absolutism, even though with

a worse name, than to see both consuls patricians, the other side not alternately governing and being governed but regarding itself as placed in perpetual authority, and looking upon the plebs as simply born to be their slaves.” There was no lack of tribunes to lead the agitation, but in such a state of universal excitement everybody was his own leader.

After many fruitless journeys to the Campus Martius, where numerous election days had been wasted in disturbances, the plebs was at last worsted by the steady persistence of the consuls.

There was such a feeling of despair that the tribunes, followed by a gloomy and sullen plebs, exclaimed as they left the Campus that there was an end to all liberty, and that they must not only quit the Campus but must even abandon the City now that it was crushed and enslaved by the tyranny of the patricians.

The consuls, though deserted by the majority of the people, only a few voters remaining behind, proceeded none the less determinedly with the election. Both the consuls elected were patricians, M. Fabius Ambustus (for the third time) and T Quinctius. In some of the annalists I find M. Popilius given as consul instead of T. Quinctius.

[*](War with the Etruscans). Two wars were brought to a successful close this year. The Tiburtines were reduced to submission; the city of Sassula was taken from them and all their other towns would have shared the same fate had not the nation as a whole laid down their arms and made peace with the consul.

A triumph was celebrated over them, otherwise the victory was followed by mild treatment of the vanquished. The Tarquinians were visited with the utmost severity. A large number were killed in battle; of the prisoners, all those of noble birth to the number of 358 were sent to Rome, the rest were put to the sword.