Ab urbe condita

Their envoys received a favourable reply from the senate and a treaty of alliance was concluded with them.

The plebs did not enjoy the same good fortune at home which they had met with in the field. In spite of the reduction in the rate of interest, which was now fixed at 8 and 1/3 per cent., the poor were unable to repay the capital, and were being made over to their creditors. Their personal distress left them little thought for public affairs and political struggles, elections, and patrician consuls; both consulships accordingly remained with the patricians.

The consuls elected were C. Sulpicius Peticus (for the fourth time) and M. Valerius Publicola (for the second). Rumours were brought that the people of Caere, out of sympathy with their co-nationalists, had sided with the Tarquinians. Whilst the minds of the citizens were in consequence filled with apprehensions of a war with Etruria, the arrival of envoys from Latium diverted their thoughts to the Volscians. They reported that an army had been raised and equipped and was now threatening their frontiers and intended to enter and ravage the Roman territory.

The senate thought that neither of these movements ought to be ignored; orders were issued for troops to be enrolled for both wars; the consuls were to draw lots for their respective commands.

The arrival of despatches from the consul Sulpicius made the Etruscan war appear the more serious of the two. He was directing the operations against Tarquinii, and reported that the country round the Roman salt-works had been raided and a portion of the plunder sent to Caere, some of whose men had undoubtedly been amongst the depredators.

The consul Valerius, who was acting against the Volscians and had his camp on the frontiers of Tusculum, was recalled and received orders from the senate to nominate a Dictator.

Titus, the son of Lucius Manlius, was nominated, and he named A. Cornelius Cossus as Master of the Horse. Finding the army which the consul had commanded sufficient for his purpose, he was authorised by the senate and the people to formally declare war upon the Caerites.

It[*](Submission of Caere.) would seem as though this formal declaration of war brought home to the Caerites the horrors of a war with Rome more clearly than the action of those who had provoked the Romans by their depredations. They realised how unequal their strength was to such a conflict; they bitterly regretted the raid, and cursed the Tarquinians who had instigated them to revolt.

No one made any preparation for war, but each did his utmost to urge the despatch of an embassy to Rome to beg pardon for their offence. When the deputation came before the senate they were referred by the senate to the people.

They besought the gods whose sacred things they had taken charge of and made due provision for in the Gaulish war [*](The incident is recorded in Vol. I. pp. 335-6.) that the Romans in their day of prosperity might feel the same pity for them that they had shown for Rome in her hour of distress. Then turning to the temple of Vesta they invoked the bond of hospitality which they formed in all purity and reverence with the Flamens and the

Vestals. “Could any one believe,” they asked, “that men who had rendered such services would all of a sudden, without any reason, have become enemies, or if they had been guilty of any hostile act that they had committed it deliberately rather than in a fit of

madness? Was it possible that they could, by inflicting fresh injuries, obliterate their old acts of kindness, especially when they had been conferred on those who were so grateful for them; or that they would make an enemy of the Roman people now that it was prosperous and successful in all its wars after having sought its friendship at a time when it was in trouble and adversity? That should not be described as deliberate purpose which ought to be called violence and

constraint. After simply asking for a free passage, the Tarquinians traversed their territory in hostile array and compelled some of their country-fold to accompany them in that predatory expedition for which the city of Caere was now held