Ab urbe condita

information that Titus Quinctius was cultivating a farm in the neighbourhood and had lost all interest in his City and the honourable distinctions he had won.

This man belonged to a patrician house, and after achieving great reputation as a soldier, had his military career cut short by a wound which made him lame in one of his feet, and he betook himself to a rural life, far from the Forum and its party struggles.

On hearing his name mentioned they recalled the man to mind, and hoping that all might turn out well they ordered an invitation to be sent to him. They hardly expected that he would come voluntarily, and prepared to intimidate him into compliance.

The messengers accordingly entered his farmhouse in the dead of night and woke him up from a sound sleep, and after telling him that there was no alternative, it must either be authority and rank or, if he resisted, death, they carried him off to the camp.

On his arrival he was saluted as their commander, and all dismayed as he was by the strangeness and suddenness of the affair, the insignia of his office were brought to him and he was peremptorily told to lead them to the City.

Acting on their own impulse rather than their leader's advice they plucked up their standards and marched in hostile array as far as the eighth milestone on what is now the Appian Way.

They would have gone on at once to the City had they not received word that an army was on its march, and that M. Valerius Corvus had been nominated Dictator, with L. Aemilius Mamercus as his Master of the Horse, to act against them.

As[*](Marcus Valerius restores Peace and Concord.) soon as they came into view and recognised the arms and standards, the thought of their country instantly calmed the passions of them all.

They had not yet been hardened to the sight of civic bloodshed, they knew of no wars but those against foreign foes, and secession from their own countrymen began to be looked upon as the last degree of madness. First the leaders then the men on both sides sought an opening for negotiations.

Quinctius, who had had enough of fighting for his country and was the last man to fight against it, and Corvus, who was devoted to all his countrymen, especially to the soldiers and above all to his own army, came forward to a colloquy.