se, by the vote of the twelve nations of
the Etrurians, another had been preferred before him to be high priest,
had caused their yearly festival to be broken off in the midst, a thing
which the Etrurians, than whom was never a people more scrupulous in
matters of religion, judged to be most impious. This thing he did by
taking away the actors of plays, who were for the most part his own
slaves. And now the whole nation, being assembled in council, decreed
that no help should be given to the men of Veii so long as they should
be under the rule of a king. But of this decree no mention was made in
Veii, for the King gave out that if any man talked of such matters he
should be held guilty of sedition. Nevertheless the Romans, fearing
lest the purpose of the Etrurians might suffer a change, made the
fortifications wherewith they had shut in the city to be double, having
one face against such sallies as the townsmen might make, and the other
turned towards Etruria, if perchance help should come thence to the
city.

In this year also, because the Romans hoped to take the city by siege
rather than by assault, winter quarters, a wholly new thing in those
days, were begun to be built; and it was decreed that the army should
abide before the city continually, not departing, as the custom had
been, at the beginning of the winter. About this there was great debate
at Rome, the tribunes protesting that the nobles had invented this
device against liberty, contriving that the better part of the Commons
should thus be kept away perpetually from the city; while the nobles
on the other hand protested by the mouth of Appius Claudius, son of the
decemvir, that in no other way could this war be brought to an end, for
that it was a grievous waste of time and labour that the works which
had been made with so much toil in the summer should be destroyed or
suffered to perish in the winter. "The love of sport," said he, "takes
them that hunt to the mountains, where they suffer frost and rain
without complaint, and shall our soldiers be less enduring when they
fight for their country? And if the Greeks were content, for the sake of
a woman, to besiege the city of Troy for ten years without ceasing,
and that far from their country and beyond the sea, shall we refuse to
remain for the space of a year before a city which is not so much as
twenty miles distant?"

While this matter was debated at Rome, the people inclining, for the
most part, to App