was taken.
And so much did Marcius by his valour eclipse the reputation of the
consul, that, had not the treaty concluded with the Latins by Spurius
Cassius alone, in consequence of the absence of his colleagues, and
which was engraved on a brazen column, served as a memorial of it, it
would have been forgotten that Postumus Cominius had conducted the war
with the Volscians. In the same year died Agrippa Menenius, a man all
his life equally a favourite with senators and commons, endeared still
more to the commons after the secession. This man, the mediator and
impartial promoter of harmony among his countrymen, the ambassador of
the senators to the commons, the man who brought back the commons to
the city, did not leave enough to bury him publicly. The people buried
him by the contribution of a sextans [40] per man.

Titus Geganius and Publius Minucius were next elected consuls. In
this year, when abroad there was complete rest from war, and at home
dissensions were healed, another far more serious evil fell upon the
state: first, dearness of provisions, a consequence of the lands lying
untilled owing to the secession of the commons; then a famine, such as
attacks those who are besieged. And matters would certainly have ended
in the destruction of the slaves and commons, had not the consuls
adopted precautionary measures, by sending persons in every direction
to buy up corn, not only into Etruria on the coast to the right of
Ostia, and through the territory of the Volscians along the coast on
the left as far as Cumae, but into Sicily also, in quest of it. To
such an extent had the hatred of their neighbours obliged them to
stand in need of assistance from distant countries. When corn had
been bought up at Cumae, the ships were detained as security for the
property of the Tarquinians by the tyrant Aristodemus, who was their
heir. Among the Volscians and in the Pomptine territory it could not
even be purchased. The corn dealers themselves incurred danger from
the violence of the inhabitants. Corn was brought from Etruria by way
of the Tiber: by means of this the people were supported. In such
straitened resources they would have been harassed by a most
inopportune war, had not a dreadful pestilence attacked the Volscians
when on the point of beginning hostilities. The minds of the enemy
being so terrified by this calamity, that they felt a certain alarm,
even after it had abated the Romans both augmented the number of the