eir
strength was almost more than sufficient for foreign wars, they
only abused it by contending among themselves. In addition to the
distracted state of the public mind prodigies from heaven increased
the general alarm, exhibiting almost daily threats in the city and in
the country, and the soothsayers, being consulted by the state and by
private individuals, declared, at one time by means of entrails, at
another by birds, that there was no other cause for the deity having
been roused to anger, save that the ceremonies of religion were not
duly performed. These terrors, however, terminated in this, that
Oppia, a vestal virgin, being found guilty of a breach of chastity,
suffered punishment. [54] Quintus Fabius and Gaius Julius were next
elected consuls. During this year the dissension at home was not
abated, while the war abroad was more desperate. The AEquans took up
arms: the Veientines also invaded and plundered the Roman territory:
as the anxiety about these wars increased, Caeso Fabius and Spurius
Furius were appointed consuls. The AEquans were laying siege to Ortona,
a Latin city. The Veientines, now sated with plunder, threatened to
besiege Rome itself. These terrors, which ought to have assuaged the
feelings of the commons, increased them still further: and the people
resumed the practice of declining military service, not of their own
accord, as before, but Spurius Licinius, a tribune of the people,
thinking that the time had come for forcing the agrarian law on
the patricians by extreme necessity, had undertaken the task of
obstructing the military preparations. However, all the odium against
the tribunician power was directed against the author of this
proceeding: and even his own colleagues rose up against him as
vigorously as the consuls; and by their assistance the consuls held
the levy. An army was raised for the two wars simultaneously; one was
intrusted to Fabius to be led against the Veientines, the other to
Furius to operate against the AEquans. In regard to the latter, indeed,
nothing took place worthy of mention. Fabius had considerably more
trouble with his countrymen than with the enemy: that one man alone,
as consul, sustained the commonwealth, which the army was doing its
best to betray, as far as in it lay, from hatred of the consul. For
when the consul, in addition to his other military talents, of which
he had exhibited abundant instances in his preparations for and in his
conduct of war, ha