ey kept within their camp, avoiding battle, owing to
the two-fold danger that threatened them, thinking that length of time
and circumstances themselves would perchance soften down resentment,
and bring them to a healthy frame of mind. The Veientine enemy and the
Etruscans proceeded with proportionately greater precipitation;
they provoked them to battle, at first by riding up to the camp and
challenging them; at length when they produced no effect, by reviling
the consuls and the army alike, they declared that the pretence of
internal dissension was assumed as a cloak for cowardice: and that the
consuls rather distrusted the courage than disbelieved the sincerity
of their soldiers: that inaction and idleness among men in arms were a
novel form of sedition. Besides this they uttered insinuations, partly
true and partly false, as to the upstart nature of their race and
origin. While they loudly proclaimed this close to the very rampart
and gates, the consuls bore it without impatience: but at one time
indignation, at another shame, agitated the breasts of the ignorant
multitude, and diverted their attention from intestine evils; they
were unwilling that the enemy should remain unpunished; they did not
wish success either to the patricians or the consuls; foreign and
domestic hatred struggled for the mastery in their minds: at length
the former prevailed, so haughty and insolent were the jeers of the
enemy; they crowded in a body to the general's tent; they desired
battle, they demanded that the signal should be given. The consuls
conferred together as if to deliberate; they continued the conference
for a long time: they were desirous of fighting, but that desire they
considered should be checked and concealed, that by opposition and
delay they might increase the ardour of the soldiery now that it was
once roused. The answer was returned that the matter in question was
premature, that it was not yet time for fighting: let them keep within
their camp. They then issued a proclamation that they should abstain
from fighting: if any one fought without orders, they would punish
him as an enemy. When they were thus dismissed, their eagerness for
fighting increased in proportion as they believed the consuls were
less disposed for it; the enemy, moreover, who now showed themselves
with greater boldness, as soon as it was known that the consuls had
determined not to fight, further kindled their ardour. For they
supposed that they co