us Considius
and Titus Genucius, the proposers of the agrarian law, appointed a day
of trial for Titus Menenius: the loss of the fort of Cremera, while
the consul had his standing camp at no great distance from thence,
was the cause of his unpopularity. This crushed him, though both the
senators had exerted themselves in his behalf with no less earnestness
than in behalf of Coriolanus, and the popularity of his father Agrippa
was not yet forgotten. The tribunes, however, acted leniently in
the matter of the fine: though they had arraigned him for a capital
offence, they imposed on him, when found guilty, a fine of only two
thousand asses. This proved fatal to him. They say that he could not
brook disgrace and anguish of mind: and that, in consequence, he was
carried off by disease. Another senator, Spurius Servilius was soon
after arraigned, as soon as he went out of office a day of trial
having been appointed for him by the tribunes, Lucius Caedicius and
Titus Statius, immediately at the beginning of the year, in the
consulship of Gaius Nautius and Publius Valerius: he did not, however,
like Menenius, meet the attacks of the tribunes with supplications on
the part of himself and the patricians, but with firm reliance on his
own integrity and his personal popularity. The battle with the Tuscans
at the Janiculum was also the charge brought against him: but being
a man of impetuous spirit, as he had formerly done in time of public
peril, so now in the danger which threatened himself, he dispelled
it by boldly meeting it, by confuting not only the tribunes but the
commons also, in a haughty speech, and upbraiding them with the
condemnation and death of Titus Menenius, by the good offices of whose
father the commons had formerly been re-established, and now had those
magistrates and enjoyed those laws, by virtue of which they then acted
so insolently: his colleague Verginius also, who was brought forward
as a witness, aided him by assigning to him a share of his own glory:
however--so had they changed their mind--the condemnation of Menenius
was of greater service to him.

The contests at home were now concluded. A war against the Veientines,
with whom the Sabines had united their forces, broke out afresh. The
consul Publius Valerius, after auxiliaries had been sent for from
the Latins and Hernicans, being despatched to Veii with an army,
immediately attacked the Sabine camp, which had been pitched before
the walls of thei