ibited imaginary appearances to
their affrighted minds. To avert these terrors, a solemn festival for
three days was proclaimed, during which all the shrines were filled
with a crowd of men and women, earnestly imploring the favour of the
gods. After this the Latin and Hernican cohorts were sent back to
their respective homes, after they had been thanked by the senate for
their spirited conduct in war. The thousand soldiers from Antium were
dismissed almost with disgrace, because they had come after the battle
too late to render assistance.

The elections were then held: Lucius Aebutius and Publius Servilius
were elected consuls, and entered on their office on the calends of
August[8] according to the practice of beginning the year on that
date. It was an unhealthy season, and it so happened that the year [9]
was pestilential to the city and country, and not more to men than to
cattle; and they themselves increased the severity of the disease by
admitting the cattle and the peasants into the city in consequence of
their dread of devastation. This collection of animals of every kind
mingled together both distressed the inhabitants of the city by the
unusual stench, and also the peasants, crowded together into their
confined dwellings, by heat and want of sleep while their attendance
on each other, and actual contact helped to spread disease. While they
were hardly able to endure the calamities that pressed upon them,
ambassadors from the Hernicans suddenly brought word that the Aequans
and Volscians had united their forces, and pitched their camp in their
territory: that from thence they were devastating their frontiers with
an immense army. In addition to the fact that the small attendance of
the senate was a proof to the allies that the state was prostrated by
the pestilence, they further received this melancholy answer: That the
Hernicans, as well as the Latins, must now defend their possessions by
their own unaided exertions. That the city of Rome, through the sudden
anger of the gods, was ravaged by disease. If any relief from that
calamity should arise, that they would afford aid to their allies,
as they had done the year before, and always on other occasions. The
allies departed, carrying home, instead of the melancholy news they
had brought, news still more melancholy, seeing that they were now
obliged to sustain by their own resources a war, which they would have
with difficulty sustained even if backed by the p