itizens could now no longer be checked,
both tribunes and commons being exasperated against the patricians,
while, if a day of trial was appointed for any of the nobility, it
always embroiled the assemblies in new struggles. On the first report
of these the AEquans and Volscians, as if they had received a signal,
took up arms; also because their leaders, eager for plunder, had
persuaded them that the levy proclaimed two years previously could not
be proceeded with, as the commons now refused obedience to military
authority: that for that reason no armies had been sent against them;
that military discipline was subverted by licentiousness, and that
Rome was no longer considered a common country for its citizens; that
whatever resentment and animosity they might have entertained
against foreigners, was now directed against themselves; that now an
opportunity offered itself for destroying wolves blinded by intestine
rage. Having united their forces, they first utterly laid waste the
Latin territory: when none met them to avenge the wrong, then indeed,
to the great exultation of the advisers of the war, they approached
the very walls of Rome, carrying their depredations into the district
around the Esquiline gate[69] pointing out to the city in mocking
insult the devastation of the land. When they marched back thence to
Corbio unmolested and driving their booty before them, Quinctius the
consul summoned the people to an assembly.

There I find that he spoke to this effect: "Though I am conscious to
myself of no fault, Quirites, yet it is with the greatest shame I have
come forward to your assembly. To think that you should know this,
that this should be handed down on record to posterity, that the
AEquans and Volscians a short time since scarcely a match for the
Hernicans, have with impunity come with arms in their hands to the
walls of Rome, in the fourth consulate of Titus Quinctius! Had I known
that this disgrace was reserved for this year, above all others,
though we have now long been living in such a manner, and such is the
state of affairs, that my mind can forebode nothing good, I would have
avoided this honour either by exile or by death, if there had been no
other means of escaping it. Then, if men of courage had held those
arms, which were at our gates, Rome could have been taken during my
consulate. I have had sufficient honours, enough and more than enough
of life: I ought to have died in my third consulate. Wh