ered a speech mindful of the
dignity of the patricians, of the concord of the different orders,
and above all, of the needs of the times. They entreated him and his
colleague to assume the management of the commonwealth; they entreated
the tribunes, by acting in concert with the consuls, to join in
driving back the war from the city and the walls, and to induce the
commons to be obedient to the senate at so perilous a conjuncture:
declaring that, their lands being devastated, and their city in a
manner besieged, their common country appealed to them as tribunes,
and implored their aid. By universal consent the levy was decreed and
held. When the consuls gave public notice that there was no time for
considering claims for exemption; that all the young men should attend
on the following morning at dawn in the Campus Martius; that when the
war was over, they would afford time for inquiring into the excuses of
those who had not given in their names; that the man should be held
as a deserter, whose excuse they found unsatisfactory; all the youth
attended on the following day. The cohorts [70] chose each their
centurions: two senators were placed at the head of each cohort.
We have read that all these measures were carried out with such
expedition that the standards, which had been brought forth from the
treasury on that very day by the quaestors and conveyed to the Campus,
started from thence at the fourth hour; and the newly-raised army
halted at the tenth milestone, followed only by a few cohorts of
veteran soldiers as volunteers. The following day brought the enemy
within sight, and camp was joined to camp near Corbio. On the third
day, when resentment urged on the Romans, and a consciousness of guilt
for having so often rebelled and a feeling of despair, the others,
there was no delay in coming to an engagement.

In the Roman army, though the two consuls were invested with equal
authority, the supreme command was, by the concession of Agrippa,
resigned to his colleague, an arrangement most salutary in the conduct
of matters of great importance; and he who was preferred made a polite
return for the ready condescension of the other, who thus lowered
himself, by making him his confidant in all his plans and sharing with
him his honours, and by putting him on an equality with him although
he was by no means as capable. On the field of battle Quinctius
commanded the right, Agrippa the left wing; the command of the centre
was