to give way.

7. After the issue of this battle, so great a terror seized Tarquin and
the Etrurians, that both the armies, the Veientian and Tarquinian,
giving up the matter as impracticable, departed to their respective
homes. They annex strange incidents to this battle,--that in the silence
of the next night a loud voice was emitted from the Arsian wood; that it
was believed to be the voice of Silvanus: these words were spoken, "that
more of the Etrurians by one[70] had fallen in the battle; that the
Roman was victorious in the war." Certainly the Romans departed thence
as victors, the Etrurians as vanquished. For as soon as it was light,
and not one of the enemy was now to be seen, P. Valerius the consul
collected the spoils, and returned thence in triumph to Rome. His
colleague's funeral he celebrated with all the magnificence then
possible. But a far greater honour to his death was the public sorrow,
singularly remarkable in this particular, that the matrons mourned him a
year,[71] as a parent, because he had been so vigorous an avenger of
violated chastity. Afterwards the consul who survived, so changeable are
the minds of the people, from great popularity, encountered not only
jealousy, but suspicion, originating in an atrocious charge. Report
represented that he aspired to the crown, because he had not substituted
a colleague in the room of Brutus, and was building a house on the
summit of Mount Velia, that there would be there an impregnable fortress
on an elevated and well-fortified place. When these things, thus
circulated and believed, affected the consul's mind with indignation,
having summoned the people to an assembly, he mounts the rostrum, after
lowering the fasces. It was a grateful sight to the multitude that the
insignia of authority were lowered to them, and that an acknowledgment
was made, that the majesty and power of the people were greater than
that of the consul. When they were called to silence, Valerius highly
extolled the good fortune of his colleague, "who after delivering his
country had died vested with the supreme power, fighting bravely in
defence of the commonwealth, when his glory was in its maturity, and not
yet converted into jealousy. That he himself, having survived his glory,
now remained as an object of accusation and calumny; that from the
liberator of his country he had fallen to the level of the Aquilii and
Vitellii. Will no merit then, says he, ever be so tried and approved