egree only, yet that contest rendered the soldiers better for future
battles by restoring to them their former courage. Aulus Virginius and
Sp. Servilius are created consuls. After the defeat sustained in the
last battle, the Veientians declined an engagement. Ravages were
committed, and they made incursions in every direction on the Roman
territory from the Janiculum as if from a fortress; no where were the
cattle or the husbandmen safe. They were afterwards entrapped by the
same stratagem as that by which they had entrapped the Fabii: having
pursued some cattle that had been driven on designedly for the purpose
of decoying them, they fell into an ambuscade; in proportion as they
were more numerous, the slaughter was greater. The violent resentment
resulting from this disaster was the cause and commencement of one still
greater: for having crossed the Tiber by night, they attempted to
assault the camp of the consul Servilius; being repulsed from thence
with great slaughter, they with difficulty made good their retreat into
the Janiculum. The consul himself also crosses the Tiber, fortifies his
camp at the foot of the Janiculum: at break of day on the following
morning, both from being somewhat elated by the success of the battle of
the day before, more however because the scarcity of corn forced him
into measures which, though dangerous, (he adopted) because they were
more expeditious, he rashly marched his army up the steep of the
Janiculum to the camp of the enemy, and being repulsed from thence with
more disgrace than he had repulsed them on the preceding day, he was
saved, both himself and his army, by the intervention of his colleague.
The Etrurians (hemmed in) between the two armies, when they presented
their rear to the one and the other by turns, were entirely cut off.
Thus the Veientian war was crushed by a fortunate act of temerity.

52. Together with the peace, provisions returned to the city in greater
abundance, both by reason of corn having been brought in from Campania,
and, as soon as the fear felt by each of future famine left them, that
corn being brought forward which had been hoarded up. Then their minds
once more became licentious from their present abundance and ease, and
their former subjects of complaint, now that there were none abroad,
they sought for at home; the tribunes began to excite the commons by
their poison, the agrarian law: they roused them against the senators
who opposed it, and no