e walls of their allies: and occasioned
such great consternation, that while, dispersed in different directions,
they sally forth to repel the assault of the enemy, the gate which the
Romans first attacked was taken; then within the rampart there was
rather a carnage than a battle. From the camp the alarm spreads into the
city; the Veientians run to arms in as great a panic as if Veii had been
taken: some come up to the support of the Sabines, others fall upon the
Romans, who had directed all their force against the camp. For a little
while they were disconcerted and thrown into confusion; then they too
forming two fronts make a stand: and the cavalry, being commanded by the
consul to charge, routs the Etrurians and puts them to flight; and in
the same hour two armies and two of the most influential and powerful of
the neighbouring states were vanquished. Whilst these transactions are
going on at Veii, the Volsci and AEqui had pitched their camp in the
Latin territory, and laid waste their frontiers. The Latins, by their
own exertions, being joined by the Hernicians, without either a Roman
general or Roman auxiliaries, stripped them of their camp. Besides
recovering their own effects, they obtained immense booty. The consul C.
Nautius, however, was sent against the Volsci from Rome. The custom, I
suppose, was not pleasing for allies to carry on wars with their own
forces and under their own direction without a Roman general and troops.
There was no kind of injury or indignity that was not practised against
the Volsci; nor could they be prevailed on however to come to an
engagement in the field.

54. Lucius Furius and Caius Manlius were the next consuls. The
Veientians fell to Manlius as his province. War however did not take
place: a truce for forty years was granted them at their request, corn
and pay for the soldiers being demanded of them. Disturbance at home
immediately succeeds to peace abroad: the commons were goaded by the
tribunes with the excitement of the agrarian law. The consuls, nothing
intimidated by the condemnation of Menenius, nor by the danger of
Servilius, resist with their utmost might; Cn. Genucius, a tribune of
the people, arraigned the consuls on their going out of office. Lucius
AEmilius and Opiter Virginius enter on the consulate. Instead of
Virginius I find Vopiscus Julius consul in some annals. In this year
(whatever consuls it had) Furius and Manlius, being summoned to trial
before the people