, there was a considerable tract of land taken the
preceding year from the Volscians; that a colony might be sent to
Antium, a neighbouring, convenient, and maritime city; that the commons
might come in for lands without any complaints of the present occupiers,
that the state might remain in quiet." This proposition was accepted. He
appoints as triumvirs for distributing the land, Titus Quintius, Aulus
Virginius, and Publius Furius: those who wished to obtain land were
ordered to give in their names. The gratification of their aim begat
disgust, as usually happens; so few gave in their names that Volscian
colonists were added to fill up the number: the rest of the people
preferred clamouring for land in Rome, rather than receive it elsewhere.
The AEquans sued for peace from Quintus Fabius, (he was sent thither with
an army,) and they themselves broke it by a sudden incursion into the
Latin territory.

2. In the following year Quintus Servilius, (for he was consul with
Spurius Posthumius,) being sent against the AEquans, fixed his camp in
the Latin territory: inaction necessarily kept the army within the camp,
involved as they were in a distemper. The war was protracted to the
third year, Quintus Fabius and Titus Quintius being consuls. To Fabius,
because he, as conqueror, had granted[105] peace to the AEquans, that
province was assigned by an extraordinary commission: who, setting out
with certain hope that the fame of his name would reduce the AEquans to
submission, sent ambassadors to the council of the nation, and ordered
them to say "that Quintus Fabius, the consul, stated that he had brought
peace to Rome from the AEquans, that from Rome he now brought war to the
AEquans, that same right hand being armed, which he had formerly given to
them in amity; that the gods were now witnesses, and would presently be
avengers of those by whose perfidy and perjury that was brought to pass.
That he, however, be matters as they might, would even now prefer that
the AEquans should repent of their own accord than be subject to the
vengeance of an enemy. If they repent, that there would be a safe
retreat in that clemency already experienced; but if they still
delighted in perjury, they would wage war with the angry gods rather
than with enemies." This statement had so little effect on any of them,
that the ambassadors were near being ill-treated, and an army was sent
to Algidum against the Romans. When these tidings were brought to