having marched back[127] his army to Columen, (that is the name of the
place,) he pitches his camp. The other consul also, as soon as the Roman
walls ceased to be in danger, the enemy being defeated, set out from
Rome. Thus the consuls, having entered the territories of the enemies on
two different sides, strenuously vie with each other in depopulating the
Volscians on the one hand, the AEqui on the other. I find in some writers
that the people of Antium revolted[128] the same year. That Lucius
Cornelius, the consul, conducted that war and took the town, I would not
venture to affirm for certain, because no mention is made of the matter
among the older writers.

[Footnote 127: _Exercitu relicto_ is the ordinary reading. Crevier
observes that _reducto_ is the more correct.]

[Footnote 128: This account does not seem to be correct. See Niebuhr ii.
p. 254.]

24. This war being concluded, a tribunitian war at home alarms the
senate. They exclaim, "that the detaining the army abroad was done for a
fraudulent motive: that such frustration was for the purpose of doing
away with the law; that they, however, would go through with the matter
undertaken by them." Publius Lucretius, however, the praefect of the
city, so far prevailed that the proceedings of the tribunes were
postponed till the arrival of the consuls. A new cause of disturbance
also arose. Aulus Cornelius and Quintus Servilius, quaestors, appoint a
day of trial for Marcus Volscius, because he had come forward as a
manifestly false witness against Caeso. For it appeared by many proofs,
that the brother of Volscius, from the time he first became ill, not
only never appeared in public, but that he had not even arisen from his
sick bed, and that he died of an illness of several months' standing;
and that at the time to which the witness had referred the commission of
the crime, Caeso had not been seen at Rome: those who served in the army
with him, positively stating that at that time he had constantly
attended at his post with them without any leave of absence. Many
persons proposed on their own private responsibility to Volscius to have
a judicial decision on the matter.[129] As he would not venture to go to
trial, all these matters coinciding rendered the condemnation of
Volscius no less certain than that of Caeso had been on the testimony of
Volscius. The tribunes occasioned a delay, who said that they would not
suffer the quaestors to hold the assembly[130] conc