ders this passage to be corrupt: he proposes to read
_cum fortuna_, so that _portentioris esset_ may refer to _quicquid
cupitum foret_, i. e. with such favourable success, that every thing
which the more powerful person might covet, became his.]

38. The ides of May came. No new election of magistrates having taken
place, private persons came forth as decemvirs, without any abatement
either in their determination to enforce their authority,[140] or any
diminution in the emblems employed to make a parade of their station.
This indeed seemed to be regal tyranny. Liberty is now deplored as lost
for ever; nor does any champion stand forth, or appear likely to do so.
And not only they themselves sunk into despondence, but they began to be
looked down upon by the neighbouring states; and they felt indignant
that dominion should exist where liberty was lost. The Sabines with a
numerous body of men made an incursion on the Roman territory; and
having committed extensive devastations, after they had driven with
impunity booty of men and cattle, they recalled their troops which had
been dispersed in different directions to Eretum, and pitch their camp
there, grounding their hopes on the dissensions at Rome; (and trusting)
that they would prove an obstruction to the levy. Not only the couriers,
but the flight of the country people through the city, occasioned alarm.
The decemvirs consult what should be done. Whilst they were thus left
destitute between the hatred of the patricians and people, fortune
added, moreover, another cause of alarm. The AEquans on the opposite side
pitch their camp at Algidum; and ambassadors from Tusculum, imploring
relief, bring accounts that the Tusculan land was ravaged by detachments
from thence. The panic occasioned hereby urged the decemvirs to consult
the senate, two wars at the same time surrounding the city. They order
the patricians to be summoned into the senate-house, well aware what a
storm of resentment was ready to break upon them; that all would heap on
them the causes of the land laid waste, and of the dangers which
threatened them; and that that would occasion an attempt to abolish
their office, if they did not unite in resisting, and by enforcing their
authority with severity on a few of an intractable spirit repress the
efforts of others. When the voice was heard in the forum of the crier
summoning the senators into the senate-house before the decemvirs; as a
matter altogether new, beca