aroused,
and under the conduct of the Tarquinians and Faliscians, they come to
Salinae. To meet this alarm, Caius Marcius Rutilus, being appointed
dictator, the first plebeian who was so, named Caius Plautius, also a
plebeian, master of the horse. This was deemed an indignity by the
patricians, that the dictatorship also was now become common, and with
all their exertions they prevented any thing from either being decreed
or prepared for the dictator, for the prosecution of that war. With the
more promptitude, on that account, did the people order things, as
proposed by the dictator. Having set out from the city, along both sides
of the Tiber, and transporting his army on rafts whithersoever his
intelligence of the enemy led him, he surprised many of them straggling
about in scattered parties, laying waste the lands. Moreover, he
suddenly attacked their camp and took it; and eight thousand of the
enemy being made prisoners, all the rest being either slain or driven
out of the Roman territory, he triumphed by order of the people, without
the sanction of the senate. Because they neither wished that the
consular elections should be held by a plebeian dictator or consul, and
the other consul, Fabius, was detained by the war, matters came to an
interregnum. There were then interreges in succession, Quintus
Servilius Ahala, Marcus Fabius, Cneius Manlius, Caius Fabius, Caius
Sulpicius, Lucius AEmilius, Quintus Servilius, Marcus Fabius Ambustas. In
the second interregnum a dispute arose, because two patrician consuls
were elected: and the tribunes protesting, Fabius the interrex said,
that "it was a law in the twelve tables, that whatever the people
ordered last should be law and in force; that the suffrages of the
people were their orders." When the tribunes by their protest had been
able to effect nothing else than to put off the elections, two
patricians were chosen consuls, Caius Sulpicius Peticus a third time,
Marcus Valerius Publicola; and on the same day they entered into office.

18. On the four hundredth year after the building of the city of Rome,
and the thirty-fifth after its recovery from the Gauls, the consulship
being taken away from the commons after eleven years, consuls, both
patricians, entered into office after the interregnum, Caius Sulpicius
Peticus a third time, and Marcus Valerius Publicola. During this year
Empulum was taken from the Tiburtians with a struggle not worth
mentioning; whether the war was w