A triumph was obtained by him over the
Tiburtians: in other respects the victory was a mild one. Rigorous
severity was practised against the Tarquinians. A great many being
slaughtered in the field, out of a great number of prisoners three
hundred and fifty-eight were selected, all of the highest rank, to be
sent to Rome; the rest of the multitude were put to the sword. Nor were
the people more merciful towards those who had been sent to Rome. They
were all beaten with rods and beheaded in the middle of the forum. That
was the punishment retaliated on the enemy for their butchering the
Romans in the forum of Tarquinii. The successes in war induced the
Samnites to seek their friendship. A courteous answer was returned to
their ambassadors by the senate: they were received into an alliance by
a treaty. The Roman commons had not the same success at home as in war.
For though the burden of interest money had been relieved by fixing the
rate at one to the hundred, the poor were overwhelmed by the principal
alone, and submitted to confinement. On this account, the commons took
little heed either of the two consuls being patricians, or the
management of the elections, by reason of their private distresses.
Both consulships therefore remained with the patricians. The consuls
appointed were Caius Sulpicius Paeticus a fourth time, Marcus Valerius
Publicola a second time. Whilst the state was occupied with the Etrurian
war, [entered into] because a report prevailed that the people of Caere
had joined the Tarquinians through compassion for them from their
relationship, ambassadors from the Latins drew their attention to the
Volscians, bringing tidings that an army enlisted and fully armed was
now on the point of attacking their frontiers; from thence that they
were to enter the Roman territory in order to commit depredations. The
senate therefore determined that neither affair should be neglected;
they ordered that troops should be raised for both purposes, and that
the consuls should cast lots for the provinces. The greater share of
their anxiety afterwards inclined to the Etrurian war; after it was
ascertained, from a letter of the consul Sulpicius, to whom the province
of Tarquinii had fallen, that the land around the Roman Salinae had been
depopulated, and that part of the plunder had been carried away into the
country of the people of Caere, and that the young men of that people
were certainly among the depredators. The senate t