ivernum, immediately
came to an engagement. The enemy were defeated after a slight
resistance: the town was taken, and given back to the Privernians, a
strong garrison being placed in it: two thirds of their land were taken
from them. The victorious army was marched thence to Satricum against
the Antians; there a desperate battle was fought with great slaughter on
both sides; and when a storm separated the combatants, hope inclining to
neither side, the Romans, nowise disheartened by this so indecisive an
engagement, prepare for battle against the following day. The
Volscians, reckoning up what men they had lost in battle, had by no
means the same spirits to repeat the risk. They went off in the night to
Antium as a vanquished army in the utmost confusion, leaving behind
their wounded and a part of their baggage. A vast quantity of arms was
found, both among the dead bodies of the enemy, and also in the camp.
These, the consul declared, that he offered up to Mother Lua; and he
laid waste the enemy's country as far as the sea-coast. The other
consul, AEmilius, on entering the Sabellan territory, found neither a
camp of the Samnites nor legions opposed to him. Whilst he laid waste
their territories with fire and sword, the ambassadors of the Samnites
came to him, suing for peace; by whom being referred to the senate,
after leave to address them was granted, laying aside their ferocious
spirits, they sued for peace for themselves from the Romans, and the
right of waging war against the Sidicinians. Which requests, [they
alleged,] that "they were the more justified in making, because they had
both united in friendship with the Roman people, when their affairs were
flourishing, not under circumstances of distress, as the Campanians had
done, and they were taking up arms against the Sidicinians, ever their
enemies, never the friends of the Roman people; who had neither, as the
Samnites, sought their friendship in time of peace, nor, as the
Campanians, their assistance in time of war, and were neither in
alliance with, nor under subjection to the Roman people."

2. After the praetor Tiberius AEmilius had consulted the senate respecting
the demands of the Samnites, and the senate voted that the treaty should
be renewed with them, the praetor returned this answer to the Samnites:
"That it neither had been the fault of the Roman people that their
friendship with them was not perpetual; nor was any objection made to
that friendshi