t will make this concession to the ties of
blood between us, as to offer terms of peace on terms of equality for
both, since it has pleased the immortal gods that the strength of both
is equalized. One of the consuls must be selected out of Rome, the
other out of Latium; an equal portion of the senate must be from both
nations; we must be one people, one republic; and that the seat of
government may be the same, and we all may have the same name, since the
concession must be made by the one party or other, let this, and may it
be auspicious to both, have the advantage of being the mother country,
and let us all be called Romans." It so happened that the Romans also
had a consul, a match for this man's high spirit; who, so far from
restraining his angry feelings, openly declared, that if such
infatuation took possession of the conscript fathers, that they would
receive laws from a man of Setia, he would himself come into the senate
armed with a sword, and would slay with his hand any Latin whom he
should see in the senate-house. And turning to the statue of Jupiter,
"Hear thou, Jupiter," says he, "hear these impious proposals; hear ye
them, Justice and Equity. Jupiter, art thou to behold foreign consuls
and a foreign senate in thy consecrated temple, as if thou wert a
captive and overpowered? Were these the treaties which Tullus, a Roman
king, concluded with the Albans, your forefathers, Latins, and which
Lucius Tarquinius subsequently concluded with you? Does not the battle
at the Lake Regillus occur to your thoughts? Have you so forgotten your
own calamities and our kindnesses towards you?"

6. When the indignation of the senate followed these words of the
consul, it is recorded that, in reply to the frequent appeals to the
gods, whom the consuls frequently invoked as witnesses to the treaties,
an expression of Annius was heard in contempt of the divinity of the
Roman Jupiter. Certainly, when aroused with wrath he was proceeding with
rapid steps from the porch of the temple, having fallen down the stairs,
his head being severely struck, he was dashed against a stone at the
bottom with such force, as to be deprived of sense. As all writers do
not say that he was killed, I too shall leave it in doubt; as also the
circumstance, that a storm, with a dreadful noise in the heavens, took
place during the appeal made in reference to the violated treaties; for
they may both be true, and also invented aptly to express in a striki