lenting, though memorable, severity of command in the other, there
succeeded as consuls Titus AEmilius Mamercinus and Quintus Publilius
Philo; neither to a similar opportunity of exploits, and they themselves
being mindful rather of their own interests as well as of those of the
parties in the state, than of the interests of their country. They
routed on the plains of Ferentinum, and stripped of their camp, the
Latins, who, in resentment of the land they had lost, took up arms
again. Publilius, under whose guidance and auspices the action had been
fought, receiving the submission of the Latin states, who had lost a
great many of their young men there, AEmilius marched the army to Pedum.
The people of Pedum were supported by the states of Tibur, Praeneste, and
Velitrae; auxiliaries had also come from Lanuvium and Antium. Where,
though the Romans had the advantage in several engagements, still the
entire labour remained at the city of Pedum itself and at the camp of
the allied states, which was adjoining the city: suddenly leaving the
war unfinished, because he heard that a triumph was decreed to his
colleague, he himself also returned to Rome to demand a triumph before a
victory had been obtained. The senate displeased by this ambitious
conduct, and refusing a triumph unless Pedum was either taken or should
surrender, AEmilius, alienated from the senate in consequence of this
act, administered the remainder of the consulship like to a seditious
tribuneship. For, as long as he was consul, he neither ceased to
criminate the patricians to the people, his colleague by no means
interfering, because he himself also was a plebeian; (the scanty
distribution of the land among the commons in the Latin and Falernian
territory afforded the groundwork of the criminations;) and when the
senate, wishing to put an end to the administration of the consuls,
ordered a dictator to be nominated against the Latins, who were again in
arms, AEmilius, to whom the fasces then belonged, nominated his colleague
dictator; by him Junius Brutus was constituted master of the horse. The
dictatorship was popular, both in consequence of his discourses
containing invectives against the patricians, and because he passed
three laws, most advantageous to the commons, and injurious to the
nobility; one, that the orders of the commons should be binding on all
the Romans; another, that the patricians should, before the suffrages
commenced, declare their approbatio