on equal ground, they protected themselves by
the nature of the place and a rampart, not by valour or arms. Greater
disgrace and greater loss were sustained in Algidum, their camp also was
lost; and the soldiers, stripped of all their utensils, betook
themselves to Tusculum, determined to procure the means of subsistence
from the good faith and compassion of their hosts; which, however, did
not disappoint them. Such alarming accounts were brought to Rome, that
the patricians, having laid aside their hatred of the decemvirs, passed
an order that watches should be held in the city; commanded that all who
were able by reason of their age to carry arms, should mount guard on
the walls, and form out-posts before the gates; they also voted arms to
be sent to Tusculum, besides a reinforcement; that the decemvirs also
should come down from the citadel of Tusculum and keep their troops
encamped; that the other camp should be removed from Fidenae into the
Sabine territory; and that the enemy might be deterred, by thus
attacking them first, from entertaining any intentions of attacking the
city.

43. To the calamities received from the enemy, the decemvirs add two
flagitious deeds, one abroad, and the other in the city. In the Sabine
district, Lucius Siccius, who, during the unpopularity of the
decemvirs, introduced, in secret conversation with the common soldiers,
mention of electing tribunes and of a secession, was sent forwards to
select a place for a camp: instructions were given to the soldiers whom
they had sent to accompany him in that expedition, to attack him in a
convenient place and slay him. They did not kill him with impunity; for
several of the assassins fell around him resisting them, whilst,
possessing great personal strength and with a courage equal to that
strength, he was defending himself against them, now surrounded as he
was. The rest bring an account into the camp that Siccius, when fighting
bravely, had fallen into an ambush, and that some soldiers were lost
with him. At first the narrators were believed; afterwards a cohort,
which went by permission of the decemvirs to bury those who had fallen,
when they observed that none of the bodies there were stripped, that
Siccius lay in the middle with his arms, all the bodies being turned
towards him, whilst there was neither any body of the enemy, nor even
any traces of them as going away; they brought back his body, saying,
that he had certainly been slain by h