ashamed to demand a triumph for one
half of the services done by them; lest if they even should obtain it,
regard of persons rather than of merit might appear to have been
entertained.

71. A disgraceful decision of the people regarding the boundaries of
their allies disgraced the honourable victory obtained over their
enemies. The states of Aricia and of Ardea, having frequently contended
in arms concerning a disputed piece of land, and being wearied out by
many mutual losses, appointed the Roman people as arbitrators. When they
came to support their claims, an assembly of the people being granted
them by the magistrates, a debate ensued conducted with great warmth.
And the witnesses being now produced, when the tribes were to be called,
and the people were to give their votes, Publius Scaptius, a plebeian
advanced in years, rises up and says; "Consuls, if it is permitted me to
speak on the public interest, I will not suffer the people to be led
into a mistake in this matter." When the consuls said that he, as
unworthy of attention, was not to be heard and, on his exclaiming "that
the public interest was being betrayed," ordered him to be put aside, he
appeals to the tribunes. The tribunes, as they are always directed by
the multitude, rather than they direct them, indulged the people, who
were anxious to hear him, in granting Scaptius leave to say what he
pleased. He then commences: "That he was in his eighty-third year, and
that he had served in that district which was now in dispute, not even
then a young man as he was serving his twentieth campaign, when
operations were going on at Corioli. He therefore adduced a fact
forgotten by length of time, but one deeply fixed in his own memory: the
district now in dispute had belonged to the territory of Corioli, and
after the taking of Corioli, it became by right of war the public
property of the Roman people. That he was surprised how the states of
Ardea and Aricia should hope to intercept from the Roman people, whom
from being the right owners they made arbitrators, a district the right
to which they never claimed whilst the state of Corioli subsisted. That
he for his part had but a short time to live; he could not however bring
himself, old as he now was, to decline claiming by his voice, the only
means he now had, a district which, as a soldier, he had contributed to
acquire, as far as an individual could. That he strenuously advised the
people not to damn their own in