rought back to Falerii; and supplied them with rods to
scourge the traitor and drive him into the city. At which spectacle, a
crowd of people being assembled, afterwards the senate being convened by
the magistrates on the extraordinary circumstance, so great a change was
produced in their sentiments, that the entire state earnestly demanded
peace at the hands of those, who lately, outrageous by hatred and anger,
almost preferred the fate of the Veientians to the peace of the
Capenatians. The Roman faith, the justice of the commander, are cried up
in the forum and in the senate-house; and by universal consent
ambassadors set out to the camp to Camillus, and thence by permission of
Camillus to Rome to the senate, in order to deliver up Falerii. When
introduced before the senate, they are represented as having spoken
thus: "Conscript fathers, overcome by you and your commander by a
victory at which neither god nor man can feel displeasure, we surrender
ourselves to you, considering that we shall live more happily under your
rule than under our own law, than which nothing can be more glorious for
a conqueror. In the result of this war, two salutary examples have been
exhibited to mankind. You preferred faith in war to present victory: we,
challenged by your good faith, have voluntarily given up to you the
victory. We are under your sovereignty. Send men to receive our arms,
our hostages, our city with its gates thrown open. You shall never have
to repent of our fidelity, nor we of your dominion." Thanks were
returned to Camillus both by the enemy and by his own countrymen. Money
was required of the Faliscians to pay off the soldiers for that year,
that the Roman people might be relieved from the tribute. Peace being
granted, the army was led back to Rome.

28. When Camillus returned home, signalized by much more solid glory
than when white horses had drawn him through the city, having vanquished
the enemy by justice and good faith, the senate did not conceal their
sense of respect for him, but immediately set about acquitting him of
his vow; and Lucius Valerius, Lucius Sergius, Aulus Manlius, being sent
in a ship of war as ambassadors to carry the golden bowl to Delphos as
an offering to Apollo, were intercepted by the pirates of the Liparenses
not far from the Sicilian Strait, and carried to Liparae. It was the
custom of the state to make a division of all booty which was acquired,
as it were, by public piracy. On that year