om motives of
animosity, to lay waste their territories, lest they should leave them
any strength for new designs; the other into the territory of Tarquinii.
Here Cortuosa and Contenebra, towns belonging to the Etrurians, were
taken by storm and demolished. At Cortuosa there was no contest; having
attacked it by surprise, they took it at the first shout and onset; the
town was plundered and burned. Contenebra sustained a siege for a few
days; and it was continual labour, abated neither by night nor by day,
that reduced them. When the Roman army, having been divided into six
parts, each [division] relieved the other in the battle one hour in six
in rotation, and the paucity of numbers exposed the same individual
townsmen, wearied as they were, to a contest ever new, they at length
yielded, and an opportunity was afforded to the Romans of entering the
city. It was the wish of the tribunes that the spoil should be made
public property; but the order [that such should be so] was too late for
their determination. Whilst they hesitate, the spoil already became the
property of the soldiers; nor could it be taken from them, except by
means calculated to excite dissatisfaction. On the same year, that the
city should not increase by private buildings only, the lower parts of
the Capitol also were built of hewn stone; a work deserving of
admiration even amid the present magnificence of the city.

5. Now, whilst the state was busily occupied in building, the tribunes
of the commons endeavoured to draw crowds to their harangues by
[proposing] the agrarian laws. The Pomptine territory was then, for the
first time since the power of the Volscians had been reduced by
Camillus, held out to them as their indisputable right. They alleged it
as a charge, that "that district was much more harassed on the part of
the nobility than it had been on that of the Volscians, for that
incursions were made by the one party on it, only as long as they had
strength and arms; that persons belonging to the nobility encroached on
the possession of land that was public, nor would there be any room in
it for the commons, unless a division were now made, before they seized
on all." They made not much impression on the commons, who through their
anxiety for building attended the forum only in small numbers, and were
drained by their expenses on the same object, and were therefore
careless about land for the improvement of which means were wanting. The
state b