m; that in his victory no
man living was a sharer. His mind puffed by these notions, and moreover,
from a viciousness of disposition being vehement and headstrong, when he
perceived that his influence among the patricians did not stand forth as
prominent as he thought it should, he, the first of all the patricians,
became a plebeian partisan, and formed plans in conjunction with the
plebeian magistrates; and by criminating the fathers, and alluring the
commons to his side, he now came to be carried along by the tide of
popular applause, not by prudence, and preferred to be of a great,
rather than of a good character: and not content with agrarian laws,
which had ever served the tribunes of the commons as material for
disturbances, he now began to undermine public credit; for [he well
knew] "that the incentives of debt were sharper, as not only threatening
poverty and ignominy, but intimidated personal liberty with stocks and
chains." And the amount of the debt was immense, contracted by building,
a circumstance most destructive even to the rich. The Volscian war
therefore, heavy in itself, charged with additional weight by the
defection of the Latins and Hernicians, was held out as a colourable
pretext, for having a higher authority resorted to. But it was rather
the reforming plans that drove the senate to create a dictator. Aulus
Cornelius Cossus having been elected dictator, nominated Titus Quinctius
Capitolinus his master of the horse.

12. The dictator, though he perceived that a greater struggle was
reserved for him at home than abroad; still, either because there was
need of despatch for the war, or supposing that by a victory and a
triumph he should add to the powers of the dictatorship itself, held a
levee and proceeds into the Pomptine territory, where he had heard that
the Volscians had appointed their army to assemble. I doubt not but
that, in addition to satiety, to persons reading of so many wars waged
with the Volscians, this same circumstance will suggest itself, which
often served as an occasion of surprise to me when perusing the writers
who lived nearer to the times of these occurrences, from what source the
Volscians and AEquans, so often vanquished, could have procured supplies
of soldiers. And as this has been unnoticed and passed over in silence
by ancient writers; on which matter what can I state, except mere
opinion, which every one may from his own conjecture form for himself?
It seems probable