History of Rome

​While these things were being done in Samnium, under whose-soever leadership and auspices, meanwhile a huge war was stirred up against the Romans in Etruria from many nations, of which the author was Gellius Egnatius from among the Samnites.

​Almost all the Etruscans had agreed to war; the contagion had dragged in the neighboring peoples of Umbria, and Gallic auxiliaries were being solicited with pay; all that multitude was assembling at the camp of the Samnites.

​When this sudden tumult was reported to Rome, since the consul Lucius Volumnius had already set out into Samnium with the second and third legions and fifteen thousand of the allies, it was decided that Appius Claudius should go to Etruria at the very first opportunity.

​Two Roman legions followed, the first and the fourth, and twelve thousand of the allies; the camp was pitched not far from the enemy.

​But the advance thither was effective rather in that, because they had arrived early, the fear of the Roman name suppressed certain peoples of Etruria who were already looking toward arms, than because anything was done there with sufficient skill or fortune under the leadership of the consul.

​Many battles were joined in unfavorable places and times, and hope was making the enemy more formidable day by day, and it was now nearly at the point where neither did the soldiers sufficiently trust the leader, nor the leader the soldiers.

​I find in three annals that a letter was sent to summon the colleague from Samnium; yet I am reluctant to set this down as certain, since that very matter was a dispute between the consuls of the Roman people, who were now holding the same office for the second time, Appius denying that it was sent, and Volumnius asserting that he had been summoned by Appius’s letter.

​Already Volumnius had captured three forts in Samnium, in which up to three thousand of the enemy had been slain and about half that number captured, and he had suppressed the seditions of the Lucanians, which had arisen from the plebeians and needy leaders, with the greatest goodwill of the optimates, through Quintus Fabius, who had been sent there as proconsul with the old army.

​He left the enemy’s lands to be ravaged by Decius, and himself proceeded with his own forces into Etruria to his colleague. All gladly welcomed him upon his arrival. I believe that Appius, from his own conscience, had a mind ​not undeservedly angry, if he had written nothing, or, with a mean and ungrateful mind, dissembling if he had stood in need of help.

​For, having gone out to meet him, when mutual greetings had scarcely been exchanged, he said: “Is all well, Lucius Volumnius? How do matters stand in Samnium?

​What cause induced you to depart from your province?” Volumnius said that matters were prosperous in Samnium, and that he had come summoned by his letter; if that letter were false and there were no need of him in Etruria, he would depart immediately, having turned his standards back.

”Indeed you may depart,” he said, “nor does anyone delay you; for it is least consistent that, when you are perhaps scarcely sufficient for your own war, you should boast that you have come here to bring help to others.”

​May Hercules turn it to good, Volumnius said: he preferred that his labor should have been spent in vain, than that anything should have occurred why one consular army was not sufficient for Etruria.