History of Rome

​This year also had a tribune as the author of the agrarian law, Tiberius Pontificius. He, entering upon the same path, as if it had succeeded for Spurius Licinius, obstructed the levy for a short time.

​When the patricians were again thrown into confusion, Appius Claudius said that the tribunician power had been overcome in the previous year, in reality for the present, and by example for the future, since it had been found that it could be dissolved by its own strength.

​For there would never be wanting someone who would wish for victory over his colleague and the gratitude of the better party, sought for the public good; and more tribunes, if there should be need of more, would be ready to assist the consuls, and even one was sufficient against all. Let only the consuls and the leaders of the patricians take care ​that, if not all, they might at least win over some of the tribunes to the republic and the senate.

​Admonished by the precepts of Appius, the patricians all addressed the tribunes in a friendly and kind manner; and the consulars, according as each of them had privately some influence over individual tribunes, obtained, partly by favor and partly by authority, that they should wish the strength of the tribunician power to be salutary to the republic;

​and the consuls, with the help of nine tribunes against one obstructor of the public good, held the levy.

​Thence they set out for the Veientine war, to which auxiliary forces had assembled from all sides of Etruria, not so much excited by favor toward the Veientes, as because they had come into the hope that the Roman state could be dissolved by internal discord.

​And the leading men in the councils of all the peoples of Etruria were murmuring that the Roman power would be eternal, unless they themselves raged against one another with seditions. This was the only poison, this the ruin found for wealthy states, so that great empires were mortal.

​This evil, sustained for a long time partly by the counsels of the patricians and partly by the patience of the plebs, had now come to the extreme. Two states had been made out of one; each party had its own magistrates and its own laws.

​At first, they were accustomed to rage in the levies, yet they obeyed their leaders in war. While the state of the city remained of whatever kind, it could be maintained by military discipline; now the Roman soldier followed the custom of not obeying magistrates even into the camp.

​In the last war, in the very line of battle, in the very contest, by the consensus of the army, victory had been voluntarily handed over to the defeated Aequians, the standards deserted, the commander left in the battle-line, and the return to the camp made without orders. Assuredly, if pressure were applied, Rome could be conquered by her own soldier. Nothing else was needed than that war be declared and shown;

​the fates and the gods would perform the rest of their own accord. These hopes had armed the Etruscans, who had been defeated and victors in turn through many vicissitudes.