History of Rome

​The Roman consuls also dreaded nothing other than their own strength, their own weapons.

​The memory of the worst example in the last war terrified them, lest they should commit the issue to a place where two battle-lines had to be feared at the same time. Therefore they kept themselves in the camp, averted from so two-sided a danger, thinking that days and time itself would perhaps soften their anger and bring sanity to their minds.

​The Veientine enemy and the Etruscans acted all the more precipitately; they provoked to battle, at first by riding up to the camp and challenging, and finally, as they could move nothing, by reviling now the consuls themselves, now the army:

​that the pretense of internal discord had been found as a remedy for fear, and that the consuls rather distrusted than disbelieved their own soldiers; and that a new kind of sedition was silence and quiet among armed men. In addition to these, they threw out, partly false and partly true things, against the novelty of their family and origin.

​While these things were being shouted beneath the very rampart and gates, the consuls bore it not unwillingly; but in the inexperienced multitude, now indignation, now shame stirred their breasts and turned them from internal evils: they did not want the enemy to go unavenged, nor did they want success for either the patricians or the consuls; external and domestic hatreds contended in their minds.

​At length the external ones triumphed; so proudly and insolently did the enemy mock them. They assembled in crowds at the general’s tent; they demanded battle, they requested that the signal be given.

​The consuls, as if deliberating, put their heads together and spoke for a long time. They wished to fight, but their desire had to be held back and concealed, so that by opposing and delaying they might add force to the soldier once he was incited.

​An answer was returned that the matter was immature, that it was not yet the time for battle; they should keep themselves in the camp. They then issued an edict that they should abstain from battle: if anyone fought without orders, they would punish him as an enemy.

​When they were thus dismissed, the less they believed the consuls wished it, the more the eagerness for fighting grew. Moreover, the enemy inflamed them much more fiercely, as soon as it was known that the consuls had decided not to fight:

​for they believed that they would insult them with impunity, that weapons were not trusted to the soldier, that the matter would break out into the ultimate sedition, and that the end had come to the Roman empire. Relying on these hopes, they ran to the gates, heaped insults, and scarcely refrained from attacking the camp. Indeed, the Romans could no longer endure the contumely;

​from the whole camp, they rushed from all sides to the consuls; they no longer demanded gradually, as before, through the chief centurions, but all everywhere urged with shouts. The matter was ripe; yet they hesitated.

​Then Fabius, since his colleague was already yielding through fear of sedition to the growing tumult, when he had made silence with the trumpet, said: “I know, Cnaeus Manlius, that those men are able to conquer;

​but whether they wish it, they themselves have prevented me from knowing. Therefore it is fixed and decreed not to give the signal, unless they swear that they will return victorious from this battle. The soldier has deceived the Roman consul once in the battle-line; he will never deceive the gods.” The centurion Marcus Flavoleius was there, a demander among the foremost in the battle.

”Victorious,” he said, “Marcus Fabius, will I return from the battle-line.” If he should deceive, he invoked father Jupiter, Mars Gradivus, and other angry gods against himself. Then, one by one, the whole army swore the same oath. To those who had sworn, the signal was given; they took up arms; they went into battle full of anger and hope. Now they commanded the Etruscans to throw their insults, ​now, armed, each wished that the enemy, so prompt with his tongue, be presented to him.

​On that day, the valor of all, both of the plebs and of the patricians, was extraordinary; the name of Fabius shone out most. They resolved to reconcile to themselves by this battle the minds of the plebs, which had been hostile through many civil conflicts.