History of Rome

​After Antium was captured, Titus Aemilius and Quintus Fabius became consuls. This was the Fabius who alone had survived when his clan was destroyed at the Cremera.

​Already in his former consulship, Aemilius had been a promoter of giving land to the plebs; therefore, in his second consulship also, the land-reformers had raised their hopes for the law, and the tribunes, thinking that a matter often attempted against the consuls could certainly be obtained now that a consul was their helper, took up the cause, and the consul remained firm in his opinion.

​The possessors and a large part of the patricians, complaining that the leading man of the state was puffing himself up with the actions of the tribunes and becoming popular by giving away other people’s property, had turned the resentment of the whole matter from the tribunes onto the consul. A fierce conflict was at hand, ​had not Fabius settled the matter by a proposal harsh to neither party; that a considerable amount of land had been taken from the Volscians the year before under the leadership and auspices of Titus Quinctius; and that Antium, ​a neighboring, convenient, and maritime city, could be established as a colony; thus, without complaints from the possessors, the plebeians would go to the lands, and the state would remain in harmony. This proposal was accepted.

​He appointed Titus Quinctius, Aulus Verginius, and Publius Furius as triumvirs for distributing the land.

​They were ordered to give in their names, those who wished to receive land. Immediately, as usually happens, abundance created disgust, and so few gave in their names that Volscian colonists were added to fill up the number; the rest of the multitude preferred to demand land at Rome rather than to receive it elsewhere.

​The Aequi sought peace from Quintus Fabius—who had come there with an army—and they themselves made it void by a sudden inroad into the Latin territory.