History of Rome

​During their magistracy, Fidenae, a Roman colony, revolted to Lars Tolumnius and the Veientes.

​A greater crime was added to the defection: they killed Gaius Fulcinius, Cloelius Tullus, Spurius Antius, and Lucius Roscius, Roman envoys who were inquiring into the cause of this new policy, by the command of Tolumnius.

​Some alleviate the king’s deed, saying that during a lucky throw of the dice, an ambiguous word of his, which seemed as if he had ordered them to be killed, was caught up by the Fidenates and was the cause of death to the envoys.

​An incredible thing—that while the Fidenates, their new allies, intervened, consulting about a murder that would break the law of nations, his mind was not distracted from the concentration on his game, nor was the deed afterwards turned back from error. It is closer to the truth that the people of the Fidenates, ​wished, so that they could not look back to any hope from the Romans, to be bound by the consciousness of so great a crime.

​Statues of the envoys who had been slain at Fidenae were set up publicly on the Rostra. A fierce conflict was imminent with the Veientes and Fidenates, who, besides being neighboring peoples, had begun a war from so heinous a cause.

​Therefore, for the care of the state’s highest interests, since the plebs and their tribunes were quiet, there was no controversy but that consuls should be elected: Marcus Geganius Macerinus for the third time and Lucius Sergius Fidenas, so called, I believe, from the war which he afterwards waged.

​For this man was the first to fight on this side of the Anio with the king of the Veientes in a successful battle, yet he did not bring back a bloodless victory. Therefore, the grief for the lost citizens was greater than the joy for the routed enemies, and the senate, as in alarming circumstances, ordered Mamercus Aemilius to be named dictator. He named as master of the horse, from the college of the previous year, ​in which they had been at the same time military tribunes with consular power, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a young man worthy of his parent.

​To the levy held by the consuls, old centurions experienced in war were added, and the number of those lost in the recent battle was filled up. The dictator ordered Titus Quinctius Capitolinus and Marcus Fabius Vibulanus to follow him as legates.

​Both the greater power and the man equal to that power drove the enemy from Roman territory across the Anio; and they, pulling back their camp, took the hills between Fidenae and the Anio, and did not descend into the plains until the legions of the Falisci came to their aid.

​Then at last the camp of the Etruscans was pitched before the walls of Fidenae, and the Roman dictator encamped not far from there near the confluence. He took up his position on both banks of the river, where he could connect them with a fortification, throwing up a rampart between. On the following day he led his men out into battle array.