History of Rome

​Before the envoys returned from Delphi or the expiations for the Alban portent were found, the new military tribunes with consular power, Lucius Iulius Iulus, Lucius Furius Medullinus for the fourth time, Lucius Sergius Fidenas, Aulus Postumius Regillensis, Publius Cornelius Maluginensis, and Aulus Manlius, entered upon their office.

​In that year, the Tarquinienses arose as new enemies. Because they saw that the Romans were occupied with many wars at the same time—with the Volscians at Anxur, where the garrison was besieged, with the Aequi at Labici, who were attacking the Roman colony there, and in addition to this, with the Veientine, Faliscan, and Capenate wars—and that affairs within the walls were no quieter due to the struggles between the patricians and the plebeians, ​thinking that among these difficulties there was an opportunity for an inroad, they sent light-armed cohorts into the Roman territory to plunder: for they thought that either the Romans would allow this injury to go unavenged, lest they burden themselves with a new war, or they would pursue them with a small and therefore insufficiently strong army.

​To the Romans, the indignity was greater than their concern over the plundering of the Tarquinienses; therefore, the matter was undertaken with no great effort nor was it long delayed.

​Aulus Postumius and Lucius Iulius, not by a regular levy—for they were hindered by the tribunes of the plebs—but with a force assembled almost entirely of volunteers whom they had aroused by exhortation, set out through the territory of Caere by oblique paths and surprised the Tarquinienses as they were returning from their plundering, laden with spoil.

​They slaughtered many of them, stripped them all of their baggage, and having recovered the spoils of their own lands, returned to Rome.

​Two days were given to the owners to identify their property; on the third day, the unclaimed items—and most of these belonged to the enemy themselves—were sold under the spear, and the proceeds therefrom were distributed to the soldiers. The other wars, and especially that with Veii, were of uncertain issue. And now, ​the Romans, despairing of human aid, were looking to fate and the gods, when the envoys arrived from Delphi bringing the response of the oracle, which agreed with the reply of the captive prophet: “Roman, beware of letting the Alban water be contained in the lake, beware of allowing it to flow into the sea by its own stream; having drawn it off, you shall water the fields with it, and dissipate it by channels till it is spent.

​Then advance boldly against the enemy’s walls, mindful that from that city which you have besieged for so many years, victory is granted to you by these fates which are now revealed.

​When the war is finished, bring as victor a rich gift to my temples, and perform the ancestral rites, the care of which has been neglected, having restored them as is customary.”