History of Rome

​The outcome of this battle compelled the Falisci, although they were under a truce, to seek a treaty from the senate, and turned the war of the Latins, who had already prepared their armies, from the Romans against the Paeligni.

​Nor did the fame of this achievement confine itself within the boundaries of Italy, but the Carthaginians also sent ambassadors to Rome to offer congratulations, with a gift of a golden crown to be placed in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. Its weight was twenty-five pounds.

​Both consuls triumphed over the Samnites, with Decius following in distinguished praise and with gifts, while in the coarse military jesting the name of the tribune was celebrated no less than that of the consuls.

​Next, the embassies of the Campanians and the Suessulani were heard, and it was granted to their entreaties that a garrison should be sent there into winter quarters, by which the incursions of the Samnites might be kept off.

​Even then Capua, by no means wholesome for military discipline, diverted the minds of the soldiers, softened by the instruments of all pleasures, from the memory of their country; and plans were being formed in the winter quarters to take Capua away from the Campanians by the same crime through which they had taken it from its ancient inhabitants:

​nor would it be undeserved that their own example should turn against them. For why should the Campanians hold the most fertile land in Italy, and a city worthy of the land, when they could protect neither themselves nor their property, rather than the victorious army, which by its own sweat and blood had driven the Samnites thence?

​Or was it fair that their own surrendered subjects should enjoy that fertility and pleasantness, while they, exhausted by military service, struggled on the pestilential and arid soil around the city, or suffered the wasting disease of daily increasing interest in the city?

​These plans, agitated in secret conspiracies and not yet made known to all, were discovered by the new consul Gaius Marcius Rutilus, to whom Campania had fallen by lot as his province, his colleague Quintus Servilius having been left at the city.

​Therefore, since he had all these matters, just as they had been done, ascertained through the tribunes, and being experienced both in age and practice—for he was already consul for the fourth time and had been dictator and censor—thinking it best to frustrate the military impulse by deferring the hope of executing the plan to whenever they wished, he spread a rumor that the garrisons would winter in the same towns also in the following year;

​for they had been distributed through the cities of Campania, and the plans had spread from Capua into the whole army. By giving this relaxation to their thoughts, the mutiny subsided for the present.