History of Rome

​And so the consuls who succeeded for that year, Gaius Iunius Bubulcus for the third time and Quintus Aemilius Barbula for the second, at the beginning of the year complained before the people that the order of the senate had been deformed by a corrupt selection, ​in which several men more worthy than those chosen had been passed over; they declared that they would not observe that selection which had been made without distinction between right and wrong according to favor and caprice, and immediately summoned the senate in that order which had existed before the censors Appius Claudius and Gaius Plautius.

​And two commands began to be given that year by the people, both pertaining to military matters: one, that sixteen military tribunes for the four legions should be created by the people, which previously, with very few places left to the vote of the people, had been almost entirely the patronage of dictators and consuls; the tribunes of the plebs Lucius Atilius and Gaius Marcius proposed this bill;

​the other, that the same people should order two commissioners for equipping and refitting the fleet; the proposer of this plebiscite was Marcus Decius, tribune of the plebs.

​I should pass over a matter of that same year small to tell of, if it had not seemed to pertain to religion. The flute-players, because they had been forbidden by the last censors to feast in the temple of Jupiter, a thing handed down from of old, taking it hard, went off in a body to Tibur, so that there was no one in the city to play before the sacrifices.

​Religious awe on account of this matter seized the senate, and they sent envoys to Tibur to take care that these men should be restored to the Romans.

​The Tiburtines, having kindly promised, first summoned them to the senate-house and exhorted them to return to Rome; when they could not be persuaded, they approached them with a plan not foreign to the character of these men.

​On a feast day, some invited others under the pretense of celebrating feasts with song, and with wine, of which that class of men is generally greedy, ​they put them to sleep, laden as they were, and thus bound by sleep threw them into wagons and carried them off to Rome. Nor did they perceive it until, the wagons having been left in the forum, light overtook them full of the effects of wine.

​Then a gathering of the people took place, and permission having been obtained for them to remain, it was granted that for three days every year, adorned, with song and this freedom which is now customary, they should wander through the city, and the right of feasting in the temple was restored to those who played before the sacrifices. These things were done amidst the care of two huge wars.