47.
In consequence of their success, the Aequi
1 had taken over the arrogance and carelessness which the Roman generals had shown, and the result was seen in the very first battle.
[
2]
When the dictator had attacked with his cavalry and had thrown the enemy's front ranks into confusion, he ordered the legions to advance rapidly, and when one of his standard-bearers hesitated, cut him down.
[
3]
So eager for combat were the troops, that the Aequi could not stop their rush, and when, defeated in the field, they had withdrawn to their camp in a disordered flight, it was stormed with less expenditure of time and effort than the battle itself had cost.
[
4]
Having captured and sacked the camp, the dictator
[p. 411]relinquished the plunder to his soldiers; and the cavalry,
2 which had pursued the enemy as they fled from their encampment, came back with the report that all
[
5??]
the Labicani, after their defeat, and a great part of the Aequi, had taken refuge in Labici.
[
6]
Next day the army marched to Labici and, drawing a cordon about the town, stormed it with ladders and plundered it. Leading his victorious army back to Rome, the dictator resigned his office eight days after his appointment; and the senate seized the opportunity, before the tribunes of the plebs could stir up agrarian troubles by proposing a division of the Labican territory, to resolve, in a largely-attended meeting, that a colony should be planted in Labici.
[
7]
Fifteen hundred colonists were sent from the City, and each received two
iugera.3
The year that followed the capture of Labici, having as military tribunes with consular powers Agrippa Menenius Lanatus, Gaius Servilius Structus, and Publius Lucretius Tricipitinus (all these for the second time), together with Spurius Rutilius Crassus;
[8]
and the succeeding year, with Aulus Sempronius Atratinus (for his third term) and Marcus Papirius Mugillanus and Spurius Nautius Rutulus (for their second) were a period of tranquillity in foreign relations but of civil discord arising out of agrarian laws.
