3.
Leaving a garrison, therefore, in their camp, they crossed the Roman border in so headlong an incursion as to carry terror even to the City.
[
2]
Moreover, the unexpectedness of the inroad added to the alarm, for nothing could have been apprehended less than that an enemy who was defeated and almost shut up in his camp should be thinking of a raid;
[
3]
and the country people who in their fright came tumbling in through the gates told not of pillaging nor of small bands of raiders, but, exaggerating everything in their senseless fear, cried out that whole armies of the enemy were close at hand and rushing on the City in a serried column.
[
4]
The very vagueness of these rumours led to further
[p. 11]exaggeration as the bystanders passed them on to others.
1 The running and shouting of men as they called “To arms!” was almost like the panic in a captured city. It chanced that the consul Quinctius had returned from Algidus to Rome.
[
5]
This circumstance allayed men's fears, and when the confusion had been stilled, he indignantly reminded them that the enemy they dreaded had been conquered, and posted watches at the gates.
[
6]
He then convened the senate, and in accordance with a resolution which the Fathers passed, proclaimed a suspension of the courts.
2
[
7]
After that he set out to defend the frontier, leaving Quintus Servilius as prefect of the City, but did not meet with the enemy in the field. The other consul campaigned with great success.
[
8]
Knowing where the enemy would come, he fell upon them when they were weighed down with the booty which incumbered their advancing column, and caused them bitterly to rue their pillaging. But few of them escaped the ambush, and the spoils were all recovered.
[
9]
So the suspension of the courts, which had lasted four days, was lifted on the return of the consul Quinctius to the City.
The census was then taken and Quinctius solemnized the concluding purification.
[10]
There are said to have been registered 104,714 citizens, besides orphans and widows. In the Aequian country there was no memorable action after that; the people retired to their towns, and permitted their farms to be burnt and ravaged. The consul made a number of forays with his army throughout the enemy's territory, and returned to Rome with great renown and huge spoils.
