Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 3
Benjamin Oliver Foster, Ph.D., Ed.

66. Titus Quinctius Capitolinus (for the fourth¹ time) and Agrippa Furius were then made consuls. They experienced neither domestic sedition nor foreign war, but were threatened with both. [2] The strife between citizens could now no longer be repressed, since tribunes and plebs alike were inflamed against the patricians, and the trial of one or another of the nobles was continually embroiling the assemblies in new quarrels. [3] At the first disturbance in these meetings the Aequi and Volsci took up arms, as though they had received a signal, and also because their leaders, being eager for plunder, had convinced them that the Romans had found it impossible, the year before, to carry out the levy which they had proclaimed, since the plebs were no longer amenable to authority; and that this had been the reason why armies were not dispatched against themselves. [4] Lawlessness was breaking down their martial traditions, nor was [p. 225]Rome any longer a united nation; all the hostility² and quarrelsomeness they had formerly entertained towards other nations was now being turned against themselves; the wolves³ were blinded with mad rage at one another, and there was now an opportunity to destroy them. [5] Combining their armies, they first desolated the country of the Latins, and then, when it appeared that there was no one in that region to punish them, they carried their marauding, amidst the triumphant rejoicings of the advocates of war, to the very walls of Rome, in the direction of the Esquiline Gate, where they insolently exhibited to the inhabitants of the City the devastation of their lands. [6] After they had withdrawn unmolested, and driving their booty before them had marched to Corbio, the consul Quinctius summoned the people to an assembly.