displaying the head of the lieutenant:  and, a sally being made at the same time from the camp at a signal given by himself from a distance, he surrounded a large force of the enemy.  Of the Aequans in Roman territory the slaughter was less, their flight more disorderly.  As they straggled in different directions, driving their plunder before them, Postumius attacked them in several places, where he had posted bodies of troops in advantageous positions.  They, while straying about and pursuing their flight in great disorder, fell in with the victorious Quinctius as he was returning with the wounded consul.  Then the consular army by its distinguished bravery amply avenged the consul’s wound, and the death of the lieutenant and the slaughter of the cohorts; heavy losses were both inflicted and received on both sides during those days.  In a matter of such antiquity it is difficult to state, so as to inspire conviction, the exact number of those who fought or fell:  Antias Valerius, however, ventures to give an estimate of the numbers:  that in the Hernican territory there fell five thousand eight hundred Romans; that of the predatory parties of the Aequans, who strayed through the Roman frontiers for the purpose of plundering, two thousand four hundred were slain by the consul Aulus Postumius; that the rest of the body which fell in with Quinctius while driving its booty before them, by no means got off with a loss equally small:  of these he asserts that four thousand, and by way of stating the number exactly, two hundred and thirty were slain.  After their return to Rome, the cessation of business was abandoned.  The sky seemed to be all ablaze with fire; and other prodigies either actually presented themselves before men’s eyes, or exhibited imaginary appearances to their affrighted minds.  To avert these terrors, a solemn festival for three days was proclaimed, during which all the shrines were filled with a crowd of men and women, earnestly imploring the favour of the gods.  After this the Latin and Hernican cohorts were sent back to their respective homes, after they had been thanked by the senate for their spirited conduct in war.  The thousand soldiers from Antium were dismissed almost with disgrace, because they had come after the battle too late to render assistance.

The elections were then held:  Lucius Aebutius and Publius Servilius were elected consuls, and entered on their office on the calends of August[8] according to the practice of beginning the year on that date.  It was an unhealthy season, and it so happened that the year [9] was pestilential to the city and country, and not more to men than to cattle; and they themselves increased the severity of the disease by admitting the cattle and the peasants into the city in consequence of their dread of devastation.  This collection of animals of every kind mingled together both distressed the inhabitants of the city by the unusual stench, and also the peasants, crowded together into their