confined dwellings, by heat and want of sleep while their attendance on each other, and actual contact helped to spread disease.  While they were hardly able to endure the calamities that pressed upon them, ambassadors from the Hernicans suddenly brought word that the Aequans and Volscians had united their forces, and pitched their camp in their territory:  that from thence they were devastating their frontiers with an immense army.  In addition to the fact that the small attendance of the senate was a proof to the allies that the state was prostrated by the pestilence, they further received this melancholy answer:  That the Hernicans, as well as the Latins, must now defend their possessions by their own unaided exertions.  That the city of Rome, through the sudden anger of the gods, was ravaged by disease.  If any relief from that calamity should arise, that they would afford aid to their allies, as they had done the year before, and always on other occasions.  The allies departed, carrying home, instead of the melancholy news they had brought, news still more melancholy, seeing that they were now obliged to sustain by their own resources a war, which they would have with difficulty sustained even if backed by the power of Rome.  The enemy no longer confined themselves to the Hernican territory.  They proceeded thence with determined hostility into the Roman territories, which were already devastated without the injuries of war.  There, without any one meeting them, not even an unarmed person, they passed through entire tracts destitute not only of troops, but even uncultivated, and reached the third milestone on the Gabinian road.[10] Aebutius, the Roman consul, was dead:  his colleague, Servilius, was dragging out his life with slender hope of recovery; most of the leading men, the chief part of the patricians, nearly all those of military age, were stricken down with disease, so that they not only had not sufficient strength for the expeditions, which amid such an alarm the state of affairs required, but scarcely even for quietly mounting guard.  Those senators, whose age and health permitted them, personally discharged the duty of sentinels.  The patrol and general supervision was assigned to the plebeian aediles:  on them devolved the chief conduct of affairs and the majesty of the consular authority.

The commonwealth thus desolate, since it was without a head, and without strength, was saved by the guardian gods and good fortune of the city, which inspired the Volscians and AEquans with the disposition of freebooters rather than of enemies; for so far were their minds from entertaining any hope not only of taking but even of approaching the walls of Rome, and so thoroughly did the sight of the houses in the distance, and the adjacent hills, divert their thoughts, that, on a murmur arising throughout the entire camp—­why should they waste time in indolence without booty in a wild and desert land, amid the pestilence engendered by cattle and human beings, when they could repair