They marched therefore to the fight, which had been suspended on their part, and endeavoured to regain the ground which they had lost, and in a moment not only was the battle restored, but one of the wings of the Sabines gave way.  The cavalry, protected between the ranks of the infantry, remounted their horses; they then galloped across to the other division to announce their success to their party; at the same time also they charged the enemy, now disheartened by the discomfiture of their stronger wing.  The valour of none shone forth more conspicuous in that battle.  The consul provided for all emergencies; he applauded the brave, rebuked wherever the battle seemed to slacken.  When reproved, they displayed immediately the deeds of brave men; and a sense of shame stimulated these, as much as praises the others.  The shout being raised anew, all together making a united effort, drove the enemy back; nor could the Roman attack be any longer resisted.

The Sabines, driven in every direction through the country, left their camp behind them for the enemy to plunder.  There the Romans recovered the effects, not of the allies, as at Algidum, but their own property, which had been lost by the devastations of their lands.  For this double victory, gained in two battles, in two different places, the senate in a niggardly spirit merely decreed thanksgivings in the name of the consuls for one day only.  The people went, however, on the second day also, in great numbers of their own accord to offer thanksgiving; and this unauthorized and popular thanksgiving, owing to their zeal, was even better attended.  The consuls by agreement came to the city within the same two days, and summoned the senate to the Campius Martius.[67] When they were there relating the services performed by themselves, the chiefs of the patricians complained that the senate was designedly convened among the soldiers for the purpose of intimidation.  The consuls, therefore, that there might be no room for such a charge, called away the senate to the Flaminian meadows, where the Temple of Apollo now is (even then it was called the Apollinare).  There, when a triumph was refused by a large majority of the patricians, Lucius Icilius, tribune of the commons, brought a proposition before the people regarding the triumph of the consuls, many persons coming forward to argue against the measure, but in particular Gaius Claudius, who exclaimed, that it was over the senate, not over the enemy, that the consuls wished to triumph; and that it was intended as a return for a private service to a tribune, and not as an honour due to valour.  That never before had the matter of a triumph been managed through the people; but that the consideration of that honour and the disposal of it, had always rested with the senate; that not even the kings had infringed on the majesty of this most august body.  The tribunes should not so occupy every department with their own authority, as to allow the existence of no public council; that the state would be free, and the laws equalized by these means only, if each order retained its own rights and its own dignity.  After much had been said by the other senior patricians also to the same purpose, all the tribes approved the proposition.  Then for the first time a triumph was celebrated by order of the people, without the authority of the senate.