charged to execute their orders without delay.  Then Tullus began as follows:  “Romans, if ever before, at any other time, in any war, there was a reason that you should return thanks, first to the immortal gods, next to your own valour, it was yesterday’s battle.  For the struggle was not so much with enemies as with the treachery and perfidy of allies, a struggle which is more serious and more dangerous.  For—­that you may not be under a mistaken opinion—­know that it was without my orders that the Albans retired to the mountains, nor was that my command, but a stratagem and the mere pretence of a command:  that you, being kept in ignorance that you were deserted, your attention might not be drawn away from the fight, and that the enemy might be inspired with terror and dismay, conceiving themselves to be surrounded on the rear.  Nor is that guilt, which I now complain of, shared by all the Albans.  They merely followed their leader, as you too would have done, had I wished to turn my army away to any other point from thence.  It is Mettius there who is the leader of this march:  it is Mettius also who the contriver of this war is:  it is Mettius who is the violator of the treaty between Rome and Alba.  Let another hereafter venture to do the like, if I do not presently make of him a signal example to mankind.”  The centurions in arms stood around Mettius:  the king proceeded with the rest of his speech as he had commenced:  “It is my intention, and may it prove fortunate, happy, and auspicious to the Roman people, to myself, and to you, O Albans, to transplant all the inhabitants of Alba to Rome, to grant your commons the rights of citizenship, to admit your nobles into the body of senators, to make one city, one state:  as the Alban state after being one people was formerly divided into two, so let it now again become one.”  On hearing this the Alban youth, unarmed, surrounded by armed men, although divided in their sentiments, yet under pressure of the general apprehension maintained silence.  Then Tullus proceeded:  “If, Mettius Fufetius, you were capable of learning fidelity, and how to observe treaties, I would have suffered you to live and have given you such a lesson.  But as it is, since your disposition is incurable, do you at any rate by your punishment teach mankind to consider those obligations sacred, which have been violated by you?  As therefore a little while since you kept your mind divided between the interests of Fidenae and of Rome, so shall you now surrender your body to be torn asunder in different directions.”  Upon this, two chariots drawn by four horses being brought up, he bound Mettius stretched at full length to their carriages:  then the horses were driven in different directions, carrying off his mangled body on each carriage, where the limbs had remained hanging to the cords.  All turned away their eyes from so shocking a spectacle.  That was the first and last instance among the Romans of a punishment which established a precedent that showed but little regard for the laws of humanity.  In other cases we may boast that no other nation has approved of milder forms of punishment.[28]