Immediately after this the Sabines also frightened the Romans:  for it was rather an alarm than a war.  News was brought into the city during the night that a Sabine army had advanced as far as the river Anio, plundering the country:  that the country houses there were being pillaged and set fire to indiscriminately.  Aulus Postumius, who had been dictator in the Latin war, was immediately sent thither with all the cavalry forces.  The consul Servilius followed him with a picked body of infantry.  The cavalry cut off most of the stragglers; nor did the Sabine legions make any resistance against the battalion of infantry when it came up with them.  Tired both by their march and nightly raids, surfeited with eating and drinking in the country houses, a great number of them had scarcely sufficient strength to flee.  Thus the Sabine war was heard of and finished in a single night.  On the following day, when all were sanguine that peace had been secured in every quarter, ambassadors from the Auruncans presented themselves before the senate, threatening to declare war unless the troops were withdrawn from the Volscian territory.  The army of the Auruncans had set out from home at the same time as the ambassadors, and the report that this army had been seen not far from Aricia threw the Romans into such a state of confusion that neither could the senate be consulted in regular form, nor could the Romans, while themselves taking up arms, give a pacific answer to those who were advancing to attack them.  They marched to Aricia in hostile array, engaged with the Auruncans not far from that town and in one battle the war was ended.

After the defeat of the Auruncans, the people of Rome, victorious in so many wars within a few days, were looking to the consul to fulfill his promises, and to the senate to keep their word, when Appius, both from his natural pride, and in order to undermine the credit of his colleague, issued a decree concerning borrowed money in the harshest possible terms.  From this time, both those who had been formerly in confinement were delivered up to their creditors, and others also were taken into custody.  Whenever this happened to any soldier, he appealed to the other consul.  A crowd gathered about Servilius:  they threw his promises in his teeth, severally upbraiding him with their services in war, and the scars they had received.  They called upon him either to lay the matter before the senate, or, as consul, to assist his fellow-citizens, as commander, his soldiers.  These remonstrances affected the consul, but the situation of affairs obliged him to act in a shuffling manner:  so completely had not only his colleague, but the whole of the patrician party, enthusiastically taken up the opposite cause.  And thus, by playing a middle part, he neither escaped the odium of the people, nor gained the favour of the senators.  The patricians looked upon him as wanting in energy and a popularity-hunting consul, the people, as deceitful:  and it soon