city on a similar occasion by the youth of the Sabines.  My mind shudders at the thought that anything should be done inconsiderately and rashly.  I have deemed it right that these matters should be mentioned beforehand to you, consuls, both for your sakes and ours.  With regard to myself, it is my determination to depart hence home immediately, that I may not be tainted with the suspicion of any word or deed if I remain.”  Having said this, he departed.  When the consuls had laid the matter before the senate, a matter that was doubtful, though vouched for by a thoroughly reliable authority, the authority, more than the matter itself, as usually happens, urged them to adopt even needless precautions; and a decree of the senate having been passed that the Volscians should quit the city, criers were sent in different directions to order them all to depart before night.  They were at first smitten with great panic, as they ran in different directions to their lodgings to carry away their effects.  Afterward, when setting out, indignation arose in their breasts, to think that they, as if polluted with crime and contaminated, had been driven away from the games on festival days, a meeting, so to speak, both of gods and men.

As they went along in an almost unbroken line, Tullius, who had preceded them to the fountain of Ferentina, [46]received the chief men, as each arrived, and, complaining and giving vent to expressions of indignation, led both those, who eagerly listened to language that favoured their resentment, and through them the rest of the multitude, into a plain adjoining the road.  There, having begun an address after the manner of a public harangue, he said:  “Though you were to forget the former wrongs inflicted upon you by the Roman people, the calamities of the nation of the Volscians, and all other such matters, with what feelings, pray, do you regard this outrage offered you to-day, whereby they have opened the games by insulting us?  Did you not feel that a triumph has been gained over you this day?  That you, when leaving, were the observed of all, citizens, foreigners, and so many neighbouring states?  That your wives, your children were led in mockery before the eyes of men?  What do you suppose were the feelings of those who heard the voice of the crier? what of those who saw us departing?  What of those who met this ignominious cavalcade?  What, except that it is assuredly a matter of some offence against the gods:  and that, because, if we were present at the show, we should profane the games, and be guilty of an act that would need expiation, for this reason we are driven away from the dwellings of these pious people, from their meeting and assembly?  What then?  Does it not occur to you that we still live, because we have hastened our departure?—­if indeed this is a departure and not rather a flight.  And do you not consider this to be the city of enemies, in which, if you had delayed a single day, you must all have died?  War has been declared against you, to the great injury of those who declared it, if you be men.”  Thus, being both on their own account filled with resentment, and further incited by this harangue, they severally departed to their homes, and by stirring up each his own state, succeeded in bringing about the revolt of the entire Volscian nation.