they began to fly.  And now the plains were quickly filled with heaps of bodies and splendid armour.  At first, their camp received the dismayed Samnites; but they did not long retain even the possession of that:  before night it was taken, plundered, and burnt.  The dictator triumphed, in pursuance of a decree of the senate; and the most splendid spectacle by far, of any in his procession, was the captured arms:  so magnificent were they deemed, that the shields, adorned with gold, were distributed among the owners of the silver shops, to serve as embellishments to the forum.  Hence, it is said, arose the custom of the forum being decorated by the aediles, when the grand processions are made on occasion of the great games.  The Romans, indeed, converted these extraordinary arms to the honour of the gods:  but the Campanians, out of pride, and in hatred of the Samnites, gave them as ornaments to their gladiators, who used to be exhibited as a show at their feasts, and whom they distinguished by the name of Samnites.  During this year, the consul Fabius fought with the remnants of the Etrurians at Perusia, which city also had violated the truce, and gained an easy and decisive victory.  He would have taken the town itself (for he marched up to the walls,) had not deputies come out and capitulated.  Having placed a garrison at Perusia, and sent on before him to the Roman senate the embassies of Etruria, who solicited friendship, the consul rode into the city in triumph, for successes more important than those of the dictator.  Besides, a great share of the honour of reducing the Samnites was attributed to the lieutenants-general, Publius Decius and Marcius Valerius:  whom, at the next election, the people, with universal consent, declared the one consul, the other praetor.

41.  To Fabius, in consideration of his extraordinary merit in the conquest of Etruria, the consulship was continued.  Decius was appointed his colleague.  Valerius was created praetor a fourth time.  The consuls divided the provinces between them.  Etruria fell to Decius, Samnium to Fabius.  The latter, having marched to Nuceria, rejected the application of the people of Alfaterna, who then sued for peace, because they had not accepted it when offered, and by force of arms compelled them to surrender.  A battle was fought with the Samnites; the enemy were overcome without much difficulty:  nor would the memory of that engagement have been preserved, except that in it the Marsians first appeared in arms against the Romans.  The Pelignians, imitating the defection of the Marsians, met the same fate.  The other consul, Decius, was likewise very successful in his operations:  through terror he compelled the Tarquinians to supply his army with corn, and to sue for a truce for forty years.  He took several forts from the Volsinians by assault, some of which he demolished, that they might not serve as receptacles to the enemy, and by extending his operations through every quarter,