and, in prosecution of this new undertaking, both the consuls marched from the city, and sat down at the distance of four miles from the camp of the enemy.  The troops of the Aequans, like tumultuary recruits, in consequence of their having passed such a number of years without waging war on their own account, were all in disorder and confusion, without established officers and without command.  Some advised to give battle, others to defend the camp; the greater part were influenced by concern for the devastation of their lands, likely to take place, and the consequent destruction of their cities, left with weak garrisons.  Among a variety of propositions, one, however, was heard which, abandoning all concern for the public interest, tended to transfer every man’s attention to the care of his private concerns.  It recommended that, at the first watch, they should depart from the camp by different roads, so as to carry all their effects into the cities, and to secure them by the strength of the fortifications; this they all approved with universal assent.  When the enemy were now dispersed through the country, the Romans, at the first dawn, marched out to the field, and drew up in order of battle; but no one coming to oppose them, they advanced in a brisk pace to the enemy’s camp.  But when they perceived neither guards before the gates, nor soldiers on the ramparts, nor the usual bustle of a camp,—­surprised at the extraordinary silence, they halted in apprehension of some stratagem.  At length, passing over the rampart, and finding the whole deserted, they proceeded to search out the tracks of the enemy.  But these, as they scattered themselves to every quarter, occasioned perplexity at first.  Afterwards discovering their design by means of scouts, they attacked their cities, one after another, and within the space of fifty days took, entirely by force, forty-one towns, most of which were razed and burnt, and the race of the Aequans almost extirpated.  A triumph was granted over the Aequans.  The Marrucinians, Marsians, Pelignians, and Ferentans, warned by the example of their disasters, sent deputies to Rome to solicit peace and friendship; and these states, on their submissive applications, were admitted into alliance.

46.  In the same year, Cneius Flavius, son of Cneius, grandson of a freed man, a notary, in low circumstances originally, but artful and eloquent, was appointed curule aedile.  I find in some annals, that, being in attendance on the aediles, and seeing that he was voted aedile by the prerogative tribe, but that his name would not be received, because he acted as a notary, he threw down his tablet, and took an oath, that he would not, for the future, follow that business.  But Licinius Macer contends, that he had dropped the employment of notary a considerable time before, having already been a tribune, and twice a triumvir, once for regulating the nightly watch, and another time for conducting a colony.  However, of this there is no dispute, that against the nobles,