to him as follows:  “Poplicola feels that you are a man of honour, who would be unwilling to take vengeance upon your countrymen, although you have been shamefully treated by them.  But if you choose to put yourself in safety by leaving your country and a people that hates you, he will receive you, both in his public and his private capacity, in a manner worthy of your own high character and of the dignity of Rome.”  After much deliberation, Clausus decided that he could not do better than accept this offer, and assembled all his friends.  They in their turn influenced many others, so that he was able to transplant to Rome five thousand of the most peaceful and respectable families of the Sabine nation.  Poplicola, who had notice of their arrival, welcomed them kindly and graciously.  He made them all citizens of Rome, and gave each of them two acres of land along the river Anio.  He gave Clausus twenty-five acres, and enrolled him among the Senators.  Clausus afterwards became one of the first men in Rome for wisdom and power, and his descendants, the Claudian family, was one of the most illustrious in history.

XXII.  Though the disputes of the Sabines were settled by this migration, yet their popular orators would not let them rest, but vehemently urged that they ought not to let Appius, a deserter and an enemy, prevail upon them to let the Romans go unpunished—­a thing which he could not persuade them to do when he was present among them.  They proceeded to Fidenae with a great army and encamped there, and laid two thousand men in ambush before Rome, in wooded and broken ground, meaning in the morning to send out a few horsemen to plunder ostentatiously.  These men were ordered to ride up close to Rome, and then to retire till their pursuers were drawn into the snare.  Poplicola heard of this plan the same day from deserters, and quickly made all necessary arrangements.  At evening he sent Postumius Balbus, his son-in-law, with three thousand men to occupy the tops of the hills under which the Sabine ambush was placed.  His colleague, Lucretius, was ordered to take the swiftest-footed and noblest youth of the city, and pursue the plundering horsemen, while he himself with the rest of the forces made a circuitous march and outflanked the enemy.  It chanced that a thick mist came on about dawn, in the midst of which Postumius charged down from the hills upon the men in ambush with a loud shout, while Lucretius sent his men to attack the cavalry, and Poplicola fell upon the enemy’s camp.  The Sabines were routed in every quarter, and even when fighting no longer were cut down by the Romans, their rash confidence proving ruinous to them.  Each party thought that the others must be safe, and did not care to stay and fight where they were, but those who were in the camp ran to those in the ambush, and those in the ambush towards the camp, each of them meeting those with whom they hoped to take refuge, and finding that those who they had hoped would help them needed help themselves.  The Sabines would have been all put to the sword, had not the neighbouring city of Fidenae afforded them a refuge, especially for the men from the camp.  Such as could not reach Fidenae were either put to death or taken prisoners.