1.
Peace was now established elsewhere, but1 Romans and Veientes were at war, and their rage and animosity were such that the end was clearly at hand for those that should be vanquished. Each people held an election very different from that of the other.
[2]
The Romans enlarged the number of their military tribunes with consular authority, and elected eight,2 a greater number than ever before, to wit, Manius Aemilius Mamercus (for the second time), Lucius Valerius Potitus (for the third), Appius Claudius Crassus, Marcus Quinctilius Varus, Lucius Julius lulus, Marcus Postumius, Marcus Furius Camillus, Marcus Postumius Albinus.
[3]
But the Veientes, weary of annual canvassing, which was sometimes the cause of brawls, chose a king. This gave offence to the feelings of the Etruscan peoples, who loathed not more the institution of kings than the King himself.
[4]
He had for some time been hateful to the nation by reason of his wealth and arrogance, since he had violently broken up a solemn [p. 5]festival, which it is impious to interrupt, in his3 resentment of a political rebuff;
[5]
and because the suffrages of the Twelve Peoples had returned another man as priest in preference to him, he had suddenly carried off the actors, most of whom were his own slaves, in the middle of the games.
[6]
And so the nation which was devoted beyond all others to religious rites (and all the more because it excelled in the art of observing them) voted to refuse its help to the men of Veil, so long as they should obey a king.
[7]
This vote the Veientes would not suffer to be mentioned, in their fear of the King, who had a way of treating the man by whom any such saying was reported as a leader in sedition, not as the bearer of an idle tale.
[8]
Although the Romans got word that things were quiet in Etruria, still, because they
[9??]
heard that this question came up at all their meetings, they so constructed their works as to have a double fortification, one facing Veii, to oppose the sallies of the townsfolk, the other confronting Etruria, to shut off any assistance that might come from thence.
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