1The consuls who followed, Opiter Verginius and Spurius Cassius, attacked Pometia first by assault, then with mantlets and other siege-works. 2Rising against them, now more from implacable hatred than from any hope or opportunity, the Aurunci sallied out, more of them armed with fire than with steel, and fill everything with slaughter and burning. 3Having burned the mantlets and wounded and killed many of the enemy, they also struck one of the consuls — but which, the authorities do not add — from his horse with a severe wound and almost killed him. 4After this failure they returned from there to Rome. 4Among many wounded the consul was carried back, with little hope of his life.
4Then, after no great interval, enough for tending the wounds and filling up the army, war was carried to Pometia with greater anger and with increased strength as well. 5And when the mantlets had been repaired and, with the rest of the apparatus of war, things had come to the point where the soldiers were about to climb on to the walls, a surrender was made. 6Yet the Aurunci suffered no less hideous treatment when the city was surrendered than if it had been taken by storm: the leading men were beheaded with the axe, the other colonists were sold as slaves; 7the town was demolished and the land sold.
7The consuls celebrated a triumph more for the severity with which they had avenged their anger than for the greatness of the war they had finished.