1The people's anger against Cassius did not last long. 1The charm of the agrarian law of itself, now that its author was removed, was stealing into their minds, and that desire was inflamed by the meanness of the senators, who, when the Volsci and Aequi had been defeated that year, cheated the soldiers of the booty. 2Whatever was taken from the enemy, the consul Fabius sold and paid into the treasury. 2The name of Fabius was hated by the plebs because of the last consul; 2the senators nevertheless succeeded in having Caeso Fabius made consul with Lucius Aemilius. 3The plebs, made all the more hostile by this, through sedition at home called forth war abroad.
3Then civil discord was suspended by the war. 3With one mind, senators and plebs, under the leadership of Aemilius, defeated the rebelling Volsci and Aequi in a successful battle. 4More of the enemy, however, were destroyed by the flight than by the battle: so relentlessly did the cavalry pursue them once routed. 5The temple of Castor was dedicated in the same year, on the Ides of Quintilis. 5It had been vowed in the Latin war by Postumius the dictator; 5his son, made one of two commissioners for that very purpose, dedicated it. 5In that year too the minds of the plebs were stirred by the charm of the agrarian law.
6The tribunes of the plebs were exalting their popular power with a popular law; 6the senators, believing there was more than enough wanton frenzy in the multitude already, shuddered at largess and incitements to recklessness. 6The consuls were the senators' fiercest leaders in resistance. 7That part of the state therefore won, and not only for the present but for the coming year too it gave as consuls Marcus Fabius, Caeso's brother, and one still more hated by the plebs for his prosecution of Spurius Cassius, Lucius Valerius. 7In that year too there was a struggle with the tribunes. 8The law proved empty and its proposers empty, as they boasted of a gift that came to nothing.
8From then on the Fabian name was held in great esteem, after three successive consulships all of which had, as it were in one unbroken course, been tested in struggles with the tribunes; 8and so, as being well placed, the office remained in that family for some time. 8Then war with Veii was begun, and the Volsci rebelled. 9But for foreign wars their strength was almost more than enough, and they misused it in quarrelling among themselves. 10On top of everyone's already troubled minds came portents from the heavens, showing threats almost every day in the city and the countryside; 10and the seers, consulted now through entrails, now through birds, both publicly and privately, declared that there was no other cause for the god being thus stirred than that the rites were not being duly performed.
11These terrors, however, ended in this, that Oppia, a Vestal Virgin, was condemned for unchastity and punished.