1Next Quintus Fabius and Gaius Julius were made consuls. 1That year the discord at home was no less intense, and the war abroad was fiercer. 1The Aequi took up arms; 1the Veientes also entered Roman territory, laying it waste. 1As anxiety over these wars grew, Kaeso Fabius and Spurius Furius became consuls. 1The Aequi were besieging Ortona, a Latin city; 2the Veientes, now glutted with plunder, were threatening that they would besiege Rome itself. 2Though these terrors ought to have checked the spirits of the plebs, they actually raised them higher; 3and the plebs were returning to their habit of refusing military service, not of their own accord: Spurius Licinius, tribune of the plebs, believing that the time had come to force an agrarian law on the senators through the utmost necessity, had undertaken to obstruct the military levy.
4But all the odium of the tribunician power turned against its author, and the consuls attacked him no more fiercely than his own colleagues did, and with their help the consuls held the levy. 5An army is enrolled for two wars at once; 5Fabius is given one to lead against the Veientes, Furius one against the Aequi. 5Among the Aequi, indeed, nothing worth remembering was done; 6Fabius had rather more trouble with his fellow citizens than with the enemy. 6That one man, the consul himself, upheld the state, which the army, out of hatred for the consul, was betraying as far as lay in its power. 6For when the consul, besides the other skills of a general, which he displayed in abundance in preparing and conducting the war, had drawn up his line in such a way that by sending out the cavalry alone he routed the enemy army, the infantry refused to pursue the routed foe; 8nor could they be compelled, if not by the exhortation of a hated leader, then at least by their own disgrace and the public shame at that moment, and the danger afterwards if the enemy regained his courage, to quicken their pace or, if nothing else, to stand in formation.
9Without orders they carry back the standards, and gloomily — you would have thought them beaten — cursing now their general, now the effort the cavalry had put forth, they return to camp. 10Nor did the general seek any remedies for so pernicious an example; 10so true is it that men of outstanding gifts will sooner lack the art of ruling a citizen than that of conquering an enemy. 11The consul returned to Rome not so much with his glory in war increased as with the soldiers' hatred of him provoked and embittered. 11The senators nevertheless managed to keep the consulship in the Fabian clan; 11they elect Marcus Fabius consul, and Gnaeus Manlius is given to Fabius as colleague.