1Amid these wars, while discord continued at home, Titus Numicius Priscus and Aulus Verginius were made consuls. 2The plebs seemed unlikely to tolerate any further postponement of the agrarian law, and the utmost violence was being prepared, when it was learned from the smoke of burning farmhouses and the flight of the country folk that the Volsci were at hand. 2This checked the sedition, which was already ripe and almost bursting out. 3The consuls, compelled at once by the senate, led the young men out of the city to war and so made the rest of the plebs calmer. 4And the enemy, having done nothing more than flood the Romans with groundless fear, depart in a hurried column; 5Numicius set out for Antium against the Volsci, Verginius against the Aequi.
5There, when a great defeat had nearly been suffered from an ambush, the courage of the soldiers restored a situation that had collapsed through the consul's carelessness. 6The command was better handled among the Volsci; 6the enemy were routed in the first battle and driven in flight into the city of Antium, which, as things then stood, was very wealthy. 6Not daring to attack it, the consul took from the people of Antium Caeno, another town by no means so wealthy. 7While the Aequi and Volsci kept the Roman armies occupied, the Sabines advanced, plundering, right up to the gates of the city. 7Then a few days later they themselves suffered more harm from two armies than they had inflicted, as both consuls in their anger invaded their territory.