1At the end of the year there was some peace, but, as always at other times, a troubled peace because of the struggle between senators and plebs. 1The plebs, angry, refused to take part in the consular elections; 2through the senators and the senators' clients Titus Quinctius and Quintus Servilius were elected consuls. 2The consuls have a year like the previous one, with a seditious beginning and then calm because of foreign war. 3The Sabines crossed the Crustumian plains in a hurried column, and after causing slaughter and burning around the river Anio, they were driven back from close to the Colline gate and the walls, but still drove off huge booty in men and cattle.
4The consul Servilius pursued them with an army ready for battle, and though he could not overtake their column itself on favourable ground, he carried out his raids so widely that he left nothing untouched by war and returned with many times as much booty taken. 5Among the Volsci, too, the state's business was excellently conducted, through the efforts both of the general and of the soldiers. 5First they fought on level ground with standards joined, with huge slaughter on both sides and very great bloodshed. 6And the Romans, because their smaller numbers made them quicker to feel their losses, would have given ground, had not the consul roused the line with a timely lie, shouting that the enemy were fleeing on the other wing.
6They charged, and while they thought they were winning, they won. 7The consul, fearing that by pressing too hard he might renew the contest, gave the signal for retreat. 8A few days intervened, with quiet kept on both sides as if by a tacit truce, during which a huge number of men from all the peoples of the Volsci and Aequi came into the camp, not doubting that the Romans, if they became aware of it, would leave by night. 9And so at about the third watch they come to attack the camp. 10Quinctius, having calmed the uproar which the sudden alarm had stirred up, ordered the soldiers to stay quiet in their tents, led out a cohort of the Hernici to an outpost, and ordered the horn-blowers and trumpeters, mounted on horses, to sound before the rampart and to keep the enemy anxious until daylight.
11For the rest of the night everything in the camp was so peaceful that the Romans even had the chance to sleep. 11The Volsci were kept on the alert as if for an enemy attack by the sight of armed infantry, whom they believed to be both more numerous than they were and Romans, and by the snorting and neighing of the horses, which were restive both because of the unaccustomed riders sitting on them and because of the noise assailing their ears besides.