1So, leaving a garrison in the camp, they went out and invaded Roman territory with such tumult that they carried terror even to the city. 2The unexpectedness of the thing, too, caused more alarm, because nothing could have been less feared than that a defeated enemy, almost besieged in his own camp, should be thinking of plunder; and the country people, rushing in panic to the gates, were shouting not that it was a raid or small bands of plunderers, but, magnifying everything with groundless fear, that armies and legions of the enemy were at hand and were rushing on the city in hostile column. 4Those nearest them passed on to others what they had heard, uncertain and therefore all the more exaggerated.
4The running and the shouting of men calling to arms were not far from the panic of a captured city. 5As it happened, the consul Quinctius had returned to Rome from Algidus. 5That was a remedy for the fear; 5and when the tumult had been quieted, rebuking them for fearing a beaten enemy, he placed guards at the gates. 6Then, having summoned the senate, when, on the authority of the senators, he had proclaimed a suspension of public business and set out to protect the borders, leaving Quintus Servilius as prefect of the city, he did not find the enemy in the fields. 7By the other consul the matter was handled outstandingly; 8knowing where the enemy would come, he attacked them as they marched along, weighed down with plunder and therefore in a more encumbered column, and made their raid a deadly one.
8Few of the enemy escaped from the ambush; 8all the plunder was recovered. 8So the return of the consul Quinctius to the city put an end to the suspension of business, which lasted four days. 8Then a census was held and the purification ceremony was completed by Quinctius. 9The number of citizens counted is said to have been one hundred and four thousand seven hundred and fourteen, besides orphan boys and girls. 10Among the Aequi nothing memorable was done after that. 10They withdrew into their towns, allowing their property to be burned and plundered. 10The consul, after marching several times in hostile column through the whole of the enemy's territory, laying it waste, returned to Rome with great glory and plunder.