1To the disasters suffered at the hands of the enemy the decemvirs add two monstrous crimes, one in the field and one at home. 2Lucius Siccius, who, among the Sabines, out of hatred for the decemvirs, was sowing talk of electing tribunes and of secession among the mass of the soldiers in secret conversations, they send ahead to reconnoitre a site for a camp. 3The soldiers whom they had sent as his companions on that mission are given the task of attacking him in a convenient place and killing him. 4They did not kill him unavenged; 4for several of the assassins fell around him as he fought back, since, exceptionally powerful as he was, he defended himself, though surrounded, with a courage equal to his strength.
5The rest report in the camp that he had fallen headlong into an ambush; 5that Siccius, fighting splendidly, had been lost, and some soldiers with him. 6At first the messengers were believed; 6but then a cohort that had set out with the decemvirs' permission to bury those who had fallen, when they saw that no body there had been stripped, and that Siccius lay in the middle in his armour with all the bodies turned towards him, while there was no body of the enemy nor any tracks of their departure, brought back his body, declaring that he had certainly been killed by his own men. 7The camp was full of indignation, and it was resolved that Siccius should be carried straight to Rome, had not the decemvirs hastened to give him a military funeral at public expense.
7He was buried amid the deep grief of the soldiers, and the decemvirs' reputation among the common people was at its worst.