1Many movements and many attacks were made on this side and that in those days, because the enemy, superior in numbers, set about wearing down the Roman forces in many places, as though they would not be enough for everything; 2at the same time the camp was being attacked, and at the same time part of the army was sent to plunder Roman territory and to make an attempt on the city itself, if fortune should give any chance. 3Lucius Valerius was left to guard the city; the consul Postumius was sent to keep raids from the borders. 3Nothing was relaxed on any side in vigilance or toil; 4watches were posted in the city, outposts before the gates and garrisons on the walls, and, as was necessary in so great a tumult, a suspension of public business was kept for several days.
5Meanwhile in the camp the consul Furius, after at first enduring the siege quietly, burst out from the rear gate on the unwary enemy, and, though he could have pursued them, halted for fear that an assault might be made on the camp from some other side. 5Furius the legate — he was also the consul's brother — was carried too far by his charge; 6in his eagerness for pursuit he saw neither his own men returning nor the enemy's attack from behind. 6So, cut off, after often making many vain efforts to force a way for himself to the camp, he fell fighting fiercely; and the consul, turning back to the fight at the news that his brother was surrounded, while he threw himself into the thick of the struggle more rashly than cautiously enough, received a wound and was rescued with difficulty by those around him, and he both dismayed the spirits of his own men and made the enemy fiercer; 8inflamed by the slaughter of the legate and the wounding of the consul, they could no longer be withstood by any force, since the Romans, driven into the camp, were again besieged, a match for the enemy neither in hope nor in strength, and the whole issue would have come into danger, had not Titus Quinctius come to the rescue with foreign forces, the army of the Latins and the Hernici.
9He attacked from behind the Aequi, who were intent on the Roman camp and were fiercely displaying the legate's head, and at the same time, as a sally was made from the camp at a signal given by him from afar, he surrounded a great number of the enemy. 9Less slaughter but a more scattered flight was the lot of the Aequi in Roman territory; 10on these, as they straggled and drove off plunder, Postumius made an attack at several points where he had placed well-chosen detachments. 10These, fleeing in disorder with their column broken up, ran into Quinctius as he returned victorious with the wounded consul. 11Then the consular army, by an outstanding fight, avenged the consul's wound and the slaughter of the legate and the cohorts.
11Great losses were both inflicted and suffered on both sides in those days. 12It is hard, in so ancient a matter, to state as a believable fact with an exact figure how many fought or fell; 12yet Valerius Antias ventures to set down totals: that of the Romans five thousand eight hundred fell in Hernican territory; that of the Aequian plunderers who were roaming through Roman territory laying it waste, two thousand four hundred were killed by the consul Aulus Postumius; 13that the rest of the multitude, driving off plunder, which ran into Quinctius, got off with nowhere near equal slaughter; 13of these, he says, four thousand were killed and, tracing the number out precisely, two hundred and thirty.
13When they returned to Rome, the suspension of business was lifted. 14The sky was seen to blaze with a great deal of fire, and other portents either appeared before people's eyes or showed empty apparitions to the terrified. 14To avert these terrors a holiday of three days was proclaimed, during which all the shrines were filled with a crowd of men and women begging for the peace of the gods. 15Then the Latin and Hernican cohorts, after the senate had thanked them for their energetic service, were sent back to their homes. 15The thousand soldiers from Antium, because they had come as a belated help after the battle, were dismissed almost in disgrace.