1Rarely at other times was the speech of a popular tribune more welcome to the plebs than was then that of a most severe consul. 2The young men too, who amid such fears had been accustomed to use refusal of military service as their sharpest weapon against the senators, were now looking towards arms and war. 2And the flight of the country people, and those robbed and wounded in the fields, reporting things more shocking than what was before their eyes, filled the whole city with anger. 3When the senate met, there indeed all turned towards Quinctius, gazing on him as the one champion of Roman majesty, and the leading senators said that his speech was worthy of the consular command, worthy of his many former consulships, worthy of his whole life, full of honours often held and still more often deserved.
4Other consuls, they said, had either fawned on the plebs by betraying the senators' dignity or, by defending the rights of their order harshly, had made the multitude more unruly in trying to tame it; 4Titus Quinctius had made a speech mindful of the majesty of the senators, of the harmony of the orders, and above all of the times. 5They begged him and his colleague to take the commonwealth in hand; 5they begged the tribunes to be of one mind with the consuls in wishing to drive the war back from the city and its walls, and to make the plebs obedient to the senators at so critical a moment: the common fatherland, they said, appealed to the tribunes and implored their help, its fields laid waste and the city all but stormed.
6By universal consent a levy was decreed and held. 6When the consuls had announced in the assembly that there was no time for examining excuses; 6that all the younger men should present themselves at first light the next day on the Campus Martius; 7that when the war was over they would give time for examining the excuses of those who had not given in their names; 7that anyone whose excuse they did not accept would be treated as a deserter: all the young men were present the next day. 8Each cohort chose its own centurions, and two senators were put in command of each cohort. 8We are told that all this was completed so speedily that the standards, brought out from the treasury by the quaestors that very day and carried to the Campus, moved off from the Campus at the fourth hour of the day, and the new army, with a few cohorts of veterans following voluntarily, halted at the tenth milestone.
9The following day brought the enemy into sight, and camp was joined to camp near Corbio. 10On the third day, since anger spurred on the Romans, and the enemy, after so many rebellions, were spurred by consciousness of guilt and by despair, there was no delay in fighting.