1With everything abandoned, without a head, without strength, the city was protected by its guardian gods and its fortune, which gave the Volscians and Aequi the mind of plunderers rather than of enemies; 1for their spirit conceived no hope, not only of taking, but not even of approaching the walls of Rome, and the roofs seen in the distance and the overhanging hills so turned their minds away that, a murmur arising everywhere throughout the camp as to why they should waste their time idle, without plunder, in a waste and deserted land amid the rotting carcasses of cattle and men, when they could make for untouched places, the Tusculan land rich in supplies, they suddenly pulled up their standards and passed by cross-country routes through the territory of Labici into the Tusculan hills.
3There all the violence and storm of the war was turned. 3Meanwhile the Hernici and Latins, moved by shame too and not by pity alone, if they neither opposed the common enemy as he made for the city of Rome in hostile column nor brought any help to their besieged allies, joined their armies and proceeded to Rome. 5When they did not find the enemy there, following reports and tracks they met them as they were coming down from the Tusculan territory into the Alban valley. 5There the fight was far from equal, and their loyalty brought the allies little luck for the present. 6At Rome the slaughter caused by disease was no less than that which had been caused among the allies by the sword.
6The consul who alone survived died; 6other distinguished men died as well, the augurs Manius Valerius and Titus Verginius Rutilus, and the chief curio Servius Sulpicius; 6and among obscure persons too the violence of the disease spread far and wide. 7And the senate, destitute of human help, turned the people to the gods and to vows: they were ordered to go with their wives and children to make supplication and to beg the peace of the gods. 8Summoned by public authority to what their own afflictions were already forcing each of them to do, they filled all the shrines. 8Everywhere mothers lay prostrate, sweeping the temples with their hair, begging pardon for the anger of heaven and an end to the plague.