Читать книгу THE HISTORY OF ROME (Complete Edition in 4 Volumes) - Livy - Страница 138

The elections were then held: Lucius Æbutius and Publius Servilius being elected consuls, enter on their office on the calends of August, which was then considered as the commencement of the year.109 This was a distressing time, and it so happened that the season was pestilential to the city and country, and not more to men than to cattle; and they increased the malignity of the distemper, by admitting110 the cattle and the peasants into the city through dread of devastation. This collection of animals of every kind mixed together, distressed both the citizens by the unusual stench, and the peasants crowded together into their close apartments, with heat, want of sleep, and their attendance on each other, and contact itself propagated the disease. Whilst with difficulty sustaining these calamities, ambassadors from the Hernicians suddenly bring word that the Æquans and Volscians, having united their forces, had pitched their camp in their territory, that from thence they were depopulating their frontiers with an immense army. Besides that the thinness of the senate was a proof to the allies that the state was prostrated by the pestilence, they further received this melancholy answer: "That the Hernicians, with the Latins, must now defend their possessions by their own exertions. That the Roman city, through the sudden anger of the gods, was now depopulated by disease. If any respite from that calamity should come, that they would afford aid to their allies, as they had done the year before, and always on other occasions." The allies departed, carrying home, instead of the melancholy news (they had brought), news still more melancholy, as being persons who were now obliged to sustain by their own means a war, which they had sustained with difficulty when backed by the power of Rome. The enemy did not confine themselves any longer to the Hernician territory. They proceed thence with determined hostility into the Roman territories, which were already devastated without the injuries of war. Where, when there was no one to meet them, not even an unarmed person, and they passed through every place destitute not only of troops, but even of the cultivation of the husbandman, they reached as far as the third stone on the Gabinian road. Æbutius, the Roman consul, was dead; his colleague, Servilius, was dragging out life with slender hope of recovery; most of the leading men, the chief part of the patricians, all of the military age, were lying sick, so that strength was wanting not only for the expeditions, which, amid such an alarm the conjuncture required, but scarcely had they sufficient even for quietly mounting guard. The senators whose age and health permitted them, discharged personally the duty of sentinels. The going around111 and attending to these was assigned to the ædiles of the people; on them devolved the chief administration of affairs and the majesty of the consular authority.