=43.= In the meantime, Rome suffered another visitation of pestilence, in which thousands of people died daily in the streets. The Æquians and Volscians ravaged the country up to the walls of Rome; and in addition to their other miseries, the crowded multitude were threatened with starvation. Their civil grievances were not to be redressed by anything less than a thorough and radical reform. In the year 462 B. C., the tribune Terenti´lius Harsa proposed the appointment of a board of ten commissioners, half patrician and half plebeian, to revise the constitution, define the duties of consuls and tribunes, and frame a code of laws from the mass of decisions and precedents. This movement was the occasion for ten years of violent contention, during which Rome was several times near falling into the hands of the Volscians, and was once actually occupied by a band of exiles and slaves under a Sabine leader, Herdo´nius, who seized the Capitol and demanded the restoration of all banished citizens to their rights in Rome. =44.= Chief of the exiles was Kæso Quinc´tius, son of the great Cincinna´tus, who had been expelled for raising riots in the Forum, to prevent any action of the people upon the Terentilian law. The invading party was defeated, and every man slain. The father of Kæso was then consul. In revenge for the fate of his son, he declared that the law should never pass while he was in office; and that he would immediately lead the entire citizen-soldiery out to war, thus preventing a meeting of the tribes. Nay more, the augurs were to accompany him, and so consecrate the ground of the encampment, that a lawful assembly could be held under the absolute power of the consuls, and repeal all the laws which had ever been enacted at Rome under the authority of the tribunes. At the close of his term, Cincinnatus declared that he would appoint a dictator, whose authority would supersede that of all other officers, patrician or plebeian. All these things could be done under the strict forms of the Roman constitution; but the Senate and the wiser patricians saw that the patience of the commons might be taxed too far, and persuaded Cincinnatus to forego so extreme an exercise of his power. =45.= War with the Æquians went on, and treaties were only made to be broken. In the year 458 B. C., the entire Roman army was entrapped in a pass of the Alban Hills, surrounded by the enemy, and in imminent danger of destruction. In this crisis, Cincinnatus, who had retired from the consulship to resume his favorite toil of farming, was called to be dictator, with absolute power. The messengers of the Senate found him at his plow, in his little garden-plot across the Tiber. He left the plow in the furrow, hastened to Rome, levied a new army in a single day, went out and defeated the Æquians, and returned the next evening in triumph. RECAPITULATION.