During this period the Volscian wars continued, yet they may not have been of great importance, so that the Latins and Hernicans could by themselves make head against them. But another war weighed upon Rome alone,--that against the Veientines. Veientine wars are already mentioned under all the kings beginning with Romulus; but they are quite apocryphal. Veii, according to the latest researches, was about one German mile (5 Engl.) in circumference, as was Rome in the days of Servius Tullius. That there should have been two such large towns so near each other, almost within two or three German miles, is very remarkable: it shows how strong the opposition must have been in those times between the Latins and the Etruscans. The incidents of the war are diffusely told by Livy and Dionysius; and very prettily indeed by the former, who deemed it all to be true. A long and severe war against the Veientines may be held to be authentic. The details are found in Livy; there is nothing improbable in them, and the story of the death of Cn. Manlius, that vain attempt to elude Fate, has quite the colouring of antiquity. If the accounts of this fight be compared with those of the battle at the lake Regillus, a marked difference will be found. The many narratives of it are most likely taken from the laudations of the Fabian family, which were a tissue of repetitions, like the panegyrical λόγοι ἐπιτάφιοι. I believe that the plebeians always refused obedience to the consul elected by the patricians. The Fabii doubted also this time whether the plebeians would obey their orders; yet when the latter were filled with ardour for the fray, their co-operation decided the battle, and the Fabii were thus reconciled to them. With this reconciliation all the relations changed. Of the chiefs of the Fabii, who are mentioned as three brothers (they may have been clansmen), one had been slain; the two others who remained at the head of their house, had their eyes opened to the fact that the oligarchs had brought the state into a wretched condition. The Veientines were beaten; but the war still lasted, and although the Latins and Hernicans had been called into the field, the Volscians spread more and more. What was therefore most requisite was union. For this reason the Fabii themselves declared that the agrarian law must be granted; and in consequence from henceforth no Fabius became patrician consul, while on the other hand, the plebeians now elected Cæso Fabius, their former enemy, to be their consul. The most frightful commotion arose; the Fabii were looked upon by their own order as traitors. When their propositions are rejected, they leave the city, three hundred and six of them, and found on the Cremera a settlement of their clan and of several thousand plebeians who had joined them. This must have been a settlement of a peculiar kind; a colony it was not, as it had arisen _per secessionem_: it was a political emigration;