the first time compelled by their tribunes to establish forts and entrench their camp, and pass both summer and winter in the enemy's country for seven years in succession. The generals were complained of, and as they seemed to be carrying on the siege remissly, they were removed, and others appointed, among them Camillus, who was then tribune for the second time. But he effected nothing in the siege at that time, because he was sent to fight the Faliscans and Capenates, who had insulted the Roman territory throughout the war with Veii, when the Roman army was engaged elsewhere, but were now driven by Camillus with great loss to the shelter of their city walls. III. After this, while the war was at its height, much alarm was caused by the strange phenomenon seen at the Alban lake, which could not be accounted for on ordinary physical principles. The season was autumn, and the summer had not been remarkable for rain or for moist winds, so that many of the streams and marshes in Italy were quite dried up, and others held out with difficulty, while the rivers, as is usual in summer, were very low and deeply sunk in their bed. But the Alban lake, which is self-contained, lying as it does surrounded by fertile hills, began for no reason, except it may be the will of Heaven, to increase in volume and to encroach upon the hillsides near it, until it reached their very tops, rising quietly and without disturbance. At first the portent only amazed the shepherds and herdsmen of the neighbourhood; but when the lake by the weight of its waters broke through the thin isthmus of land which restrained it, and poured down in a mighty stream through the fertile plains below to the sea, then not only the Romans, but all the people of Italy, thought it a portent of the gravest character. Much talk about it took place in the camp before Veii, so that the besieged also learned what was happening at the lake.