quietly mounting guard. Those senators, whose age and health permitted them, personally discharged the duty of sentinels. The patrol and general supervision was assigned to the plebeian aediles: on them devolved the chief conduct of affairs and the majesty of the consular authority. The commonwealth thus desolate, since it was without a head, and without strength, was saved by the guardian gods and good fortune of the city, which inspired the Volscians and Æquans with the disposition of freebooters rather than of enemies; for so far were their minds from entertaining any hope not only of taking but even of approaching the walls of Rome, and so thoroughly did the sight of the houses in the distance, and the adjacent hills, divert their thoughts, that, on a murmur arising throughout the entire camp--why should they waste time in indolence without booty in a wild and desert land, amid the pestilence engendered by cattle and human beings, when they could repair to places as yet unattacked--the Tusculan territory abounding in wealth? They suddenly pulled up their standards,[11] and, by cross-country marches, passed through the Lavican territory to the Tusculan hills: to that quarter the whole violence and storm of the war was directed. In the meantime the Hernicans and Latins, influenced not only by compassion but by a feeling of shame, if they neither opposed the common enemy who were making for the city of Rome with a hostile army, nor afforded any aid to their allies when besieged, marched to Rome with united forces. Not finding the enemy there, they followed their tracks in the direction they were reported to have taken, and met them as they were coming down from Tusculan territory into the Alban valley: there a battle was fought under circumstances by no means equal; and their fidelity proved by no means favourable to the allies for the time being. The havoc caused by pestilence at Rome was not less than that caused by the sword among the allies: the only surviving consul died, as well as other distinguished men, Marcus Valerius, Titus Verginius Rutilus, augurs: Servius Sulpicius, chief priest of the curies:[12] while among undistinguished persons the virulence of the disease spread extensively: and the senate, destitute of human aid, directed the people's attention to the gods and to vows: they were ordered to go and offer supplications with their wives and children, and to entreat the favour of Heaven. Besides the fact that their own sufferings obliged each to do so, when summoned by public authority, they filled all the shrines; the prostrate matrons in every quarter sweeping the temples with their hair, begged for a remission of the divine displeasure, and a termination to the pestilence.