and implored their aid. By universal consent the levy was decreed and held. When the consuls gave public notice that there was no time for considering claims for exemption; that all the young men should attend on the following morning at dawn in the Campus Martius; that when the war was over, they would afford time for inquiring into the excuses of those who had not given in their names; that the man should be held as a deserter, whose excuse they found unsatisfactory; all the youth attended on the following day. The cohorts [70] chose each their centurions: two senators were placed at the head of each cohort. We have read that all these measures were carried out with such expedition that the standards, which had been brought forth from the treasury on that very day by the quæstors and conveyed to the Campus, started from thence at the fourth hour; and the newly-raised army halted at the tenth milestone, followed only by a few cohorts of veteran soldiers as volunteers. The following day brought the enemy within sight, and camp was joined to camp near Corbio. On the third day, when resentment urged on the Romans, and a consciousness of guilt for having so often rebelled and a feeling of despair, the others, there was no delay in coming to an engagement. In the Roman army, though the two consuls were invested with equal authority, the supreme command was, by the concession of Agrippa, resigned to his colleague, an arrangement most salutary in the conduct of matters of great importance; and he who was preferred made a polite return for the ready condescension of the other, who thus lowered himself, by making him his confidant in all his plans and sharing with him his honours, and by putting him on an equality with him although he was by no means as capable. On the field of battle Quinctius commanded the right, Agrippa the left wing; the command of the centre was intrusted to Spurius Postumius Albus, as lieutenant-general. Publius Sulpicius, the other lieutenant-general, was placed at the head of the cavalry. The infantry on the right wing fought with distinguished valour, while the Volscians offered a stout resistance. Publius Sulpicius with his cavalry broke through the centre of the enemy's line; and, though he might have returned thence in the same way to his own party, before the enemy restored their broken ranks, it seemed more advisable to attack them in the rear, and in a moment, charging the line in the rear, he would have dispersed the enemy by the double attack, had not the cavalry of the Volscians and Æquans kept him for some time engaged by a mode of fighting like his own. Then indeed Sulpicius declared that there was no time for delay, crying out that they were surrounded and would be cut off from their own friends, unless they united all their efforts and despatched the engagement with the cavalry. Nor was it enough to rout the enemy without disabling them; they must slay horses and men, that none might