A disgraceful decision of the people regarding the boundaries of their allies marred the honourable victory obtained over their enemies. The people of Aricia [72] and of Ardea, who had frequently contended in arms concerning a disputed piece of land, wearied out by many losses on either side, appointed the Roman people as arbitrators. When they arrived to support their claims, an assembly of the people being granted them by the magistrates, the matter was debated with great warmth. The witnesses being now produced, when it was time for the tribes to be called, and for the people to give their votes, Publius Scaptius, a plebeian advanced in years, rose up and said, "Consuls, if it is permitted me to speak on the public interest, I will not suffer the people to be led into a mistake in this matter." When the consuls said that he, as unworthy of attention, ought not to be heard, and, on his shouting that the public interest was being betrayed, ordered him to be put aside, he appealed to the tribunes. The tribunes, as they are nearly always directed by the multitude rather than direct it, granted Scaptius leave to say what he pleased in deference to the people, who were anxious to hear him. He then began: That he was now in his eighty-third year, and that he had served in that district which was now in dispute, not even then a young man, as he was already serving in his twentieth campaign, when operations were going on at Corioli. He therefore brought forward a fact forgotten by length of time--one, however, deeply fixed in his memory, namely, that the district now in dispute had belonged to the territory of Corioli, and, after the taking of Corioli, it had become come by right of war the public property of the Roman people. That he was surprised how the states of Ardea and Aricia could have the face to hope to deprive the Roman people, whom instead of lawful owners they had made arbitrators; of a district the right of which they had never claimed while the state of Corioli existed. That he for his part had but a short time to live; he could not, however, bring himself, old as he now was, to desist claiming by his voice, the only means he now had, a district which, as a soldier, he had contributed to acquire, as far as a man could. That he strenuously advised the people not to ruin their own interest by an idle feeling of delicacy.