The Sidicinians and Campanians, on being thus abandoned, put themselves under the protection of the Latins, with whom the Volscians also formed an alliance. The Hernicans adhered to the Romans, and the Samnites also became their allies. As war between Rome and Latium seemed inevitable, T. Manlius Torquatus, and P. Decius Mus were made consuls for the ensuing year with a view to it. But the Latins would first try the path of peace and accommodation; and at the call, it is said, of the Roman senate, their two prætors and ten principal senators repaired to Rome. Audience was given to them on the Capitol, and nothing could be more reasonable than their demands. Though the Latins were now the more numerous people of the two, they only required a union of perfect equality,--one of the consuls and one-half of the senate to be Latins, while Rome should be the seat of government, and Romans the name of the united nation.[39] But the senate exclaimed against the unheard-of extravagance of these demands, the gods were invoked as witnesses of this scandalous breach of faith, and the consul Manlius vowed that if they consented to be thus dictated to, he would come girt with his sword into the senate-house and slay the first Latin he saw there. Tradition said, that when the gods were appealed to, and the Latin prætor L. Annius spoke with contempt of the Roman Jupiter, loud claps of thunder and a sudden storm of wind and rain told the anger of the deity, and that as Annius went off full of rage, he tumbled down the flight of steps and lay lifeless at the bottom. It was with difficulty that the magistrates saved the other envoys from the fury of the people. War was forthwith declared, and the consular armies were levied. THE LATIN WAR [Sidenote: [340 B.C.]] As the Latin legions were now in Campania (340), the Romans, instead of taking the direct route through Latium, made a circuit through the country of the Sabines, Marsians, and Pelignians, and being joined by the Samnites, and probably the Hernicans, came and encamped before the Latins near Capua. Here a dream presented itself to the consuls: the form of a man, of size more than human, appeared to each, and announced that the general on one side, the army on the other, was due to the Manes and Mother Earth; of whichever people the general should devote himself and the adverse legions, theirs would be the victory. The victims when slain portending the same, the consuls announced, in presence of their officers, that he of them whose forces first began to yield would devote himself for Rome.