While the Roman dominion was thus extended without, wise and patriotic men of both orders saw the necessity of internal concord, and of abolishing antiquated and now mischievous claims and pretensions. In 339, therefore, the patrician consul Tib. Æmilius named his plebeian colleague Q. Publilius Philo dictator, who then brought forward the following laws to complete the constitution. (1) The patricians should give a previous consent to any law that was to be brought before the centuries; for as such a law must previously have passed the senate, and the centuries could make no alteration in it, their opposition, it would seem, could hardly have any ground but prejudice and spite. (2) The _Plebiscita_ should be binding on all Quirites. (3) One of the censors should of necessity be a plebeian. The curies were induced, we know not how, to give their assent to these laws.[40] Internal discord was now at an end, and the golden age of Roman heroism and virtue began. THE SECOND SAMNITE WAR [Sidenote: [338-325 B.C.]] The affairs for the ten succeeding years are of comparative unimportance. The Romans and Samnites both knew that another war was inevitable, and they made the necessary preparations for it. In the year 327 the people of the Greek town of Palæopolis (_Old Town_) being in alliance with the Samnites, began to exercise hostilities against the Roman colonists in Campania. As they refused to give satisfaction, the consul Q. Publilius Philo was sent against them, while his colleague, L. Cornelius Lentulus, watched the motions of the Samnites. Publilius encamped between Palæopolis and its kindred town of Neapolis (_New Town_), and on his sending word home that there was a large body of Samnite and Nolan troops in them, envoys were sent to Samnium to complain of this breach of treaty. The Samnites replied that those were volunteers, over whom the state had no control; that moreover they had not, as the Romans had alleged, excited the people of Fundi and Formiæ to revolt, while the Romans had sent a colony to Fregellæ, in a district which of right was theirs; that, in fine, there was no use in arguing or complaining when the plain between Capua and Suessula offered a space on which they might decide whose should be the empire of Italy. The Roman fetial then veiled his head, and with hands raised to heaven prayed the gods to prosper the arms and counsels of Rome if right was on her side; if not, to blast and confound them. Right certainly was not on the side of Rome, for she had first violated the treaty; but war was not to be averted, and it was now to begin.