41. To Fabius, in consideration of his extraordinary merit in the conquest of Etruria, the consulship was continued. Decius was appointed his colleague. Valerius was created praetor a fourth time. The consuls divided the provinces between them. Etruria fell to Decius, Samnium to Fabius. The latter, having marched to Nuceria, rejected the application of the people of Alfaterna, who then sued for peace, because they had not accepted it when offered, and by force of arms compelled them to surrender. A battle was fought with the Samnites; the enemy were overcome without much difficulty: nor would the memory of that engagement have been preserved, except that in it the Marsians first appeared in arms against the Romans. The Pelignians, imitating the defection of the Marsians, met the same fate. The other consul, Decius, was likewise very successful in his operations: through terror he compelled the Tarquinians to supply his army with corn, and to sue for a truce for forty years. He took several forts from the Volsinians by assault, some of which he demolished, that they might not serve as receptacles to the enemy, and by extending his operations through every quarter, diffused such a dread of his arms, that the whole Etrurian nation sued to the consul for an alliance: this they did not obtain; but a truce for a year was granted them. The pay of the Roman army for that year was furnished by the enemy; and two tunics for each soldier were exacted from them: this was the purchase of the truce. The tranquillity now established in Etruria was interrupted by a sudden insurrection of the Umbrians, a nation which had suffered no injury from the war, except what inconvenience the country had felt in the passing of the army. These, by calling into the field all their own young men, and forcing a great part of the Etrurians to resume their arms, made up such a numerous force, that speaking of themselves with ostentatious vanity and of the Romans with contempt, they boasted that they would leave Decius behind in Etruria, and march away to besiege Rome; which design of theirs being reported to the consul Decius, he removed by long marches from Etruria towards their city, and sat down in the district of Pupinia, in readiness to act according to the intelligence received of the enemy. Nor was the insurrection of the Umbrians slighted at Rome: their very threats excited tears among the people, who had experienced, in the calamities suffered from the Gauls, how insecure a city they inhabited. Deputies were therefore despatched to the consul Fabius with directions, that, if he had any respite from the war of the Samnites, he should with all haste lead his army into Umbria. The consul obeyed the order, and by forced marches proceeded to Mevania, where the forces of the Umbrians then lay. The unexpected arrival of the consul, whom they had believed to be sufficiently employed in Samnium, far distant from their country, so thoroughly affrighted the