He, after he had appointed Aulus Cornelius Cossus his master of the horse, content with the consular army, declared war against the Caeritians by order of the people, with the sanction of the senate.
20.

Then for the first time were the Caeritians seized with a real dread of war, as if there was greater power in the words of the enemy to indicate war than in their own acts, who had provoked the Romans by devastation; and they perceived how ill suited the contest was to their strength.

They repented of their depredations, and cursed the Tarquinians as the instigators of the revolt.

Nor did any one think of preparing arms and hostilities; but each strenuously urged the necessity of sending ambassadors to sue for pardon for their error.

When their ambassadors applied to the senate, being referred by the senate to the people, they implored the gods, whose sacred utensils they had received in the Gallic war and treated with all due ceremony, that the same compassion for them might influence the Romans now in a flourishing condition, which had formerly influenced themselves when the state of the Roman people was distressed; and turning to the temple of Vesta, they invoked the bonds of hospitality subsisting [between themselves] and the flamens and vestals entered into by them with holy and religious zeal: "Would any one believe that persons, who possessed such merits, had suddenly become enemies without cause?
or if they had committed any act in a hostile manner, that they had, through design rather than under the influence of error from frenzy, so acted, as to cancel their former acts of kindness by recent injuries, more especially when conferred on persons so grateful, and that they would choose to themselves as enemies the Roman people, now in the most flourishing state and most successful in war, whose friendship they had cultivated when they were distressed?
That they should not call it design, which should rather be called force and necessity.