When those persons attended without reluctance, being conducted to the senate by the consuls, they so answered to the questions put to them, that they were dismissed more suspected than they had come.

Upon this war was considered as inevitable.

Spurius Fusius, one of the consuls to whom that province had fallen, having marched against the AEquans, found the enemy committing depredations in the country of the Hernicians; and being ignorant of their numbers, because they had never been seen all together, he rashly hazarded an engagement with an army not a match for their forces.

Being beaten from his ground at the first onset, he betook himself to his camp: nor was that an end of the danger: for both on the next night and the following day, his camp was beset and assaulted with such vigour, that not even a messenger could be sent from thence to Rome.

The Hernicians brought an account both that a defeat had taken place, and that the army was besieged: and they struck such terror into the senate, that a charge was given to the other consul Posthumius, that he should "take care that the commonwealth sustained no injury,"[107] which form of a decree has ever been deemed to be one of extreme exigency.