This collection of animals of every kind mixed together, distressed both the citizens by the unusual stench, and the peasants crowded together into their close apartments, with heat, want of sleep, and their attendance on each other, and contact itself propagated the disease.

Whilst with difficulty sustaining these calamities, ambassadors from the Hernicians suddenly bring word that the AEquans and Volscians, having united their forces, had pitched their camp in their territory, that from thence they were depopulating their frontiers with an immense army.

Besides that the thinness of the senate was a proof to the allies that the state was prostrated by the pestilence, they further received this melancholy answer: "That the Hernicians, with the Latins, must now defend their possessions by their own exertions.

That the Roman city, through the sudden anger of the gods, was now depopulated by disease.

If any respite from that calamity should come, that they would afford aid to their allies, as they had done the year before, and always on other occasions." The allies departed, carrying home, instead of the melancholy news (they had brought), news still more melancholy, as being persons who were now obliged to sustain by their own means a war, which they had sustained with difficulty when backed by the power of Rome.