In consequence of the sickness, the consuls laboured under a paucity of hands in conducting the government; when not finding more than one senator for each embassy, they were obliged to attach to it two knights.

Except from the pestilence and the scarcity, there was no internal or external annoyance during those two years.

But as soon as these causes of anxiety disappeared, all those evils by which the state had hitherto been distressed, started up, discord at home, war abroad.
53.

In the consulship of Mamercus AEmilius and Caius Valerius Potitus, the AEquans made preparations for war; the Volscians, though not by public authority, taking up arms, and entering the service as volunteers for pay.

When on the report of these enemies having started up, (for they had now passed into the Latin and Hernican land,) Marcus Maenius, a proposer of an agrarian law, would obstruct Valerius the consul when holding a levy, and when no one took the military oath against his own will under the protection of the tribune; an account is suddenly brought that the citadel of Carventa had been seized by the enemy.