In a short time, when there was no longer any danger from him, the people, recollecting only his virtues, were seized with regret for him.

A pestilence too which soon followed, no causes of so great a calamity presenting themselves, seemed to a great many to have arisen from the punishment inflicted on Manlius: "The Capitol" [they said] "had been polluted with the blood of its preserver; nor was it agreeable to the gods that the punishment of him by whom their temples had been rescued from the hands of the enemy, had been brought in a manner before their eyes." 21.

The pestilence was succeeded by a scarcity of the fruits of the earth, and the report of both calamities by spreading [was followed] by a variety of wars in the following year, Lucius Valerius a fourth time, Aulus Manlius a third time, Servius Sulpicius a third time, Lucius Lucretius, Lucius AEmilius a third time, Marcus Trebonius, being military tribunes with consular power.

Besides the Volscians, assigned by some fatality to give eternal employment to the Roman soldiery, and the colonies of Circeii and Velitrae, long meditating a revolt, and Latium which had been suspected, new enemies suddenly sprung up in the people of Lanuvium, which had been a most faithful city.

The fathers, considering that this arose from contempt, because the revolt of their own citizens, the people of Velitrae, had been so long unpunished, decreed that a proposition should be submitted to the people at the earliest opportunity on the subject of declaring war against them: and in order that the commons might be the more disposed for that service, they appointed five commissioners for distributing the Pomptine land, and three for conducting a colony to Nepete.