5.19
By this time the Games
and the Latin Festival had been celebrated afresh,
and the water drawn off from the Alban Lake on the
fields, and now the fated doom was closing over
Veii. Accordingly the commander destined by the
Fates for the destruction of that city and the
salvation of his country -M. Furius Camillus -was
nominated Dictator. He appointed as his Master of
the Horse P. Cornelius Scipio. With the change in
the command everything else suddenly changed; men's
hopes were different, their spirits were different,
even the fortunes of the City wore a different
aspect. His first measure was to execute military
justice upon those who had fled during the panic
from the camp, and he made the soldiers realise that
it was not the enemy who was most to be feared. He
then appointed a day for the enrolment of troops,
and in the interim went to Veii to encourage the
soldiers, after which he returned to Rome to raise a
fresh army. Not a man tried to escape enlistment.
Even foreign troops -Latins and Hernicans -came to
offer assistance for the war. The Dictator formally
thanked them in the senate, and as all the
preparations for war were now sufficiently advanced,
he vowed, in pursuance of a senatorial decree, that
on the capture of Veii he would celebrate the Great
Games and restore and dedicate the temple of Matuta
the Mother, which had been originally dedicated by
Servius Tullius. He left the City with his army amid
a general feeling of anxious expectation rather than
of hopeful confidence on the part of the citizens,
and his first engagement was with the Faliscans and
Capenates in the territory of Nepete. As usual where
everything was managed with consummate skill and
prudence, success followed. He not only defeated the
enemy in the field, but he stripped them of their
camp and secured immense booty. The greater part was
sold and the proceeds paid over to the quaestor, the
smaller share was given to the soldiers. From there
the army was led to Veii. The forts were constructed
more closely together. Frequent skirmishes had
occurred at random in the space between the city
wall and the Roman lines, and an edict was issued
that none should fight without orders, thereby
keeping the soldiers to the construction of the
siege works. By far the greatest and most difficult
of these was a mine which was commenced, and
designed to lead into the enemies' citadel. That the
work might not be interrupted, or the troops
exhausted by the same men being continuously
employed in underground labour, he formed the army
into six divisions. Each division was told off in
rotation to work for six hours at a time; the work
went on without any intermission until they had made
a way into the citadel.