Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 26
Frank Gardner Moore, Professor Emeritus in Columbia University, Ed.

27. such utterances were interrupted on the night before the Quinquatrus¹ by a fire which broke out in several places at once about the Forum. [2] at the same time the seven shops which later were five, and the bankers' offices, now called Tabernae Novae, caught fire;² then private houses took fire —for there were no basilicas then, —the quarter of the Quarries³ took fire, and the Fish Market and the [p. 105]Atrium [4] Regium.⁴ the Temple of Vesta was saved⁵ with difficulty chiefly by the aid of thirteen slaves, who were purchased by the state and [5] manumitted. the fire held on night and day, and no one doubted that it was the work of incendiaries, since the flames had burst out in several places at once, and places not adjacent at [6] that. accordingly the consul on the authority of the senate declared before an assembly that any man who made known through whose action the fire had been kindled should have, if a freeman, money as his reward, if a slave, his [7] freedom. led by that reward a slave of the Capuan Calavii —his name was Manus —declared that his masters, and in addition five young men, Capuan nobles, whose fathers had been beheaded by Quintus Fulvius, had set that fire, and would set others everywhere if they were not arrested. they were arrested, themselves and their slaves. and at first they tried to discredit the informer and the [8] information. it was said that, having been punished by scourging the day before, he had left his masters; that owing to anger and worthless character he had made up a charge out of a chance [9] occurrence. but when they were accused in the presence of the informer, and an examination⁶ of those who had served them in the crime began in the centre of the Forum, they all confessed, and punishment was visited upon the masters and their slave accomplices. the informer was given his liberty and twenty thousand [10] asses.

as the consul Laevinus was passing Capua, a multitude of Capuans flocked about him, begging him with tears to be permitted to go to the senate at Rome, to plead with them, if they could at last be touched by any sense of pity, not to proceed utterly to destroy [p. 107]them, and not to allow Quintus Flaccus to wipe out⁷ the Capuan [11] people. Flaccus said that he had no personal quarrel with the Capuans; his enmity was national, and would be as long as he knew they were so disposed toward the Roman people. for no nation, no people in the world was more hostile to the Roman [12] people. he was keeping them shut up inside the walls for the reason that, if any escaped in some way, they roamed like wild beasts over the country and mangled and slew all that met them. some had deserted, he said, to Hannibal, others had gone to set Rome on [13] fire. in the half —burned Forum the consul would find traces of the crime of the Capuans. Vesta's temple had been the object of attack, and the eternal fires, and, hidden away in its holy place, the fateful pledge⁸ of Roman [14] rule. he did not think it at all safe to give the Capuans permission to enter the walls of [15] Rome. after Flaccus had required the Capuans to take an oath that they would return to Capua on the fifth day after they should receive the senate's answer, Laevinus bade them follow him to [16] Rome. surrounded by this multitude, while at the same time the Sicilians came out to meet him and followed him into Rome, he bore the appearance of a man grieving for the destruction of two very famous cities, and bringing into the city the vanquished in war to be the accusers of men of the greatest [17] eminence. nevertheless it was in regard to the state and the provinces that the two consuls first introduced business into the senate.

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