Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 3
Benjamin Oliver Foster, Ph.D., Ed.

7. In this helpless plight, without a leader and¹ without strength, the commonwealth was saved by its tutelary gods and the good fortune of the City, which inspired the Volsci and Aequi with the spirit of plunderers rather than of soldiers. [2] For they were so far from entertaining any hope of approaching, not to speak of capturing, the walls of Rome, and the distant sight of her roofs and beetling hills so damped their ardour, that the entire army began to [3??] murmur, and to ask why they should waste their time in desolate and abandoned fields, where bodies of beasts and men lay rotting and there was no booty, when they might be invading an unspoiled country, the land of Tusculum, abounding in wealth; so they suddenly pulled up their standards, and passed by cross-roads through the Labican fields to the hills of Tusculum, and on that point all the impetus and fury of the war converged. [4] Meanwhile the Hernici and Latins, moved not by pity alone but by shame, if they should fail to oppose the common enemy, advancing in force against the City of Rome, and should bring no assistance to their besieged allies, united their armies and proceeded to the City. [5] Failing to find the enemy there, but following the report and traces of his march, they met him as he was coming down from the Tusculan valley into that of Alba. There they engaged the invaders on far from equal terms, and their loyalty to their friends was for the moment not attended with success.

[6] In Rome the ravages of the disease were no less fatal than those of the sword had been amongst her allies. The surviving consul died; and death took other famous men, the augurs Marcus Valerius and [p. 27]Titus Verginius Rutulus, and the head curio,² Servius B.C. 463 Sulpicius; [7] as for the base rabble, the violence of the plague stalked at large amongst them; until the senate, finding no help in man, sent the people to the gods in prayer, commanding them to take their wives and children and supplicate Heaven for forgiveness. [8] Thus summoned by the state's authority to do what each was impelled to by his own distress, they crowded all the shrines. Everywhere were prostrate matrons, sweeping the floors of the temples with their hair, while they besought the angry gods to grant them pardon and end the pestilence.