Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 5
Benjamin Oliver Foster, Ph.D., Ed.

12. Incited by these speeches, the plebs¹ condemned the accused to pay each a fine of 10,000 pounds of bronze. It was in vain that Sergius blamed Fortune and the common chance of war, while Verginius begged that he might [2??] not be more unlucky at home than he had been in the campaign. [3] On them the wrath of the people was poured out, and the co-optation of the tribunes and the evasion of the Trebonian law were almost forgotten.

[4] The victorious tribunes, that the plebs might have an immediate reward for its judgment, proposed a land-law and forbade the gathering of the war-tax, notwithstanding that pay was needed for so many armies, whose campaigning, though successful, yet failed to realize the desired end in any war. [5] Thus, at Veii, they recovered the lost camp and strengthened it with fortresses and garrisons, led by the military tribunes Manius Aemilius and Caeso Fabius; Marcus Furius in the Faliscan country, and Gnaeus Cornelius in the territory of Capena, meeting no enemies afield, drove off booty, and burning farmhouses and crops, laid waste the land, but the towns they neither assaulted nor besieged; [6] in the Volscian [p. 45]country, however, after ravaging the fields, they² made a futile attack on Anxur, which was seated on an eminence, and finding force to be unavailing, began to invest it with a stockade and trench, under Valerius Potitus, who had got the command against the Volsci.

[7] While military affairs were in this posture, a quarrel that broke out at home aroused more energy than went to their making of wars; and since the tax could not be taken up, on account of the tribunes, and the generals were sent no money, while the soldiers were clamouring for their pay, the camp, too, was like to have been disrupted by the contagion of mutiny in the City. [8] In the midst of this hostility which the plebs felt towards the patricians, though the plebeian tribunes said that the time was now come to establish liberty, and to transfer the highest office from such as Sergius and Verginius to [9??] stout and courageous commoners, yet they got no further than the election of one plebeian (by way of asserting their right), namely, Publius Licinius Calvus, to be military tribune with consular powers; [10] the others chosen were patricians: Publius Manlius, Lucius Titinius, Publius Maelius, Lucius Furius Medullinus, Lucius Publilius Volscus. [11] The plebeians themselves were amazed that they had gained so important a point, and not alone the man who had been chosen, one that had held no offices before, but was only a senator of long standing, now well on in years. [12] There is no unanimity of opinion why he was selected as the first and fittest to taste of the new honours. Some think it was the favour of his cousin³ Gnaeus Cornelius, who as tribune of the soldiers the year before had granted triple pay [p. 47]to the cavalrymen, ' that got him his promotion to so⁴ great an office; others, that he himself made a timely speech on the harmony of the orders, which pleased both patricians and plebeians. [13] Overjoyed at their victory in this election, the tribunes of the plebs withdrew that opposition to the tax which was the greatest obstacle to the business of the state, and it was obediently paid in and dispatched to the army.