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

30. As to the senate, he ceased not to encourage it in opposing the law: they must go down into the Forum, when the day should arrive for voting on it, in no other spirit than that of men who realized that they had to fight for hearth and home, for the temples of their gods, and for the soil of their birth. [2] So far, indeed, as the question touched his private interest, it would actually be an honour to him, if it were not sinful to be thinking of his own renown while his country was struggling for life, that the city he had, won should be thronged with people; that he should [p. 107]daily be reminded of his glory, and have before his¹ eyes the town which had figured in his triumph;² that all men should tread in the footsteps of his fame. [3] But he thought it an offence against Heaven that a city deserted and forsaken by the immortal gods should be inhabited, and that the Roman People should dwell on conquered soil, exchanging their victorious City for a vanquished one.

[4] These earnest words of their leading member so stirred the senators, old men as well as young, that on the day the law was proposed they formed in a body and came into the Forum, where they dispersed among the tribes, and canvassing every man [5??] his own tribesmen, began with tears to beseech them, that they would not forsake that City for which both they and their fathers had fought with the greatest courage and good fortune. [6] They pointed to the Capitol, to the shrine of Vesta, and to the other temples standing all about them; they begged them not to drive the Roman People, an exile, and a wanderer from its native land and its household gods, to the city of its enemies, nor to carry things so far that it would be better that Veii had not been taken, so that Rome might not be deserted. [7] Since the patricians used not force but entreaties, and in their entreaties made many a reference to the gods, the greater part felt the prick of conscience, and the law was rejected by one more tribe than voted in its favour.³ [8] And so greatly did this victory rejoice the Fathers, that next day, at the instance of the consuls, a decree was passed by the senate, that seven iugera of the Veientine land should be apportioned to every plebeian, and not alone to the heads of families, but so as to reckon in all the free-born members of the [p. 109]household, that with such a prospect before them⁴ men might be willing to rear children.