HKB
Lucius Minucius, Titus Antonius, Caeso Duillius, and Marcus Sergius: they appointed Spurius Oppius to assist Appius Claudius in protecting the city, while all the decemvirs were to enjoy equal authority.
The republic was managed with no better success in war than at home. In this the only fault in the generals was, that they had rendered themselves objects of hatred to their fellow-citizens: in other respects the entire blame lay with the soldiers, who, lest any enterprise should be successfully conducted under the leadership and auspices of the decemvirs, suffered themselves to be beaten, to their own disgrace and that of their generals. Their armies were routed both by the Sabines at Eretum, and by the Æquans in Algidum. Fleeing from Eretum during the silence of the night, they fortified their camp nearer the city, on an elevated position between Fidenae and Crustumeria; nowhere encountering on equal ground the enemy who pursued them, they protected themselves by the nature of the ground and a rampart, not by valour or arms. Their conduct was more disgraceful, and greater loss also was sustained in Algidum; their camp too was lost, and the soldiers, stripped of all their arms, munitions, and supplies, betook themselves to Tusculum, determined to procure the means of subsistence from the good faith and compassion of their hosts, and in these, notwithstanding their conduct, they were not disappointed. Such alarming accounts were brought to Rome, that the patricians, having now laid aside their hatred of the decemvirs, passed an order that watches should be held in the city, and commanded that all who were not hindered by reason of their age from carrying arms, should mount guard on the walls, and form outposts before the gates; they also voted that arms should be sent to Tusculum, besides a re-enforcement; and that the decemvirs should come down from the citadel of Tusculum and keep their troops encamped; that the other camp should be removed from Fidenas into Sabine territory, and the enemy, by their thus attacking them first, should be deterred from entertaining any idea of assaulting the city.
In addition to the reverses sustained at the hands of the enemy, the decemvirs were guilty of two monstrous deeds, one abroad, and the other in the city. They sent Lucius Siccius, who was quartered among the Sabines, to take observations for the purpose of selecting a site for a camp: he, availing himself of the unpopularity of the decemvirs, was introducing, in his secret conversations with the common soldiers, suggestions of a secession and the election of tribunes: the soldiers, whom they had sent to accompany him in that expedition, were commissioned to attack him in a convenient place and slay him. They did not kill him with impunity; several of the assassins fell around him, as he offered resistance, since, possessing great personal strength and displaying courage equal to that strength, he defended himself against them, although surrounded. The rest brought news into the camp that Siccius, while fighting bravely, had fallen into an ambush, and that some soldiers had been lost with him. At first the account was believed; afterward a party of men, who went by permission of the decemvirs to bury those who had fallen, when they observed that none of the bodies there were stripped, and that Siccius lay in the midst fully armed, and that all the bodies were turned toward him, while there was neither the body of any of the enemy, nor any traces of their departure, brought back his body, saying that he had assuredly been slain by his own men. The camp was now filled with indignation, and it was resolved that Siccius should be forthwith brought to Rome, had not the decemvirs hastened to bury him with military honours at the public expense. He was buried amid the great grief of the soldiery, and with the worst possible infamy of the decemvirs among the common people.