But, if that were a forged letter, and that there was no occasion for him in Etruria, he would instantly face about, and depart." "You may depart." replied the other; "no one detains you: for it is a perfect inconsistency, that when, perhaps, you are scarcely equal to the management of your own war, you should vaunt of coming hither to succour others." To this Volumnius rejoined, "May Hercules direct all for the best; for his part, he was better pleased that he had taken useless trouble, than that any conjuncture should have arisen which had made one consular army insufficient for Etruria." 19.

As the consuls were parting, the lieutenants-general and tribunes of Appius's army gathered round them.

Some entreated their own general that he would not reject the voluntary offer of his colleague's assistance, which ought to have been solicited in the first instance: the greater number used their endeavours to stop Volumnius, beseeching him "not, through a peevish dispute with his colleague, to abandon the interest of the commonwealth; and represented to him, that in case any misfortune should happen, the blame would fall on the person who forsook the other, not on the one forsaken; that the state of affairs was such, that the credit and discredit of every success and failure in Etruria would be attributed to Lucius Volumnius: for no one would inquire, what were the words of Appius, but what the situation of the army.

Appius indeed had dismissed him, but the commonwealth, and the army, required his stay.

Let him only make trial of the inclinations of the soldiers." By such admonitions and entreaties they, in a manner, dragged the consuls, who almost resisted, to an assembly.
There, longer discourses were made to the same purport, as had passed before in the presence of a few.