During the second campaign against Veii a town called Artena was taken by the Romans. According to some of the annalists, it belonged to the Volscians; according to others, to the Veientines: Livy adopted the former notion: yet, were it not that we find mention of an engagement in the same year near Ferentinum, we could not hesitate on internal grounds to prefer the latter: it is natural that the whole force of the republic should have been pointed against Etruria; and so we might readily suppose that a town in that extensive country had been conquered by a division of the Roman army. Throughout the whole remainder of the Veientine war nothing is said about any hostilities against the Volscians and Æquians; excepting at Anxur, where the inhabitants, with the help of some of their country men who had got into the town, overpowered the Roman garrison in 353. The circumstances under which this was brought about, shew that Rome was at peace with the rest of the Volscian nation: a great part of the soldiers were absent on furlough, and Volscian merchants had been admitted without any precaution into the place. Two years afterward it was retaken: and it seems that the peace with the rest of the nation was still subsisting undisturbed: the Romans were most deeply concerned to maintain it; and the disheartened Ausonian tribes were enjoying their repose with faint hopes of favorable events that might avert the impending danger.