to be usurped by slaves. The attempted revolution apparently began with the admission of freedmen into the army, which must have been in 280 BC. They became a powerful plebeian class, who were subsequently allowed to become members of the Senate and to hold public office. They seem to have acquired majorities, using them to shape the law. Other slaves were set free; they gave themselves all the privileges formerly reserved for the Etruscans, such as rights of intermarriage and inheritance, and aggressively insisted on them against the will of the Etruscan patrician class. There were complaints of rape and robbery. In 265 BC, when the revolutionary party began to pass laws limiting patrician political activity, the lucumones sent a clandestine embassy to Rome asking for military assistance. On their return they were executed for treason, but shortly afterwards a Roman army arrived to lay siege to the town. The subsequent conflict was intense; the consul and commanding general, Quintus Fabius Gurges, was a casualty. A year later his successor, Marcus Fulvius Flaccus, receiving the surrender of the town through its starvation, razed it and executed the leaders of the plebeian party. The first display of gladiators at Rome in 264 is believed to have featured now captive freedmen from Volsinii. The Romans rescued and restored to power the remaining Etruscans of Volsinii, but decided it was necessary to remove them from that location to a new city on the shores of Lake Bolsena. The new city had none of the natural defenses of the old one and was not in any way sovereign. The portable wealth from the old city was carried off to Rome. If the old city was in fact Orvieto, it cannot have remained unoccupied for long; however, it never again posed a threat to Rome. The new city soon adopted Roman culture and language. Volsinii novi The Romans, when they took Volsinii, razed the town, and compelled the inhabitants to migrate to another spot. (Zonaras, l. c.) This second, or Roman, Volsinii (sometimes called Volsinii Novi – New Volsinii) continued to exist under the Empire. It was the birthplace of Sejanus, the minister and favorite of Tiberius. Juvenal (x. 74) alludes to this circumstance when he considers the fortunes of Sejanus as dependent on the favor of Nursia, or Norsia, an Etruscan goddess much worshipped at Volsinii, into whose temple there, as in that of