[note 1] According to the most well-known version, the mutiny originated in a group of Roman garrison soldiers wintering in Campania to protect the cities there against the Samnites.
Some even believe the mutiny to be entirely invented by writers wishing to provide a context for the important political reforms they knew had been introduced in 342 BC.
The most extensive description of the mutiny, that has been preserved, is provided by Livy (59 BC - 17 AD), who makes it the closing episode of the Seventh Book of his history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita.
[2] At the end of the campaign season the people of Suessula and Capua requested garrisons from Rome to defend them against the Samnites during the winter.
[3] According to Dionysius, the Roman senate authorised Marcus Valerius to organise the garrisons, as large as the host cities wished to support.
[8] At first glad to visit their homes, those sent away grew suspicious when they realised they were not to rejoin the army and that the leading agitators appeared to have been singled out.
This man came from a prominent patrician family, the Quinctii, and had had a distinguished military career, but a wound had made him lame in one foot and he had taken up a rural life far from Rome.
Not expecting that he would accept leadership over them voluntarily, a party of the mutineers broke into Quinctius' house at night and carried him away to their camp where he was saluted as commander.
On their own initiative the mutineers then broke camp and marched against Rome, only halting eight miles from the city when they learned that an army was marching against them, commanded by Marcus Valerius Corvus, who had been appointed dictator with Lucius Aemilius Mamercus as Master of the Horse[13] Livy writes that as soon as the enemy army came into view, the mutineers, who had never experienced civil war, started having second thoughts and negotiations were started.
[16] According to him, the mutineers were met at the Alban mount about one day's march from Rome by the army of the Dictator, Marcus Valerius Corvus.
Unwilling to start a civil war, Corvus convinced the Senate to decree a cancellation of debts to all Romans, and immunity to the rebels.
At night the conspirators seized one Gaius Manlius[note 3] from his bed to be their leader and marched out to establish a fortified position four miles from the city.
The consuls moved against them with another army, but when the battle lines drew close, rather than fight, the soldiers of both sides exchanged greetings, clasped hands and embraced each other.
[27] While most of the surviving narratives of the mutiny must probably be discarded as fiction, Oakley (1998) believes some kind of sedition actually took place in 342 which has later been embellished.
[28] Forsythe (2005) considers the mutiny a fiction invented by later Roman writers to provide context for the important laws that were passed this year.
[29] According to Livy, Valerius brought forward a proposal granting immunity to all who had taken part in the secession during an assembly of the people at the Peteline Grove.