Book 7

1.1. When Titus Geganius Macerinus and Publius Minucius had taken up the consular power, a severe scarcity of grain gripped Rome, taking its origin from the secession. For the people had seceded from the patricians after the autumn equinox, just about the very beginning of the sowing season; and the farmers abandoned their land along with the disturbance, and divided—the more pliant going over to the patricians, the labouring portion to the commoners. From that time they remained apart from one another, until the city was settled and came together into itself, having been reconciled not long before the winter

1.2. solstice. During the interval in which the whole seasonable sowing is accomplished, the land was bare of those who should have tended it, and continued so for a long time, so that even when the farmers had come down it was not easy to recover it, ruined as it was by the desertion of slaves and the destruction of cattle, with which they were to have worked it; and for not many was there a starting-stock for the coming year, neither of seed nor of food.

1.3. Learning this, the senate sent envoys to the Tyrrhenians and the Campanians and the so-called Pomptine plain to buy as much grain as they could; and Publius Valerius and Lucius Geganius were dispatched to Sicily—Valerius being the son of Publicola, and Geganius the brother of one of the consuls.

1.4. There were tyrants in the various cities at that time, the most distinguished being Gelon, son of Deinomenes, who had recently taken over the tyranny of his brother Hippocrates—not Dionysius the Syracusan, as Licinius has written, and Gellius, and many other Roman historians who examined nothing about the dates accurately, as the very fact shows, but declared at random whatever came to hand.

1.5. For the embassy appointed to Sicily sailed out in the second year of the seventy-second Olympiad, Hybrilides being archon at Athens, seventeen years having passed after the expulsion of the kings, as both these and almost all the other historians agree; whereas Dionysius the Elder, eighty-five years after this, rising against the Syracusans, seized the tyranny in the third year of the ninety-third Olympiad, Callias being archon at Athens, the successor of

1.6. Antigenes. Now one might grant historical writers a few years' error in the dates when composing ancient histories spanning many years; but to wander from the truth by two or three whole generations one would not allow. It seems that the one who first inserted this in the chronicles—whom all the rest followed—found in the ancient records only so much, that envoys were sent in the term of these consuls to Sicily to buy grain and returned thence bringing the gift the tyrant gave; but he did not further examine from the Greek historians who was tyrant of Sicily at that time, but somehow, without scrutiny and at random, set down Dionysius.

2.1. The envoys sailing to Sicily, then, meeting with a storm at sea and forced to sail round the island, were brought late to the tyrant, and, having spent the winter season there, returned after the summer to Italy bringing many provisions.

2.2. But those sent to the Pomptine plain came near to being put to death as spies by the Volscians, having been slandered by the exiles from Rome; and only with great difficulty, through the zeal of their private guest-friends, were they able to save their persons, and returned to Rome without the money, having accomplished nothing.

2.3. The like befell those who came to Italian Cumae. For there too many Romans were spending their time, the exiles who had escaped with King Tarquinius from the last battle; and they at first attempted to demand the men from the tyrant for execution, and, failing of this, thought fit to seize these persons as reprisals from the city that had sent them, until they should recover their own property, which they said had been unjustly confiscated by the Romans; and they thought the tyrant ought to be the judge for them of this suit.

2.4. The one who was then tyrant of Cumae was Aristodemus, son of Aristocrates, a man not of common stock, who was called by the citizens the Effeminate, and in time the surname became better known than his own name—whether because as a boy he was womanish and suffered what befits women, as some relate, or because he was gentle by nature and soft to anger, as others write.

2.5. What sort of occasions of his tyranny he used, by what roads he came to it, how he administered the affairs of his rule, and what manner of end he met—I think it not untimely, halting the Roman narrative a little, to relate summarily.

3.1. In the sixty-fourth Olympiad, Miltiades being archon at Athens, Cumae, the Greek city in the country of the Opicans, which the Eretrians and Chalcidians founded, the Tyrrhenians who dwell about the Ionian Gulf—and who in time were driven thence by the Celts—together with the Umbrians and Daunians and many other barbarians, attempted to destroy, having no just pretext to allege for their hatred except

3.2. the prosperity of the city. For Cumae was at that time renowned throughout all Italy for wealth and power and the other goods, holding the most fruitful land of the Campanian plain and commanding the most strategic harbours about Misenum. Plotting against these goods, the barbarians marched against it, foot soldiers not fewer than five hundred thousand, and horsemen falling short of twenty thousand by two thousand. When they had encamped not far from the city, a marvellous portent occurred, such as is recorded nowhere at any time, neither in Greece nor in any barbarian land.

3.3. For the rivers that flow beside their camps—Volturnus the name of one, Glanis of the other—abandoning their natural courses, reversed their streams and continued for a long while withdrawing from their mouths back toward their sources.

3.4. The Cumaeans, perceiving this, then took courage to come to grips with the barbarians, as though the divinity would make the high things of those men low, and the things that seemed to be low of themselves high. Dividing all their force in its prime into three, with one they guarded the city, with another they kept the ships under watch, and with the third, posted before the wall, they received the assailants. Of these the cavalry were six hundred, the foot four thousand five hundred; and being thus few in number, they stood against so many myriads.

4.1. When the barbarians perceived them prepared to fight, with a war-cry they advanced to the encounter in the barbarian fashion without order, foot and horse mingled, as if to sweep them all away. But the ground before the city, where they joined battle, was a narrow defile enclosed by mountains and lakes, an ally to the valour of the Cumaeans, an enemy to the multitude of the barbarians.

4.2. For, overturning one another and being trodden underfoot in many places, but especially about the marshes of the lake, even before coming to grips with the Greek phalanx, the most of them were destroyed by their own selves; and their foot army, the great mass of it, tripped up about itself, having displayed no noble deed, scattered this way and that and fled. The cavalry, however, came to close quarters and gave the Greeks much toil; but being unable to encircle the enemy because of the narrowness of the ground, and the divinity too somewhat fighting alongside the Greeks with lightnings and rain and thunders, they took fright and turned to flight.

4.3. In this battle all the Cumaean cavalry fought brilliantly, and these were acknowledged most of all to have been the cause of the victory; but above all the rest Aristodemus, surnamed the Effeminate; for he it was who killed the commander of the enemy, withstanding him alone, and many other brave men besides. When the war was ended, the Cumaeans, having rendered the thank-offerings to the gods and given splendid burial to those slain in the battle, fell into great strife concerning the prizes of valour, to whom the first crown should be given.

4.4. For the impartial judges wished to honour Aristodemus, and the whole people was with him; but the powerful favoured Hippomedon the cavalry-commander, and the whole council took his part—for the polity was at that time aristocratic among the Cumaeans, and the people was master of no great matters. When strife arose through this contention, the elders, fearing lest the rivalry should come to arms and bloodshed, persuaded both orders to consent that each of the men receive equal honours.

4.5. From this beginning the Effeminate Aristodemus became champion of the people; and having practised the power of civic eloquence, he won over the multitude by demagoguery, taking them in hand by gratifying policies, convicting those of the powerful who appropriated the public funds, and benefiting many of the poor from his own money; and for these reasons he was burdensome and formidable to the leaders of the aristocracy.

5.1. In the twentieth year after the battle against the barbarians, there came to the Cumaeans envoys of the Aricians with suppliant boughs, asking them to help them, being warred upon by the Tyrrhenians. For after the reconciliation which the king of the Tyrrhenians, Porsina, made with the city of the Romans, he sent his son Arruns, giving him half the army, since he wished to acquire a realm of his own, as I have shown in the books before this; who was then besieging the Aricians, who had fled for refuge within their wall, and expected before long to take the city by famine.

5.2. When this embassy arrived, the leaders of the aristocracy, hating Aristodemus and fearing lest he work some harm to the polity, supposed they had got a most fair opportunity to put him out of the way under a seemly pretext. Having persuaded the people to send two thousand men to the Aricians as allies, and appointing Aristodemus general, as one brilliant in war, they thereafter took measures by which they supposed he would either be cut down fighting by the Tyrrhenians or perish at sea.

5.3. For, being authorised by the council to enrol those who should go out to the alliance, they registered none of the notable and worthy men, but, choosing out the most destitute and worst of the commoners, from whom they always suspected some disturbances, from these they filled up the expedition; and launching ten old ships of the worst sailing, of which the poorest of the Cumaeans were captains, they put them aboard these, threatening death if any should hold back from the campaign.

6.1. Aristodemus, saying only so much, that the design of his enemies was not hidden from him—that in word they were sending him out to an alliance, but in deed to manifest destruction—accepted the command, and putting to sea with the envoys of the Aricians in haste, and crossing the intervening sea laboriously and dangerously, anchored off the shores nearest to Aricia; and leaving a sufficient guard in the ships, in the first night, having covered the road from the sea, which was not long, he appeared to the Aricians about dawn, unexpected.

6.2. Pitching his camp near them and persuading those who had fled for refuge within the walls to come out into the open, he at once challenged the Tyrrhenians to battle. A fierce pitched contest arising, the Aricians, holding out a very short while, gave way in a body, and there was again a flight of them to their wall; but Aristodemus, with the picked Cumaeans about him—few though they were—bearing the whole weight of the war and slaying with his own hand the commander of the Tyrrhenians, turned the rest to flight and

6.3. won a victory most brilliant of all. Having accomplished this and being honoured by the Aricians with many gifts, he sailed off quickly, wishing to be himself the messenger to the Cumaeans of his own victory; and there followed him very many merchant-ships of the Aricians bringing the spoils and the Tyrrhenian prisoners.

6.4. When they drew near Cumae, anchoring the ships, he held an assembly of the army; and after accusing many of the leaders of the city and going through many praises of those who had proved brave in the battle, and distributing money to them man by man and laying down the gifts from the Aricians in common for all, he begged them to remember the benefits, when they should sail home to their country, and, if ever any danger should befall him from the oligarchy, to help him, each as he was able.

6.5. When all acknowledged that they owed him much gratitude, both for the unhoped-for safety they had through him and for their coming home not with empty hands, and promised that they would give up their own lives to their enemies sooner than his, he praised them and dismissed the assembly. After this, calling to his own tent the worst of them and the bravest in fight, and corrupting them by the gift of presents and the kindliness of his words and the hopes that deceive all men, he had them ready to help him overthrow the established polity.

7.1. Taking these as accomplices and fellow-combatants and laying down for each what must be done, and giving freedom freely to the prisoners whom he brought—that he might gain their goodwill too—he sailed into the harbours of the Cumaeans with his ships decked out. The fathers and mothers of those serving and all the rest of their kin, children and wedded wives, met them as they disembarked with tears, embracing and kissing and calling each by the sweetest names.

7.2. And all the rest of the city's multitude, greeting the commander with joy and applause, escorted him home as he departed. At these things the leaders of the city were grieved—and most of all those who had given him the command and contrived the other measures toward his destruction—and had evil reckonings concerning the future.

7.3. He, leaving a few days, in which he paid his vows to the gods and awaited the merchant-ships that lagged behind, when the time was come, said he wished to report to the council what had been done in the contest and to display the spoils of the war. When the magistrates had assembled in numbers in the senate-house, he came forward and harangued, going through all that had happened in the battle; while those prepared by him as accomplices of the attempt, having swords beneath their cloaks, rushing in numbers into the senate-house, slaughtered all the aristocrats.

7.4. There was after this a flight of those in the marketplace and a running, some to their houses, some outside the city, except those who shared in the attempt; these seized the citadel and the dockyards and the strong places of the city. On the following night, freeing from the prisons the condemned, who were many, and arming them along with the other friends—among whom were the Tyrrhenian prisoners—he set up a guard of these about his person.

7.5. When day came, summoning the people to an assembly and laying out a long accusation of the citizens he had murdered, he said he had taken vengeance on them with justice, having often been plotted against by them, but that he came bringing to the other citizens freedom and equality of speech and many other good things.

8.1. Having said this and filled all the commoners with wondrous hopes, he set up the two worst of the polities among men, which every tyranny uses as its preludes—a redistribution of land and a cancellation of debts; and he promised to take charge of both of these himself, being appointed general with full powers, until the commonwealth should be secure and they should establish a democratic

8.2. polity. When the popular and wicked multitude gladly received the plunder of others' goods, having taken the autocratic office, he himself, on his own part, brought forward another plan, by which, having beguiled them, he stripped them all of their freedom. For, pretending to suspect tumults and uprisings of the rich against the commoners on account of the redistribution of land and the cancellation of debts, that there might be no civil war nor civic murders, he said he found one safeguard, before coming to such terrors—if all should bring their arms forth from their houses and consecrate them to the gods, that they might have them to use against enemies attacking from without, when some necessity should seize them, and not against themselves, but that they should lie meanwhile with the gods in safe keeping.

8.3. When they were persuaded of this too, on the same day, having stripped all the Cumaeans of their arms, on the following days he made a search of the houses, in which, having killed many good citizens on the ground that they had not consecrated all their arms to the gods, he thereafter secured the tyranny with three guards: one of the foulest and worst citizens, with whom he had overthrown the aristocratic polity; another of the most impious slaves, whom he himself had freed for killing their own masters; and a third, mercenary, of the most savage barbarians; these were not fewer than two thousand and far better in war than the

8.4. rest. Of the men he had killed, taking down their statues from every sacred and profane place, and carrying his own to the same places, he set them up instead of theirs; and seizing their houses and lands and the rest of their property, taking out the gold and silver and whatever else was a possession worthy of a tyranny, he bestowed the rest on those who had helped him set up his rule, and gave the most and greatest gifts to those who had killed their own masters; and they thought fit to live with the wives and daughters of their masters besides.

9.1. The male offspring of the slain he at first held in no account; but afterward, whether from some oracle or by the likely reckoning, thinking that no small danger was being bred up against him, he attempted

9.2. to destroy them all in one day. But when all, in whose houses their mothers chanced to be and the boys were being reared, made much entreaty, he—wishing to grant them this gift too—released them from death against his judgment; and, keeping watch over them lest, banding together, they should plot anything against the tyranny, he ordered them all to depart from the city, this one one way, that another, and to live in the fields, partaking of none of the things that befit free children, neither pursuit nor learning, but tending sheep and doing the other works of the fields, threatening death if any of them should be found

9.3. coming into the city. They, leaving their ancestral hearths, were reared in the fields like slaves, serving those who had killed their fathers. And that there might be no noble or manly spirit in any of the other citizens either, he set about to emasculate by their upbringing all the rising youth of the city, abolishing the gymnasia and the exercises in arms, and changing the manner of life which the boys had used before.

9.4. For he ordered the males to wear their hair long like maidens, curled and ringleted and bound up in nets, and to put on embroidered tunics reaching to the feet, and to wrap themselves in fine and soft mantles, and to spend their lives in the shade; and women attendants accompanied them to the schools of dancers and flute-players and the like flatterers of the Muses, carrying parasols and fans; and these bathed them, bringing combs to the baths and alabaster boxes of perfumes and mirrors.

9.5. Corrupting the boys with such an upbringing until they completed their twentieth year, the time after that he allowed them to count as men. With many other outrages and maimings he insulted the Cumaeans, abstaining from no licentiousness or cruelty, until, when he supposed he held the tyranny securely, being now an old man, he paid no slight penalties to gods and men, perishing root and branch.

10.1. Those who rose against him and freed the city from the tyranny were the sons of the citizens he had murdered, whom at the first he had resolved to kill, all of them, in one day, but had refrained, as I said, being entreated by the bodyguards to whom he had given their mothers, and had ordered to spend their lives in the fields.

10.2. A few years later, when, going through the villages, he saw their fine and numerous youth, fearing lest, joining together, they should rise against him, he wished to forestall them by making away with them all before any should perceive it; and taking his friends, he considered with them by what manner they might be most easily and quickly destroyed unawares.

10.3. The boys, perceiving this—whether disclosed by one of those privy to it, or themselves having suspected it by the likely reckoning—fled to the mountains, snatching up the farmer's iron. And there came to them in haste, as helpers, the Cumaean exiles spending their time in Capua, of whom the most distinguished and having the most Campanian guest-friends were the sons of Hippomedon who had been cavalry-commander in the Tyrrhenian war; these, both armed themselves and bringing arms for the others, having mustered no small force of Campanian mercenaries and friends.

10.4. When all had come together into one, overrunning the enemy's fields with raiding incursions they plundered them, and detached the slaves from their masters and freed and armed those from the prisons; and whatever money and cattle they could not carry and drive away, some they burned, others they slaughtered. The tyrant being at a loss in what manner he should war against them—

10.5. because they made their attacks neither openly nor tarried in the same places, but timed their incursions by night to dawn and by day to night, and often, when he had sent his soldiers to the relief of the country in vain—there came to him one of them maltreated in body with whips, sent by the exiles as a deserter, who, having asked for impunity, promised the tyrant that, taking the force that should be sent with him, he would lead it to the place where the exiles were to encamp the coming night.

10.6. The tyrant being induced to trust him—since he asked nothing and offered his own body as a hostage—sent the most trusted of his commanders leading many horsemen and the mercenary force, whom he charged to bring to him all the exiles bound, if possible, but if not, as many as they could of them. The counterfeit deserter, then, led the army by untrodden roads and through desolate thickets, toiling all night long, to the parts farthest from the city.

11.1. But the rebels and exiles, lying in ambush on the mountain about Aornus near the city, when they learned that the tyrant's army had marched out of the city—being informed by signals from the scouts—sent of their number about sixty, the boldest, wearing leather jerkins and carrying bundles of firewood.

11.2. These, about lamp-lighting time, slipping in unobserved at the various gates as labourers, when they were inside the wall, drew out the swords they had hidden in the bundles, and, all coming together to the same place and then setting out thence in a body to the gates leading to Aornus, killed the guards of them as they slept and received all their own men, now near the wall, through the opened gates; and they accomplished this unobserved.

11.3. For it chanced that on that night there was a public festival, and on account of it the whole city crowd was in drinking and the other revelries. This gave them, with much security, to pass through all the roads leading to the tyrant's house; nor did they find at the doors any great or wakeful guard, but there too they slaughtered some already asleep, others drunk, without effort, and thrusting in numbers into the house, slew all the rest like sheep—men no longer masters of their bodies or their wits through the wine; and Aristodemus and his sons and the rest of his kin they seized, and, maltreating and torturing them and abusing them with every cruelty, so to speak, far into the night, put them to death.

11.4. Having destroyed the tyrant's house root and branch, so as to leave neither children nor wives nor kin of any of them, and having searched out all night the accomplices of the tyranny, when day came they went forward into the marketplace. Then, summoning the people to an assembly, they laid aside their arms and established the ancestral polity.

12.1. Against this Aristodemus, then, when he had been tyrant of Cumae nearly fourteen years, the exiles with Tarquinius, prosecuting their suit against their country, wished to have it carried through. The envoys of the Romans for a while objected, on the ground that they had not come for this contest, nor had they authority, which the senate had not granted them, to make a defence on behalf of the city.

12.2. When they accomplished nothing, but saw the tyrant inclining to the other side because of the entreaties and exhortations of the exiles, having asked for time for the defence and given security for their persons in money, in the interval of the suit, when no one any longer guarded them, they ran away and departed. Their servants and beasts of burden and the money brought for the grain-purchase the tyrant seized.

12.3. These embassies, then, having so fared, returned without accomplishing anything; but those sent from the cities in Tyrrhenia, having bought up millet and spelt, brought it down in river-boats to the city. This supply fed the Romans a short time; then, being exhausted, it brought them back to the same straits. There was no kind of necessary food which they did not still try, and it befell not a few of them, partly through the scarcity, partly through the strangeness of the unaccustomed eating, that some had their bodies sickly, and others, neglected through poverty, were altogether helpless.

12.4. When the Volscians, recently conquered in the war, learned this, by secret dispatches of embassies they urged one another to war against the Romans, on the ground that they would be unable to hold out if anyone should attack them, weakened as they were by war and famine. But some goodwill of the gods, who took care not to look on while the Romans fell beneath their enemies, then too most clearly displayed its power. For so great a pestilential destruction suddenly fell upon the cities of the Volscians as is recorded nowhere else, neither in Greece nor in any barbarian land, destroying alike every age and fortune and nature, both strong and weak bodies. A notable city of the Volscians showed the excess of the calamity—Velitrae its name—great and populous as it was before, of which the plague left one part out of ten, and carrying off the rest swept them away.

12.5. At last, then, as many as survived the calamity, sending an embassy to the Romans, told of their desolation and surrendered the city. They had also formerly received settlers from Rome, on which account they asked colonists from them a second time.

13.1. When the Romans learned this, pity for the calamity came over them, and they thought they ought to bear no rancour against their enemies for such misfortunes, as having given the gods sufficient penalties on their behalf in return for what they had been about to do; but they resolved to take over Velitrae by sending out no small number of colonists, reckoning the many advantages from the matter.

13.2. For the place seemed to be sufficient, when occupied by a worthy garrison, to be a great check and hindrance to any who might wish to revolt or stir something up; and the scarcity of food gripping the city was suspected to become not a little more moderate if some considerable part of the multitude should remove from it. And most of all, the strife being rekindled before the former had yet ceased well,

13.3. moved them to vote the colony. For again, as before, the people was provoked and held the patricians in anger, and many harsh speeches were made against them—some charging them with negligence and slackness, that they had not long beforehand foreseen the coming scarcity of grain and devised the remedies for the calamity; others declaring that the dearth had come about by their plot, through anger and a desire to harm the commoners in remembrance of the secession.

13.4. For these reasons, then, the sending out of the colonists proceeded swiftly, three men being appointed leaders by the senate. The people at first were glad to draw lots for the colony, as men who would be rid of famine and would dwell in a prosperous land; then, reflecting on the plague which, having become great in the city that was to receive them, had destroyed the inhabitants and gave fear lest it work the same upon the settlers too, their opinion gradually shifted to the contrary, so that not many appeared willing to share in the colony, but far fewer than the senate had voted, and these too had already condemned themselves as ill-counselled and were slipping out of the expedition.

13.5. This part, however, and the other that did not willingly share in the expedition, was held to it by the senate's voting that the expedition be made out of all the Romans by lot, and against those on whom the lot fell, if they did not go out, setting harsh and inexorable penalties. This expedition, then, was sent to Velitrae, held to it by a seemly compulsion; and another again, not many days later, to the city of Norba, which is a not obscure city of the Latin nation.

14.1. But nothing the patricians reckoned came about, at least not according to their hope, that the strife would abate; rather, those left behind were even worse in their tempers and used much outcry against the senators, in bands and clubs, gathering at first few, then in numbers, the scarcity now becoming more pressing, and, running together into the marketplace, clamoured for the tribunes.

14.2. An assembly being convened by them, Spurius Sicinius, who was then leader of the magistracy, came forward and himself poured forth much against the senate, magnifying as far as he could the envy against it, and bade the others say what they thought in public, calling especially upon Sicinius and Brutus, then aediles, each by name—who had also been the authors of the first secession for the people, and, having introduced the tribunician power, were the first to obtain it.

14.3. These, coming forward, having long prepared the most malicious of speeches, went through what the many wished to hear: that the scarcity about the grain had come about of forethought and plot by the rich, since the people had won its freedom from the secession against their will.

14.4. They declared that the wealthy did not in the least share equally with the poor in the calamity; for those had both food laid up unseen and money, with which, buying the imported supplies, they were in much contempt of the evil, while the commoners were destitute of both these things; and they declared the sending out of the colonists, which they had made to unhealthy places, to be a casting-out into a manifest and far worse destruction, magnifying as much as they could in speech the terrors, and demanding to learn what end there would be of the evils, and reminding them of the old maltreatments with which they had been maltreated by the rich, and

14.5. going through the other like things with much licence. At the end Brutus shut up his speech in some such threat: that, if they were willing to obey him, he would quickly compel those who had kindled the trouble to quench it too. So the assembly broke up.

15.1. The consuls on the following day convened the senate, being full of fear at the innovations and thinking the demagoguery of Brutus would burst out into some great evil. Many and various speeches were made in the council both by the consuls themselves and by the other elders—some thinking they ought to court the people with all affability of words and promise of deeds and make their leaders more moderate, laying the matters before them in common and inviting them, along with themselves, to consider what was for the common good;

15.2. others advising to yield nothing soft to a crowd arrogant and ignorant, or to the bold and unbearable madness of demagogic men, but to defend themselves, on the ground that none of what had happened was the patricians' fault, and to promise to have what care of the evil was possible, and to rebuke those disturbing the people and proclaim that, if they did not cease rekindling the strife, they would pay fitting penalties.

15.3. Of this opinion Appius was leader, and it was the prevailing one, after much rivalry had fallen upon the councillors; so that even the people, much disturbed by their shouting which was heard far off, ran together to the senate-house, and the whole city was on tiptoe with

15.4. expectation. After this the consuls, coming forward, summoned the people to an assembly—there was not much of the day left—and, coming forward, tried to say what had seemed best to them in the senate. But the tribunes withstood them, and the speech from both sides did not come in turn nor in order; for they shouted at the same time and barred one another, so that it was not easy for those present to discern their minds, what they wished.

16.1. The consuls held it just, having the superior power, to rule all things in the city; the tribunes held that the assembly was their place, as the senate was theirs, and that of whatever matters it was theirs to judge and vote concerning the commoners, of these they themselves had all the authority. With the one contended the multitude, shouting and prepared, if need be, to come to grips with those who hindered; with the consuls the patricians, banding together.

16.2. There was much contention about not yielding on either side, as though in that single defeat the right of each for the time to come were being conceded. The sun was already toward its setting, and the rest of the multitude was running together from the houses into the marketplace, and they were likely, if night should overtake the strife, to come to blows and stone-throwing.

16.3. That this might not be, Brutus, coming forward, asked the consuls to give him a hearing, promising to end the strife. And they, thinking it conceded to them that the demagogue, in the presence of the tribunes, had asked the favour not of them, allowed him to speak. When silence fell, Brutus said nothing else, but asked the consuls some such

16.4. question: "Do you remember," he said, "that when we settled the strife, this right was conceded to us by you, that, when the tribunes assemble the people about anything whatever, the patricians should not be present at the meeting nor make trouble?" "We remember," said Geganius. And Brutus continues: "Why then do you set yourselves in our way and not let the tribunes say what they wish?" Geganius answers to this: "Because it was not they who summoned the people to the assembly, but we the consuls. If, then, the meeting had been held by these, we should think fit neither to hinder nor to meddle; but since we convened the assembly, we do not hinder them from speaking, but think it not just to be ourselves

16.5. hindered by them." And Brutus, taking him up, "We win, commoners," he said, "and it is conceded to us by our opponents all that we asked. Now, then, depart and cease contending; but tomorrow I promise to make plain to you how great strength you have. And you, tribunes, yield the marketplace to them for the present; for you will not yield it to the end; but when you have learned how great power your office has—for you will know before long; this I undertake to make plain to you—you will render their arrogance more moderate. But if I am found cheating you, use me as you wish."

17.1. No one objecting to this, they departed from the assembly, the two sides not having the same suppositions: but the poor, thinking that Brutus had found out something extraordinary and had not promised so great a thing at random; the patricians, despising the man's levity and supposing the boldness of his promises would come only to words—for nothing had been conceded by the senate to the tribunes beyond aiding the wronged of the commoners. Yet not upon all, and especially the elders, came contempt of the matter, but rather a heeding lest the man's madness should work something irreparable.

17.2. On the following night Brutus, having communicated his opinion to the tribunes and prepared no small band of commoners, went down with them into the marketplace; and before bright day came, seizing the temple of Vulcan, where it was their custom to hold assemblies, they summoned the people to an assembly. The marketplace being filled—for such a crowd as never before came together—Sicinius the tribune came forward and made a long speech against the patricians, reminding them of all that had been done by them against the commoners; then concerning the past day he taught that he had been hindered by them from getting a hearing and deprived of the power of his office.

17.3. "For of what else," he said, "should we be masters, if we shall not even be of speaking? And how could we help any of you who is wronged by them, if we should be deprived of the power of assembling you? For words are the beginning of every deed, and it is not unclear that those who may not say what they think could not do what they wish. Either, then, take back the power you have given us, if you do not mean to confirm its security by it, or by a written law hinder those who shall in future stand in our way."

17.4. Having discoursed thus, the people urging him with a great cry to bring in the law, having it already written, he read it and gave the multitude the vote concerning it to cast at once; for the matter seemed to need no postponement or delay, lest some other hindrance arise from the consuls.

17.5. The law was of this sort: "When a tribune is declaring his opinion before the people, let no one say anything to the contrary or interrupt the speech. If anyone does contrary to this, let him, when asked, give the tribunes sureties for the payment of whatever penalty they shall impose on him. He who does not give a surety, let him be punished with death, and let his goods be consecrated. Of those who dispute against these penalties, let the judgments be before the people."

17.6. The tribunes, having put this law to the vote, broke up the assembly; and the people departed full of much cheer, owing great thanks to Brutus, the thought of the law being held to be his.

18.1. After this many disputes about many matters arose between the tribunes and the consuls, and neither did the people hold valid whatever the senate voted, nor was anything the people resolved pleasing to the senate; but they continued ranged against one another and holding one another in suspicion. Yet their hatred did not proceed to any irreparable deed, such as is wont to happen in such

18.2. disturbances. For neither did the poor rush upon the houses of the rich, where they supposed they would find some food stored, or attempt to plunder the open market, but submitted to buy little at much money, and, when they ran out of silver, endured to feed on the roots and herbs from the ground; nor did the rich, forcing the weaker by their own power and that of their clients, which was great, think fit to seize the city for themselves, driving some out and killing others, but continued, like fathers governing most temperately toward their sons, using a kindly and caring anger toward their offences.

18.3. Such being the state of affairs at Rome, the neighbouring cities invited those of the Romans who wished to dwell among them, alluring them by the gift of citizenship and other humane hopes—some from the best motive, through goodwill and pity of the calamity, but the more through envy of their former prosperity. And those who departed with all their households and removed their dwellings elsewhere were very many; of whom some came back again when the city's affairs were settled, others remained.

19.1. Seeing this, the consuls thought fit, the senate permitting, to make a levy of an army and lead the force out; and they had got an occasion fitting for the undertaking in the incursions and ravagings by which the country was frequently harmed by the enemy, reckoning the other advantages from the matter—that, an army being sent abroad, those left behind, become fewer, would have a more abundant market to use, and those bearing arms would live amid more plentiful supplies, victualling themselves from the enemy, and the strife would abate for as long as the campaign should last; and most of all it seemed that the equal sharing of evils and goods that would come about amid the dangers, patricians and commoners campaigning together, would confirm their reconciliation in deed.

19.2. But the multitude would not obey them, nor, as before, present themselves willingly for the levy; and the consuls did not think it just to apply to the unwilling the compulsion from the laws, but some of the patricians were enrolled willingly along with their clients, and as they went out a small part of the people campaigned

19.3. with them. The leader of those who marched out was Gaius Marcius, who had taken the city of Corioli and proved himself the best in the battle against the Antiates; and most of those of the commoners who took up arms, seeing him march out, were strengthened—some through goodwill, others by hope of succeeding; for the man was already renowned, and great fear of him had arisen among the enemy.

19.4. This army, advancing as far as the city of Antium, without effort became master of much grain found in the fields and of many slaves and cattle, and not long after returned having become better off in their livelihood, so that on those who had stayed behind fell much dejection and blaming of the demagogues, on whose account

19.5. they thought they were deprived of like good fortune. Geganius, then, and Minucius, who were consuls that year, having been amid great and various storms and often run the risk of overturning the city, worked no harm, but preserved the commonwealth, dealing with what befell more prudently than luckily.

20.1. The consuls appointed after them, Marcus Minucius Augurinus and Aulus Sempronius Atratinus, established in the office for the second time, men inexperienced neither in arms nor in words, used much forethought to fill the city with grain and the other market, since the concord of the multitude lay in the abundance throughout it; yet it did not fall to them to attain both these at once, but along with the satiety of goods there entered also the insolence of those who used them.

20.2. And then the greatest danger from the first seized Rome, when it seemed least likely. For the envoys sent by them for the grain-purchase, having bought up much grain from the seaboard and inland emporia, brought it down for the public; and those accustomed to trade in markets came together from every place, from whom the city, buying the cargo from the common funds, kept it under guard.

20.3. There came also the envoys formerly sent to Sicily, Geganius and Valerius, bringing many merchant-ships, in which were conveyed fifty thousand Sicilian medimni of wheat, of which half was bought at a very low price, the rest the tyrant had sent free of charge, having conveyed it at his own expense.

20.4. When the arrival of the grain-bearing ships from Sicily was announced to those in the city, much inquiry fell upon the patricians concerning the disposal of it. For the most equitable and most popular of them, looking to the necessities gripping the commonwealth, advised distributing the whole gift from the tyrant among the commoners and selling the grain bought from the public funds to them at a low price, teaching that by these favours the angers of the poor against the wealthy would become most moderate; but the more arrogant and oligarchic thought they ought with all zeal and contrivance to harm the commoners, and advised making the supplies as dear as possible to them, that they might become more temperate through necessity and more law-abiding as to the other rights of the polity.

21.1. Of these oligarchic men was that Marcius surnamed Coriolanus, not, like the rest, secretly and with caution declaring his opinion, but openly and boldly, so that many even of the commoners heard. For he had, besides the common grievances, certain private grounds, lately arisen, on which he reasonably seemed to hate the commoners.

21.2. For when he was a candidate for the consulship at the most recent elections and had the patricians fighting for him, the people, opposing, would not let the office be given him, holding the brilliance and boldness of the man in caution, lest on account of these he should work some innovation toward the abolition of the tribunes—and most of all fearing because the body of the patricians supported him with all zeal as none of his predecessors.

21.3. Stirred to anger, then, by this insult, and eager to restore the change of the polity to its original order, the man both openly, as I said before, worked the abolition of the people and urged on the others. There was about him a great club of well-born young men, who had the largest property qualifications, and many clients banded together for the spoils from the wars; lifted up by whom he gave himself airs and was brilliant and advanced to the height of distinction.

21.4. Yet not for these reasons did he obtain a fortunate end; for, a senate having been convened about these matters, and the elders, as was their custom, first declaring their minds—among whom there were not many who openly proposed the opinions against the people—when the word came down to the younger men, having asked authority from the consuls to say what he wished, and obtaining great attention and notice, he went through such a speech against the people:

22.1. "That the people made the secession not forced by necessity and want, fathers, but lifted up by a wicked hope of overthrowing your aristocracy and themselves becoming master of all public affairs—I think almost all of you have perceived, seeing the advantages they grasped in the reconciliation. For it did not suffice them, having destroyed faith in contracts and abolished the laws established upon it, to meddle in nothing else, but, having set up a new office for the overthrow of the consuls' authority, sacred and inviolable, they made it so by law; and now, clothing themselves in tyrannic power, senators, by the recently ratified law, they have escaped your notice.

22.2. "For when, on the strength of great power, their leaders, putting forward the seemly pretext of aiding the wronged of the commoners, through this power carry off and seize whatever they please, and there is none to hinder their lawbreaking, neither private man nor magistrate, for fear of the law, which takes away even our speech along with our deeds, setting death as the penalty for those who utter a free voice—what other name should men of sense set on this dominion than that which it truly is, and which you would all acknowledge, tyranny? And if we are tyrannised not by one man but by a whole people, what does this matter? For the deed from both is the same.

22.3. "It would have been best, then, not to allow even the seed of this power to be sown, but to endure everything first, as Appius the excellent, foreseeing the terrors from afar, thought fit; but, failing that, now at least, all of one mind, to dig it up root and branch and cast it from the city, while it

22.4. is weak and easy to make war upon. And this it has fallen to us, fathers, neither first nor alone to suffer, but to many and often already who, having fallen into involuntary necessities, erred in their best judgment about the greatest matters, since they did not check the beginnings of the evil, to try to pull down its growths; and the repentance of those who begin late to be wise, though inferior to forethought, appears in another way not worse, by the prevention of the end obliterating what was overlooked at the beginning.

23.1. "But if to some of you the deeds of the people seem terrible, and they think they ought to be hindered from erring in what remains, yet fear comes upon them lest they seem to be the first to break the agreements and transgress the oaths, let them know that not as beginners but as defenders, not abolishing the agreements but punishing those who have abolished them, they do it; and they will be guiltless before the gods and will do what is just for their own advantage.

23.2. "And let this be a great proof to you, that of breaking the agreements and violating the covenants not you, but the commoners' party are the authors, by not thinking fit to abide by the terms on which they won their return. For they asked for the power of the tribunes not for harming the senate, but for not being harmed by it; but they use it no longer for what they should, nor for what they obtained it, but for the corruption

23.3. and confounding of the ancestral polity. For you doubtless remember the assembly lately held and the speeches made in it by the demagogues, what arrogance and disorder they displayed; and now on what self-conceit those are who think nothing sound, since they learned that in the vote is all the power of the city, of which they will be master, being more than we.

23.4. "What, then, is left for us to do, they having begun to violate covenants and break laws, except to defend ourselves against the aggressors, and to take from them with justice what they now hold unjustly, and to stop them for the future from reaching after more—thanking the gods that they did not let them, having gained the first advantages, be moderate in what remained, but cast upon them this shamelessness and meddlesomeness, by which you, being compelled, try both to recover what is lost and to keep what remains by the guard that befits.

24.1. "The present opportunity is such as no other, if indeed you mean to begin to be wise—when the greater part of them have been afflicted by the famine, and the rest could no longer hold out a long time for want of money, if they should have scarce and dear supplies. The worst and those who never rejoiced in the aristocracy will be forced to leave the city, while the more equitable will govern themselves orderly, troubling you no more.

24.2. "Keep the supplies, then, under guard, and remit nothing of the price of the wares, but vote to sell them now at as high a price as they ever were, having just occasions and reasonable pretexts—the ungrateful outcry of the people, that the dearth was contrived by us, which came about through their secession and the destruction they wrought of the land, carrying it off and plundering it like an enemy's, and the expenses taken out of the public treasury for the men sent for the grain-purchase, and many other things in which you have been wronged by them—that we may now learn what that terrible thing is which they will inflict on us, if we do not do everything to the people's pleasure, as their demagogues said in frightening us.

24.3. "But if you let this opportunity too slip from your hands, you will often pray to get another such; and if the people should learn this, that you wished to overthrow its strength and turned aside, it will press far more heavily upon you, reckoning the willing part of you an enemy, the unable part a coward."

25.1. When Marcius had said such things, the opinions of the councillors were divided, and there was much tumult among them. For those originally opposed to the commoners and who had endured the reconciliation against their judgment—among whom were almost all the young men and the wealthiest and most ambitious of the elders, bearing it grievously, some at the losses about contracts, others at the lessening about the prices—praised the man as noble and patriotic and saying the best things for the commonwealth;

25.2. but those who held popular purposes of character and did not honour wealth beyond what was fitting, and supposed nothing more necessary than peace, were vexed at his words and would not receive the opinion; and they thought fit to prevail over the humbler not by violence but by good sense, and to consider fairness not unseemly but necessary, especially when shown toward fellow citizens out of goodwill; and they declared his counsel madness, not frankness nor freedom. This part, then, being small and weak, was overborne by the more violent.

25.3. Seeing this, the tribunes—for they were present at the council, invited by the consuls—shouted and writhed and called Marcius a pest and a destroyer of the city for going through wicked speeches against the people, and said that, if the patricians did not hinder him from bringing civil war into the city by punishing him with death or exile, they themselves would do it.

25.4. A still greater tumult arising at the words of the tribunes, and the younger men especially ill-bearing the threats, Marcius, lifted up by these, now laid hold of the tribunes more arrogantly and boldly: "If, however, you do not cease," he said, "disturbing the city and stirring up the poor by demagoguery, I shall no longer contend with you in word, but in deed."

26.1. The senate being enraged, when the tribunes learned that those who wished to take away the power given to the people were more than those who thought fit to abide by the agreements, they ran out of the senate-house shouting and calling upon the gods of oaths. And after this, gathering the people into an assembly, they made known to it the speeches made in the senate by Marcius, and summoned the man to make his defence.

26.2. When he gave no heed to them, but even drove off with abusive words the attendants by whom he was summoned, the tribunes, still more indignant, taking the aediles and many of the other citizens, rushed upon him; but he chanced still to be lingering before the senate-house, bringing many of the patricians with him and having the rest of his club about him.

26.3. When the tribunes caught sight of him, they ordered the aediles to lay hold of his person and, if he was not willing to follow of his own accord, to lead him by force—they who then held the aedilician power were Titus Junius Brutus and Gaius Visellius Ruga. These, then, came forward to lay hold of the man; but the patricians, holding the deed monstrous, that one of them should be led off by force by the tribunes before trial, stood in front of Marcius, and, striking those who came to grips, drove them off.

26.4. The affair being noised throughout the whole city, all leapt out of their houses—those in dignities and well off in money, to shield Marcius along with the patricians and to recover the ancient polity; those humble in fortune and lacking in livelihood, prepared to help the tribunes and to do whatever they should order. And the shame, by which, being mastered, they had hitherto dared no lawless deed against one another, was then abolished by them. Yet they did nothing irreparable that day, but deferred it to the next, yielding to the opinion and exhortation of the consuls.

27.1. On the following day the tribunes, going down first into the marketplace, summoned the people to an assembly, and, coming forward in succession, accused the patricians of many things, as having falsified the covenants and transgressed the oaths they made to the people concerning amnesty for the past, bringing forward proofs that they had not securely reconciled with the commoners—the scarcity of grain, which they themselves had contrived, and the sendings out of both colonies, and the other things they had devised for the diminution of the multitude.

27.2. They laid hold of Marcius much, going through the speeches made by him in the senate, and that, summoned to his defence by the people, he not only did not think fit to come, but even drove off with blows the aediles who came to him. They called as witnesses of what had happened in the senate the most honoured of those there, and of the outrage against the aediles all the commoners then present in the marketplace.

27.3. Having said this, they gave the patricians a defence, if they wished, keeping the people in the assembly until the senate should be dissolved. For the patricians chanced to be sitting in council concerning these very matters, at a loss whether they ought to make a defence to the people about the things of which they were slandered,

27.4. or to remain quiet. When the majority of opinions chose the more humane over the more arrogant, the consuls, dissolving the meeting, went forward into the marketplace to clear themselves of the common slanders and to ask the people to resolve nothing irreparable about Marcius. And the elder of them, Minucius, came forward and spoke as follows:

28.1. "The defence concerning the dearth, commoners, is very brief, and we shall offer no other witnesses of what we say than yourselves. For the failure of the grain-crops you doubtless know yourselves, occurring through the omitted sowing; and the other destruction of the country you need not learn from others—from what cause it came about, and how at last the greatest and best land has come short of all crops and slaves and cattle, partly plundered by the enemy, partly not supplying you, so numerous as you are and having no other resource.

28.2. "So that, reckoning the famine to have come about not from what the demagogues slander, but from what you yourselves know, cease attaching a plot of ours to the calamity and holding us, who do no wrong, in anger.

28.3. "The sendings out of colonists came about of necessity, it having seemed good to you all in common to hold under guard places suited for war, and they greatly benefited, occurring at a most necessary time, both those who went out and those of you who stayed. For the former are supplied with more abundant necessities; the latter, who stayed here, want the market less; and the equal sharing of fortune which we patricians made with you commoners, by drawing lots for the expedition, is not censured.

29.1. "What, then, has come over the demagogues, that they accuse us about these things, in which we shared both the counsels and the fortunes—whether terrible, as these say,

29.2. or beneficial, as we think? For the charges by which we have been slandered by them at the recently held senate—that we did not think fit to be moderate about the prices of the market, that we plotted to take away the power of the tribunes, that we bore rancour against you for the secession and were eager by every means to harm the commoners, and all such accusations—we shall clear ourselves of by deeds before long, neither working you any harm and confirming now too the power of the tribunes on the terms we then conceded you to have, and making the sale of the grain as you all shall think best. Wait, then; and if any of these things does not happen, then accuse us.

29.3. "But if you should wish to examine the differences accurately, we patricians would more justly accuse the people than you hold the senate to blame. For you wrong us, commoners—and be not at all vexed to hear it—if, not waiting to learn the end of our opinion, you think fit already to accuse it.

29.4. "And yet who does not know that it would be a most easy task for anyone who wished, accusing such things—the proof of which lies in the future and is still uncertain—to confound and abolish concord from a city; and that this is no safeguard against suffering some harm, but a pretext for doing wrong?

29.5. "And not only your leaders, who slander the senate and play the sycophant, deserve rebuke, but you no less, who trust them and are indignant before making trial. For you ought, if you feared the future wrongs, to keep your angers at them too in the future. But now you appear to have judged more quickly than wisely, and to set the safer in the more malicious.

30.1. "Concerning the common wrongs, then, on which the tribunes have slandered the senate, I think enough has been said. But since they play the sycophant against each one of us severally for what we may say in the senate, and accuse us of dividing the city, and now seek to kill Gaius Marcius, a patriotic man who used a free voice on behalf of the commonwealth, or to make him an exile from his country, I wish to say what is just to you about this too; and consider whether I shall speak moderate and true

30.2. words. You, commoners, when reconciling with the senate, thought it enough for you to be released from your debts, and for the aid of the oppressed poor you asked to appoint magistrates from yourselves; and for both these, knowing much thanks to us, you received them. But to abolish the office of consuls, or to make the senate void of its presidency over public affairs and to overturn the order of the ancestral polity, you neither asked nor intend.

30.3. "Why then do you now attempt to confound all these? And trusting in what right do you seek to take away our honours? For if you shall make it fearful among those who share the senate not to say with frankness what they think, what fair thing would your leaders say? Or by what law will they think fit to punish with death or exile any of the patricians? For neither do the old laws give you this power, nor the agreements lately made with the senate.

30.4. "To overstep the lawful bounds and to make violence stronger than justice is no longer popular, but, if you wish to hear the truth, tyrannic. I would advise you, then, to depart from none of the humane things you obtained from the senate, but not now to lay claim to what you did not think fit to obtain when settling the enmity.

31.1. "And that you may the more plainly see that the demagogues think fit for nothing moderate or just, but reach after unlawful and impossible things, transferring the matter to themselves, consider thus, and suppose that those who share the council were to accuse those who govern among you of making wicked speeches against the senate and abolishing the ancestral aristocracy and dividing the city, saying all this truly—for they do these things—and, what is the harshest of all, that they clothe themselves in a power greater than was conceded them, attempting to put to death untried whomever they wish of us, and that those who do these things ought

31.2. to die unavenged. How would you bear the arrogance of the council? And what would you say? Would you not be indignant and say you suffered dreadful things, if someone should take from you your frank speech and your freedom, setting the uttermost danger upon those who utter a free voice on behalf of the people?

31.3. "There is no other way to put it. Then, what you yourselves would not endure to suffer, this you think it just that others should endure to suffer? Civic indeed, commoners, and moderate are your counsels. By thinking fit such things, do you not yourselves confirm the slanders against you to be true, and prove that those who counsel you not to look on while your unlawful dominion grows are minded toward what is just for the commonwealth?

31.4. "To me at least it seems so. But if you wish to do the opposite of what you are slandered for, using me as counsellor, be moderate, and bear the speeches at which you are vexed in a civic and not ill-tempered manner. For it will be yours, if you do this, to seem good men, and theirs who are ill-disposed toward you, to repent.

32.1. "Putting forward, then, these just claims to you—great ones, as we think—we persuade you to err in nothing; and we shall use kind and humane deeds, not wishing to reproach you, but to make you more equitable—apart from the old ones, the recent things about your return, which we wish to forget, but you are bound to remember.

32.2. "And we are compelled to bring them forward now, asking in return for the many great things we granted you in your need, to receive this favour from you: neither to kill nor to cast from the city a patriotic man, best of all in war. For we shall be harmed not a little, know well, commoners, by depriving the city of such valour. Most of all, then, for his own sake, you are bound to relax your anger, remembering how many of you he saved in the wars, and not to bear rancour for paltry words, but to remember noble deeds.

32.3. "For the man's speech harmed you in nothing, but his deeds greatly benefited you. And if you are irreconcilable toward him, grant him at least to us and the senate, who beg it, and be at last firmly reconciled, and make the city, as from the beginning it was, one. But if you will not yield to our persuasion, know well that we too will not yield to your force, but either this trial of the people will be the cause to all of guileless friendship and still greater favours, or it will again be the beginning of civil war and irreparable evils."

33.1. When Minucius had gone through this, the tribunes, seeing the multitude won over by the moderation of his words and the humanity of his promises, were vexed and bore it grievously—and most of all Gaius Sicinius Bellutus, who had persuaded the poor to secede from the patricians and was appointed their general while they were in arms, a man most hostile to the aristocracy and on this account advanced by the many to distinction, and who had now taken up the tribunician power for the second time, thinking least of all the demagogues that it was to his advantage that the city should be of one mind and recover its ancient order.

33.2. For not only did he suppose he would not have the same honours and powers if the aristocracy governed—being basely born and ingloriously reared and having displayed nothing brilliant either in war or in peace—but that he would run the uttermost danger, as having divided the city and been the cause of many evils to it.

33.3. Reflecting, then, on what he should say and do, and having deliberated with his colleagues, when he had them too of one mind, he rose, and, after lamenting a little over the misfortune gripping the people, praised the consuls, that they had thought fit to render account to the commoners, not despising their lowliness; and he said he was thankful to the patricians, if some care for the safety of the poor at last entered them; and he said he would still more bear witness with all, if they should furnish deeds like their words.

34.1. Having said this and seeming moderate in anger and conciliatory, he turned to Marcius, who stood by the consuls, and says: "But you, why do you not make defence to your own fellow citizens, noble sir, concerning what you said in the senate? Or rather, why do you not beseech and beg off their angers, that they may impose a more moderate penalty on you? For to deny it I would not think fit of you, with so many men knowing, nor to flee to shameless defences—you being a Marcius and having a spirit greater than a private man's; unless indeed it is well for the consuls and the patricians to persuade the people on your behalf, but it will not be well for you to do this

34.2. same thing for yourself?" He said this not unaware that a high-spirited man would not endure, becoming his own accuser as one who had erred, to ask release from punishment, nor flee to lamentations and entreaties against his own character, but would either altogether disdain the defence, or, keeping his innate arrogance, would in no way flatter the people by being moderate in his words—which is just what happened.

34.3. For when silence fell and much eagerness fell upon almost all the commoners to acquit him, if he should court the present occasion, he displayed such arrogance of words and so despised them that, coming forward, he denied none of the things said against the people before the senate, nor, as one repenting them, turned to laments and entreaties; rather, he thought fit not even to use them as judges of any matter at all, on the ground that they had no lawful authority; but if anyone should wish to accuse him before the consuls, whether demanding account of deeds or of words,

34.4. where there is a law, he was ready to undergo trial. He said he had come forward to the commoners, since they themselves called him, partly to rebuke their lawbreakings and greeds, which they had used both about the secession and after the return; partly to advise them at last to check and contract their unjust desires.

34.5. And after this very pointedly and boldly he laid hold of all of them, and especially the tribunes. And there was in his words not the reasonable modesty of a citizen instructing the people, nor the prudent caution of a private man hateful to many before the angers of the ruling power, but, as of an enemy fearlessly insulting those beneath his hand, a kind of unmixed and heavy bile and contempt of one suffering ill.

35.1. Accordingly, while he was still speaking, there was much tumult here and there, the men being frequently drawn to and fro, as among different and divided multitudes wishing not the same things—some pleased at his words, others again vexed. And when he ceased speaking, a still greater shout and tumult arose.

35.2. For the patricians, calling him the best of men, praised him for his frankness and declared him alone of them all free, who neither feared the multitude of the enemy attacking nor flattered the arrogant and lawless impulses of citizens; but the commoners, ill-bearing the reproaches, called him heavy and bitter and most hateful of all enemies.

35.3. And some now had much eagerness, those in whom there was much rashness, to destroy him by force of hands on the spot. The tribunes helped and joined them in this, and Sicinius especially gave rein to their wishes. At the end, at least, when he had made much onslaught against him and kindled the tempers of the commoners, breathing much fury into the accusation, he brought out as his conclusion that the magistracy condemned him to death for the outrage against the aediles, whom on the day before, ordered by themselves to lead him off, he had driven away with blows; for the insult done to their attendants belonged to none other than to those who had given the order.

35.4. Having said this, he ordered him to be led to the hill overlooking the marketplace—the place is a sheer cliff, whence it was their custom to cast down the condemned. The aediles, then, came forward to lay hold of his person; but the patricians, with a great shout, rushed upon them in a body; then the people rushed upon the patricians; and there was much disorder of deeds and much insolence of words on both sides,

35.5. shovings and layings-on of hands. The disturbers were checked and forced to be temperate by the consuls, who forced their way into the midst and ordered the lictors to drive back the crowds—so great was the reverence for the office among the men of that time, and so honoured the imitation of the kingly power. At which Sicinius, distressed and confounded and full of caution lest he should compel his opponents to undo violence with violence, not thinking fit to desist from the undertaking, since once he had set out upon it, yet unable to abide by what he had judged, was much at a loss what should be done.

36.1. Seeing him helpless, that Lucius Junius Brutus—the demagogue who had contrived the terms on which the reconciliation should be made, a man clever both in other respects and in finding ways amid impasses—comes to him alone and suggests not to be contentious in pressing a hot and unlawful undertaking, seeing all the patricians provoked and ready, if summoned by the consuls, to go to arms, and the strongest part of the people doubtful and not gladly receiving the surrender of the most distinguished man in the city to death, and that untried.

36.2. He advised him for the present to yield and not come to grips with the consuls, lest he work some greater evil, but to set a trial for the man, fixing whatever time, and to give the citizens the vote concerning him by tribes; and whatever the majority of votes should determine, to do that. For it was tyrannic and violent, what he was now attempting, that the same man be at once accuser and judge and master of the measure of punishment; but it was civic that the accused, having obtained a defence according to the laws, suffer whatever the majority of judges should decide.

36.3. Sicinius was persuaded of this, seeing no better counsel, and coming forward said: "You see the zeal of the patricians, commoners, for murderous and violent deeds—how, when one arrogant man wrongs the whole city, they value your multitude less. Yet we must not become like them and rush headlong, either beginning a war or defending ourselves; but since some put forward as a seemly pretext the law—helping which they take him from punishment, the law which allows none of the citizens to be killed untried—let us concede them this right, even though we suffer from them things neither lawful nor just, and show that we wish to prevail over the citizens who wrong us by good sense rather than by force.

36.4. "You, then, depart and await the coming occasion, which will not be far off; we, having made ready what presses, will set a time for the man for his defence and will complete the trial before you. And when you become masters of the vote according to the law, assess against him whatever penalty you find him to deserve. And about him so much. As for the sale and disposal of the grain, that it may be done most justly, if these men and the senate have no care for it, we ourselves will see to it." Having said this, he dissolved the assembly.

37.1. After this the consuls, gathering the senate, considered at leisure what release there might be of the present disturbance. And it seemed best to them first to soothe the commoners by making the supplies very cheap and profitable to them; then to persuade their leaders, as a favour to the senate, to desist and not bring Marcius forward—or, if they could not persuade them, to put it off to the longest times, until the angers of the many should wither.

37.2. Having voted these things, they brought out to the people the decree about the market and, all approving, ratified it. It was of this sort: that the prices of the wares for daily living should be those which were lowest before the civil strife. From the tribunes, having much entreated, they did not obtain the entire abandonment, but got the postponement for as long as they asked; and they themselves contrived another delay, using this occasion.

37.3. The envoys sent from Sicily by the tyrant, who had conveyed to the people the gift of grain, sailing home, the Antiates, sending out a piratical squadron, brought them in as they lay at anchor not far from the harbours, and treated their goods as an enemy's for plunder, and, shutting up their persons, kept them under guard.

37.4. Learning this, the consuls voted an expedition against the Antiates, since to their embassy they thought fit to do nothing just; and, making a levy of those in their prime, both went out, having ratified a decree about the postponement of private and public suits for as long as they should be in arms.

37.5. This was not so long as they supposed, but far shorter. For the Antiates, learning that the Romans had marched out in full force, held out not even the least time, but, begging and entreating, gave back both the persons of the captured Sicilians and the money, so that the Romans were compelled to return to the city.

38.1. The army being disbanded, Sicinius the tribune, gathering the multitude into an assembly, proclaimed a day on which he was to complete the trial of Marcius; and he urged those in the city to come in numbers to the decision of the suit, and those spending their time in the fields, leaving their work, to present themselves on the same day, as men who would take the vote concerning the freedom and safety of the whole city; and he gave notice to Marcius too to be present for his defence, as one who would fail of none of the lawful procedures

38.2. about trials. But the consuls, having deliberated with the council, thought best not to look on while the people became master of so great a power. And there had been found by them a just and lawful occasion of hindrance, by which they thought to dissolve all the plans of their opponents. And after this they invited the leaders of the people to come to a conference, their associates being with them.

38.3. And Minucius spoke as follows: "It seems to us, tribunes, that we ought to drive the strife from the city with all our power and not contend against the people about any matter—especially when we see you coming from violence to justice and to words. Praising you, however, for this opinion, we think the senate ought to begin by making a preliminary decree, as is ancestral to us. And you yourselves could

38.4. bear witness to this, that from the time our forefathers founded this city, the senate has continued to hold this privilege, and the people has never decided or voted anything that the senate did not first deliberate upon—not now only, but not even under the kings; rather, whatever seemed good to the council, the kings, bringing it before the people, ratified. Do not, then, take away this right of ours, nor abolish a fair ancient custom; but, having instructed the council that you ask a just and moderate thing, make the people master of whatever it shall think best."

39.1. When the consuls said this, Sicinius would not endure the words nor think fit to make the senate master of anything; but those who held the same power as he, using the opinion of Decius, agreed that the preliminary decree should be made, themselves too making a just demand which it was not possible for the consuls

39.2. not to accept. For they thought fit that the senators, having given a hearing both to those acting on behalf of the people and to those who wished to speak for or against, when they had heard all who wished, should declare whatever should seem to them just and advantageous to the commonwealth, and cast their opinion, all of them, having sworn the lawful oath as in a court of law; and whatever the majority of opinions should determine, this should be valid.

39.3. The consuls agreeing that the preliminary decree should be made as the tribunes thought fit, they then dispersed; and on the following day the senate was present in the council, and the consuls, having made known to it the things agreed, called the tribunes, and bade them say what they had come for. Coming forward, Decius, who had agreed that the preliminary decree should be made, used such words as these:

40.1. "It does not escape us, senators, what will come about, that we shall be blamed by the people for our coming to you, and shall have as accuser of the preliminary decree a man holding the same power as we, who thought fit not to ask of you what the law gives us, nor to receive justice in the guise of a benefit. And we shall run no slight danger, brought to trial, but, condemned as deserters and traitors, shall suffer the most shameful things.

40.2. "Yet, though knowing this, we nevertheless endured to come to you, trusting in the right and committing ourselves to the oaths by which, having sworn, you will cast your opinions. We are mean men, indeed, for speaking on so great and so many matters, and far short of what befits; but the matters are not mean about which we shall speak. To these, then, give heed; and if they seem to you just and advantageous to the commonwealth—I will add, also necessary—concede them to us willingly to obtain.

41.1. "I will speak first about the just. You, senators, when you got rid of the kings, having us as allies, and established the polity in which we now are, which we do not censure, seeing the commoners disadvantaged in suits whenever any difference arose between them and the patricians—and these were many—ratified a law, using the opinion of Publius Valerius, one of the consuls: that it should be permitted to the commoners oppressed by the patricians to refer the judgments to the people; and by nothing else so much as this law you both preserved the city in concord and

41.2. repelled the kings when they attacked. Bringing forward this law, then, on account of the things in which we all say we are wronged and oppressed by Gaius Marcius here, we summon him before the people and bid him say there what is just. And there was no need of a preliminary decree here. For about things for which there are no laws, you have the power to make a preliminary decree and the people to ratify it; but a law existing, unalterable, even if you make no preliminary decree,

41.3. this surely must be used. For no one could say this, that for private men, who happen to be disadvantaged in trials, the appeal to the people should be valid, but for us the tribunes void. Relying, then, on this concession of the law, and on this account having risked coming under you as judges, we are here.

41.4. "By the unwritten and unlegislated right of nature, senators, we think fit that the people have neither more than you nor less—in justice, at least—we who have shared with you many great wars, and displayed the greatest zeal about the ending of the wars, and furnished no small part toward the city's doing the bidding of no one, but itself prescribing justice to others.

41.5. "And you would render us our not having less than our due, fathers, if you should hinder those who attempt to do lawless violence to our persons and our freedom, setting upon them the fear arising from a trial. Offices and presidencies and honours we think you ought to allot to those who surpass us in valour and fortune; but to suffer no wrong and to obtain fitting justice for whatever one suffers we hold should be equal and common to those who share the polity.

41.6. "As, therefore, we yield to you the brilliant and great things, so we do not let go the equal and common. Let this suffice to be said about the just, though there are many other things that might be said.

42.1. "And that it will be advantageous to the commonwealth that these things be done as the people thinks fit, bear with me as I go through a few things. Come, if someone should ask you, what do you think is the greatest of the evils that befall cities, and the cause of the swiftest destruction—would you not say dissension? To me at least it seems so.

42.2. "For who of you is so foolish or perverse or hating equality beyond measure that he does not know that, the power being given to the people to judge the suits permitted it by the law, we shall govern in concord; but that if you should resolve the contrary and take away our freedom—for you will take away our freedom by taking away justice and law—you will compel us to be in strife again and to war with you? For from whatever city justice and law are driven out, into that strife and war are wont to enter.

42.3. "And those who have not come to trial of civil differences—it is no wonder if, through inexperience of the evils, they neither are vexed at the terrors that have happened nor hinder beforehand those to come. But those who, like you, having come into the uttermost dangers, were gladly rid of them, making the release of their evils as the occasion demanded—what seemly or moderate pretext is left for these, if they should fall into the same fortunes again?

42.4. "And who of you would not condemn much folly and madness, reflecting that a little while ago, that the commoners might not be in strife, you endured many things against your judgment, some of which perhaps were neither best nor most profitable; but now, about to be harmed neither in money nor in good repute nor in any other of the public matters whatsoever, that you may gratify the most people-hating, you will set the commoners at war again? Not,

42.5. if you are wise. I would gladly ask you, with what opinion you then conceded the return to us on the terms we thought fit—whether foreseeing the best by reason, or yielding to necessity? For if you supposed these things most beneficial to the city, why do you not abide in them even now? But if necessary and not possible to be otherwise, why are you vexed that they came about? For at the outset perhaps you ought not to have conceded, if you had the power; but, having conceded, no longer to blame what was done.

43.1. "For you seem to me, senators, to have used the best judgment about the reconciliation ... to whom one must yield ... about keeping firm the agreements. For you gave us the gods as sureties of the covenants, having laid many dreadful curses on those who should transgress the agreements, both on themselves and their descendants for all time. But that we ask what is just and advantageous, which there is also great necessity for you to do, remembering the oaths—as to men who all know it, I know not what need there is to trouble you by saying more.

43.2. "But that it is no small matter to us not to abandon this contest, neither yielding to force nor led astray by deceit, but that we have come to it of great necessity, having suffered dreadful things and beyond dreadful at the hands of this man, learn, fathers—or rather, recall; for I shall say nothing that you do not all know—and at the same time use your own judgment about what is said, reflecting, if one of us commoners had attempted to say or do among the multitude such things against you as Marcius dared to say here, what feeling would have come over you toward him.

44.1. "For the unalterable agreements with the senate concerning concord, secured almost with bonds of adamant, which it is lawful neither for you who swore them nor for those to be born of you to abolish, so long as this city is inhabited—Marcius here was the first of you to attempt to abolish, not yet three years old since they were made, working their dissolution not in silence nor having sunk into some obscure place, but openly, in this place, with all of you present, declaring his opinion that the tribunician power must no longer be conceded to us, but abolished—the power on which, as the first and only

44.2. guardian of our freedom, we relied in making the reconciliation. And he did not stop at this arrogance, but, calling the freedom of the poor insolence and equality of speech tyranny, advised you to take it away from us. And what was the most impious of the things then thought fit by him—recall, fathers—when he declared it a fair occasion to remember against the commoners all the angers for the former grievances, and advised now, when it is worn out by want of money and has long been short of necessary food, to crush it utterly, keeping the market in the same dearth of

44.3. provisions. For we should not, he said, hold out long, poor men buying little food at much money, but some would depart leaving the city, and as many as remained would perish by the most wretched of deaths. So out of his senses was he and god-stricken in persuading you of these things that he could not perceive even this—apart from the other things he laid upon himself in thinking fit to break the senate's covenants—that poor men, shut out from necessary food, being so great in number, would be forced to come to grips with the authors of the calamity, reckoning nothing friendly any longer.

44.4. "So that, had you madly ratified his opinions, there would have been no middle ground, but either the whole commoner multitude would have perished, or not even the race of the patricians would have been left. For we should not have given ourselves up so slavishly, the one to be cast out, the other to die, but, calling the gods and divinities to witness what we suffered, we should have filled the marketplaces and streets with many corpses, know it well, and, setting up a great bowl of civic blood, so should we have received our appointed portion. Of such impieties, fathers, he became your prompter, and thought fit to harangue such things.

45.1. "And it is not that Marcius attempted to say what would divide the city but did not set about to do what he said; rather, having about him a band of men ready for every service, summoned before our office he does not present himself, and on our attendants, whenever, ordered to lead him off, they attempt it, he inflicts blows, and at last refrains not even from laying hands on our persons.

45.2. "So that it remains for us, so far as he is concerned, to have a seemly name of an inviolable office, set up for mockery, but in deed to do nothing whatever of what is assigned to the office. How could we help others who say they are wronged, when we ourselves have not security? These insults the poor, insulted by one man not yet a tyrant but still a would-be one—and having already suffered dreadful things, fathers, and others which, had not the greater part of you stood in the way, we should very nearly have come to suffer—do we, then, with reason feel indignation and think we need some aid, not without your fellow-indignation, summoning him to an equal and lawful trial, senators, in which the whole multitude, divided by tribes, a hearing being given to those in need, shall cast its sworn vote.

45.3. "Go there, Marcius, and these things you mean to say here, defend yourself against all the citizens in a body—whether that you counselled them the best things from the best motive, and that it would have benefited the city had these come about; or that it is not just that those who declare their opinions here should give account of words; or that not of forethought nor plot, but yielding to anger, you were led to advise these abominable things;

45.4. or whatever other defence you have. Come down from those arrogant and tyrannic boasts to the more popular, wicked man, and make yourself at last like other men. Take the humble and pitiable bearing of one who has erred and begs off, such as misfortunes demand. Not forcing those who have suffered ill, but humbling yourself, think fit to be saved.

45.5. "Let there be an example to you of the fairness by which, using it, you would be unblamed toward your fellow citizens—the deeds of these good men, who, being so great in number as you yourself now see, and having displayed so many virtues both military and civic, which it would not be easy to go through even in much time, brought forth no cruel or arrogant end against us, the mean and humble—they the august and great—but were the first themselves to begin words of reconciliation, offering terms when fortune had divided us from one another, and conceded that the agreements be made not as they supposed best for themselves, but as we thought fit; and these last differences about the grain-distribution, lately in time, on account of which we held them to blame, they made much of clearing themselves of.

46.1. "I pass over the rest; but on behalf of you yourself and your god-struck folly, what entreaties did they not make, in common and to each of the commoners, begging you off from punishment? Then was it well for the consuls and the senate, governing so great a city, Marcius, to endure the people as judge of the things they were accused of, but is it not well for you?

46.2. "And these all think it no disgrace to beg the commoners for your release, but you take this same thing as a disgrace? And these do not suffice you, noble sir, but, as if you had wrought some fine deed, you go about high-headed and boasting and fighting to yield nothing of your spirit—for I pass over that you also rail at the people and accuse and threaten besides.

46.3. "Then are you not indignant at his arrogance, fathers, if he thinks himself alone worthy of such great things as not even all of you think yourselves? Whom it behoved, even if all of you undertook to vote the war on his behalf, to be content with your goodwill and zeal, but not to accept a private favour at common harm, but to endure to make defence and undergo trial if need be, and to suffer

46.4. everything. For these were the deeds of a good citizen and one who practises nobility in deeds, not words. But the things this man now forces—of what life are they signs? Of what purposes are they tokens—to transgress oaths, to break pledges, to abolish agreements, to war with the people, to outrage the persons of magistrates, and for none of these to make his body answerable, but, untried, undefended, having begged no one, feared no one, become equal to none of so many citizens, to go about fearlessly? Are these not the signs of a tyrannic

46.5. character? To me at least they seem so. And yet there are some who soothe and applaud this man from among yourselves, in whom is frozen an irreconcilable hatred toward the commoners, and who cannot perceive that this evil is no more bred against the humbler part of the city than against the more august; but they think that, the rival being by nature enslaved, their own part too will be secure.

46.6. "It is not so in truth, you who err in your best judgment; but, taking experience as teacher—which Marcius furnishes—and time, chastened by examples both foreign and domestic, you would know that a tyranny grafted against the people is grafted against the whole city, and now begins from us, but, having prevailed, will not spare you either."

47.1. When Decius had gone through this, and the other tribunes had supported what he seemed to have left out, since the councillors had to declare their opinions, first the eldest of the consulars, called in the customary order by the consuls, rose; then those of lower rank in both respects; last the youngest, saying no speech—for this was still then a disgrace to the Romans, and no young man thought fit to be wiser than an elder—but ratifying the opinions laid down by the consulars.

47.2. And all were ordered, as they came forward, to cast their vote with an oath, as in a court of law. Appius Claudius, then, of whom I said before that he was most people-hating of the patricians and never pleased with the reconciliations with the commoners, would not allow the preliminary decree to be made, using such words as these:

48.1. "I should indeed have wished, and often prayed the gods, that I myself had erred in the opinion I held about the reconciliations with the people—since I supposed the return of the exiles would be neither honourable and just nor advantageous to us, and throughout, as often as it was proposed to consider this, I was first of all and at last alone, when the rest desisted, opposed it; and that you, senators, who took the hopes for the better and eagerly granted the people everything, just and unjust, should seem to be of better judgment than I.

48.2. "But since affairs have gone for you not as I wished and prayed the gods, but as I thought, and your favours have turned for you into envies and hatreds, to rebuke you for your errors and grieve you in vain—which is the easiest thing and customary for most to do—seeing it would not now be in season, I shall let pass. But what we shall do to set right the past, so far as it is not altogether incurable, and to think better about the present,

48.3. this I shall try to say. And yet it does not escape me that I shall seem to some of you to be mad and to court death, declaring a free opinion about these matters, reflecting how great are the dangers of frank speech, and considering the misfortunes of Marcius, who now runs the contest for his life for no other reason.

48.4. "But I do not think I ought to take more forethought for my own safety than for the common advantage. For my body is already given to the dangers on your behalf, senators, and consecrated to the contests for the city, so that, whatever the divinity wills, with all and with few, and, if need be, even alone, I shall nobly suffer; but so long as I have my life, no fear shall hold me back from saying what I think.

49.1. "First, then, I think fit that you at last firmly learn this, that you have the commoner crowd as an enemy and foe to the established polity, and that all you have softly conceded to it has both been spent on it in vain and become a cause of contempt, as conceded by you through necessity, not

49.2. from goodwill nor by judgment. For consider thus. When the people seceded, taking up arms from you, and dared openly to become your enemy—wronged in nothing, but pretending an inability to discharge their debts to those who had lent—and said that, if you should vote cancellations of debts and impunity for what it had erred in the secession, it would need nothing more, the majority of you—not all—deceived by your counsellors, as would they never had, resolved to make void the laws established for security and to bear rancour for none of the wrongs then committed.

49.3. "It was not content with obtaining this favour, the only one which, it said, it remembered in making the secession, but at once asked another still greater and more lawless gift than this—that authority be given it to appoint tribunes from itself each year, making a pretext of our strength, that there might be some aid and refuge for the wronged and oppressed of the poor; but in truth plotting against the order of the polity and wishing to turn affairs

49.4. toward democracy. And our counsellors persuaded us to let the office come into the city, an evil to the commonwealth—and most of all to the envy against the senate—though I, if indeed you remember, shouted much and called gods and men to witness that you would bring an unceasing civil war into the city, and said all that has come to pass for you.

50.1. "What, then, did our good people do, when you had conceded it this office too? It did not husband so great a favour, nor receive it modestly and temperately, but, as to men fearing its strength and cowering before it ... then it said the office must be declared sacred and inviolable, confirmed by oaths, asking a greater honour than you gave the consuls. You endured this too, and, standing over the victims, you swore to the destruction of yourselves and your descendants.

50.2. "What, then, did it do, having got this too? Instead of being thankful to you and preserving the ancestral order of the polity, beginning from these advantages and using these lawbreakings as occasions for the later ones, it brings in laws without preliminary decree, and ratifies these without your opinion, and gives no heed to whatever decrees you bring out, and accused the consuls of governing the city not rightly; and the things that come about contrary to your agreements—and many there are which human reason cannot conjecture—it ascribes not, as it ought, to fortune, but to your purpose, pretending to be plotted against by you and to fear lest you take away its freedom or cast it from its country—while itself it continues contriving these against you; and that it may not suffer what it says it fears, it is plain it guards by nothing else than by being first to do.

50.3. "It showed this often before and in many things which I am barred from mentioning at present, but most of all in accusing this Marcius, a patriotic man, neither of obscure ancestors nor himself falling short of any of us in valour, of plotting against it and saying wicked opinions here, it attempted to put him to death untried.

50.4. "And had not the consuls and those of you who think the better, holding the matter dreadful, banded together and checked their lawbreaking, in that one day you would have been deprived of all that your fathers, acquiring with many toils, left you, and that you yourselves, undergoing contests no fewer than theirs, possess—the dignity, the empire, the freedom; and the nobler, not content even with life itself, if you were not to live with these goods, would have given up their lives sooner than be deprived of these, some at once, others not long after.

50.5. "For what would have hindered, Marcius here having been snatched off so basely and wickedly as in a desert, that I too after him should have perished, torn apart by enemies, and all who ever opposed and were in future to oppose the lawless desires of the people? For it would not have been content having made away with us two only, nor, having come this far, would it have desisted from lawbreaking, if one must conjecture the future from the past; but, beginning from us, it would have swept away and borne down all the rival and unyielding part, like a great torrent falling upon it, sparing neither nobility nor valour nor age.

51.1. "These fair returns, senators, the people has rendered you in exchange for the many great goods it received—some it has already rendered, others it was about to render, had not the hindrance come from you. Come now, reflect again on those things it did after this noble and prudent deed of yours, that you may know

51.2. in what manner you must deal with it. When that man learned that you no longer endured its insolence, but were prepared to come to grips, it cowered, and, recovering itself a little as from drunkenness and madness, came down from violence and turned to trial; and, proclaiming a fixed day, summoned the man to it as one to undergo a trial of which it itself was to be accuser and witness and judge and master of the

51.3. measure of the punishment. But when you opposed this too, judging that the man was summoned not to a trial but to a punishment, seeing that it is master of no matter, but only of ratifying what you shall first decree, it has now relaxed the arrogance it then breathed much, and comes to beg you to concede it this favour too.

51.4. "Reflecting on these things, perceive at last and learn that all that you granted, deliberating more simply than wisely, has brought you calamities and harms; but all that, standing with nobility, you opposed against its lawless and violent acts has turned out for your need.

51.5. "What, then, do I advise you, who know these things, to do, and what opinion do I declare about the present? All that you granted and conceded to the people, reconciling the enmity in whatever way, to keep valid, and to abolish none of what was then conceded—not as being fair and worthy of the city—whence?—but as necessary and no longer admitting of correction; but all that, beyond this, forcing and breaking the law, against your will, it shall attempt to take, neither to concede nor to permit, but to oppose it with words and deeds, all together and each one singly.

51.6. "For if one errs once, whether deceived or compelled, he need not do the rest in like manner, but, remembering that, consider how the rest may not be such. These, then, are the things I think all of you in common ought to have resolved, and I advise you to be prepared against the unjust greeds of the people.

52.1. "And that this matter too, which is now proposed for consideration, is like his other unjust and lawless undertakings, and not, as the tribune in deceiving you tried to make out, just and moderate, learn, you who do not yet clearly know. The law about the popular courts, on which Decius chiefly relied, was not written against you patricians, but for the security of the oppressed commoners, as itself shows, having writings not ambiguous, and

52.2. as you all always say, knowing it well. A great proof of this is that which seems the best test of every disputed right—time, now nineteen years old since this law was set down; in all of which Decius could not show a single suit, neither public against any of the patricians tried under the law, nor private; and if he shall say so,

52.3. let him show it, and we need no more words. The agreements, by which you reconciled with the commoners, lately made—for you must learn about these too, since the tribune has become a wicked interpreter of them—contain these two concessions: that the commoners be released from their debts, and that this office be appointed each year for the aid and protection of the oppressed—nothing else besides these.

52.4. "And let this be a very great proof to you that neither the law nor the agreements have given the people authority to judge a patrician man, which the people now does. For it asks it of you today, as not having it before; and no one would think fit to take from others what he is master of by law.

52.5. "And how could this be a right of nature, unlegislated, senators—for Decius thought you ought to consider this too—that for the commoners, both the suits they may flee from the patricians and those they may bring against them, the people should judge, but for the patricians, neither when they bring a suit against any of the commoners, nor when they themselves are in danger, the patricians should arbitrate the disputes; but that to these it should be allowed to have the advantage in both,

52.6. and to us to share in neither right? But if Marcius wrongs the people, or any other of the patricians whosoever, and deserves to die or be cast from the city, let him give justice judged not among them but here, as is lawful. Unless indeed, Decius, the people will be an equal judge and would do itself no favour in casting its vote against an enemy man; but if these should become masters of the vote, they will value the wrongdoer more than the city wronged by him, being about to carry off from the trial curse and perjury and hatred from men and the wrath of the gods, and to live with wicked hopes.

52.7. "I do not think fit that you consider these things about the senate, commoners, to which you confess you yield honours and offices and the best things in the city for its valour, and say you owe much thanks for the zeal it displayed about your return. These things war with one another; and it is not reasonable to fear those you praise, and at once both entrust them with the greater matters and distrust them about

52.8. the rest. Why do you not, using one opinion, either trust them in all or distrust them about all? But you think them capable of making preliminary decrees about what is just, yet not capable of judging about these very things which they pre-decree. I had many other things to say about the just, senators, but these too suffice.

53.1. "Since Decius tried also to speak about the advantageous—that concord is a good thing, strife dreadful, and that courting the people we shall govern in concord, but hindering them from banishing or murdering whom they wish of the patricians we shall fall into civil war—having much to say, I shall use very few words.

53.2. "First, then, I have to marvel at Decius's irony—for it is not stupidity—if he thinks himself better at judging what is advantageous to the commonwealth, he who has just come into civic affairs, than we who have grown old in them and made the city great from small. Next, if he supposed he would persuade you that you must hand over someone bound to your enemies for punishment—and that a fellow citizen of yours, and not one of the obscure or mean citizens, but one whom you yourselves judge most brilliant in war and most temperate in life and inferior to no one in conducting civic affairs.

53.3. "And he dared to say this, knowing that you make most reverence of suppliants, and shut not even your enemies who flee for refuge here from this humanity. But if you knew us, Decius, to practise the opposite—impious thoughts about the gods, unjust deeds toward men—what more dreadful deed than this would you advise us to endure, by which, root and branch and utterly destroyed, hated by gods and men, we should perish?

53.4. "We need you not as counsellor, Decius, neither about the handing over of citizens nor about any other matter we must do; nor do we, who have come to this age through much experience of evils and goods, think we ought to judge our own advantages by the foreign wisdom of young men. And the threats of war, by which you frighten us, brought against us not now first by you, but already often and by many shaken over us, we shall bear undismayed, consigning them to our customary gentleness.

53.5. "And if indeed you shall do the like to what you say, we shall defend ourselves, having the gods as fellow-combatants, who are indignant at those who begin an unjust war, and shall have no small force of men as ally. For all the Latins, to whom we have lately given equal citizenship, will stand with us, fighting as for their own country now in this city; and the many fine cities colonised from here, valuing the safety of the mother city above all, will defend her.

53.6. "But if you shall shut us up to the necessity of seeking help from every quarter, we shall endure, Decius, calling slaves to freedom and enemies to friendship and all men to a share of the hopes from victory, to come to grips with you. But may none of these things be needed, O Zeus and all you gods who hold the city of the Romans, but may these terrors come only to words, and may no unwelcome deed come of them."

54.1. This Appius said. But Manius Valerius, the most popular of the council and who had displayed the greatest zeal about the reconciliation, openly then too supported the people and went through a speech composed with much care, rebuking those who would not let the city be one, but divided the commoners from the patricians and for small pretexts rekindled civil wars; praising those who held the advantage one and common and reckoned all things less than concord; teaching that, if the people should, as it thinks fit, become master of the trial, and obtain this favour too from the senate willingly, perhaps it would not even pursue it to the end, but, content with the very fact of having prevailed over his person, would treat him more equitably than harshly.

54.2. But if indeed the tribunes, thinking they ought by every means to set a lawful end to the trial, should become master of the vote, it would acquit the man of the charge, both reverencing the very person in danger, of whom it has many fine deeds to remember, and rendering this favour to the senate, which had furnished it the authority and opposed none of

54.3. the moderate things. He advised, however, that the consuls and all the council and the other patricians, coming in numbers, be present at the trial and join in the man's defence, and ask the people to decide nothing harsh about him; for these too would contribute not a little to the balance of his safety; and not only that they themselves be so minded, but that each summon his own clients and gather his friends, and, if they suppose any of the commoners well-disposed to them through benefits, that these too now, at the voting, demand the favour formerly owed.

54.4. He declared that the kindly and the haters of wickedness would be no small part of the people, and still greater than this, that which knows how to feel something at human fortunes and to pity those in dignities when their fortunes fall low.

54.5. But the greater part of his speech was directed to Marcius, holding exhortation mixed with admonition and entreaty with necessity. For he thought fit, since he was charged with dividing the people from the senate and was slandered as tyrannic through the arrogance of his character, and fear had come upon all lest through him there should be a beginning of strife and irreparable evils, such as civil wars bring, that he should not make the slanders against him true and valid by remaining in the envied manner of life, but take on a humble bearing and yield his person to those who said they were wronged, and not flee an unjust charge that was being cleared by word with justice.

54.6. For these things were both safest for his preservation and most brilliant for the good repute he longed for, and in keeping with his earlier deeds. But if he should be more arrogant than moderate, and should think fit that the senate endure every danger on his account, he declared he would bring an evil defeat and a shameful victory upon those who heeded him; and he was here lengthy in lamentation, recounting the greatest and most manifest of the evils that befall cities in dissensions.

55.1. Going through this with many tears, not feigned and counterfeit but real—a man surpassing in the dignity of age and valour—when he saw the council moved by what was said, he wove the rest of his speech from a now more confident beginning: "But if some of you, senators," he said, "are disturbed, thinking you introduce a wicked custom into the city if you concede the people to cast a vote against the patricians, and think the tribunician power, having got much strength, will be for no good, let them learn that they err in opinion and have supposed the contrary of

55.2. what is fitting. For if anything else will be the cause of safety to this city, and of its never being deprived of its freedom or its strength, but of continuing ever in concord and using one opinion about all things, the people will be most responsible, taken into partnership in affairs; and the fact that the polity administering the commonwealth is not one unmixed—neither monarchy nor oligarchy nor democracy, but the constitution mixed of all these—this above all will benefit us.

55.3. "For most easily does each of these polities by itself fall into insolence and lawbreaking; but when all are tempered moderately, the part that is being stirred and departing from the customary order is ever restrained by the part that is sound and abides in its own ways. Monarchy, become cruel and arrogant and beginning to pursue tyrannic ambitions, is overthrown by a few good men.

55.4. "Oligarchy, composed of the best men—which you too now use—when, lifted up by wealth and clubs, it makes no account of justice and the rest of virtue, is overthrown by a sensible people. A people, temperate and governing by laws, when it begins to be disorderly and lawless, is set right by force, mastered by the best man.

55.5. "For you, senators, against a monarch's power, that it become not a tyranny, the possible remedies are found. For, appointing two instead of one as masters of the city, and entrusting these with the office not for an unlimited time but yearly, you nonetheless appoint as guardians over them three hundred men, the best and eldest of the patricians, of whom this senate is composed; but of yourselves, that you may remain in fitting order, you appear hitherto to have made no guard.

55.6. "And about you I do not yet fear lest you be corrupted in mind by the greatness and abundance of goods—you who have lately freed the city from a long tyranny and have not yet had leisure to grow insolent and luxurious because of the continual long wars; but reflecting on those who will come after you, and how many changes the long course of time brings, I fear lest the powerful of the council, having made some disturbance, escape notice in turning the polity into a tyrannic monarchy.

56.1. "If, then, you share the polity with the people too, no evil will be bred here, but he who thinks fit to have more than the rest and has won over from the senate one willing to sicken and do wrong with him—for one must foresee all the likely things when deliberating about a city—that great and august man, summoned by the tribunes before the multitude, will render account to the mean and humble people of what he does and intends, and if he appear to wrong, will get the justice he deserves.

56.2. "And the people itself, that it may not grow insolent, become master of so great a power, nor, led astray by demagoguery from the basest, make war on the best—for in a crowd too tyranny is wont to arise—will be watched and allowed to break no law by a man surpassing in prudence, chosen dictator by you, who, using autocratic and irresponsible power, will both cut out the diseased part of the city and not let the not-yet-corrupted be harmed, reforming the best customs and laws and ways of life and appointing what magistracies he thinks will most temperately administer public affairs; and, having arranged these within six months, will be a private man again, taking from these things only the being honoured, and nothing else.

56.3. "Reflecting, then, on these things, and judging this form of polity best, drive the people from nothing; but, as you have shared with it the appointing of the magistrates that govern the city each year, and the ratifying of some laws and abolishing of others, and the deciding about war and peace—the greatest and most sovereign of the matters transacted in the city—and have not made the senate master of any of these, so share with it the courts too, and most of all about those who may be charged with wronging the city, by introducing strife or contriving tyranny or treating with the enemy about treason or attempting some other such evil.

56.4. "For the more fearful you make it for the insolent and the greedy to transgress the laws and disturb the customs, by appointing many eyes and guards over them, the better will the commonwealth be for you."

57.1. Having said this and the like, he ceased. Of the senators who rose after him, all the rest except a few attached themselves to this opinion. And when the preliminary decree had to be written, Marcius, having asked leave to speak, said: "What manner of man I have been toward public affairs, senators, and how through my goodwill toward you I have come into this danger, and that what has met me from you is contrary to my judgment, you all know, and will know still more when my case has its

57.2. end. But since Valerius's opinion prevails, may it profit you, and may I prove a bad guesser of the future. But that you who write the preliminary decree may know on what terms you are about to hand me over to the people, and that I too may not be ignorant about what I shall contend, bid the tribunes say before you what the wrong is on which they will accuse me, and what name they will inscribe on the suit."

58.1. He said this, thinking he would undergo trial on the speeches he had made in the senate, and wishing the tribunes to acknowledge that on this charge they were about to accuse him. But the tribunes, having deliberated among themselves, charged him with plotting tyranny and bade him come to make defence against this charge, not wishing to shut up the indictment in one charge, and that neither strong nor pleasing to the senate, but both making for themselves authority to accuse him of whatever they wished, and thinking to take away from Marcius the help from the councillors. And Marcius said: "Well, if indeed I shall be judged on this slander, I give myself liable to trial before the commoners, and let there be no hindrance to writing the

58.2. preliminary decree." It was also welcome to the majority of the councillors that the trial be on this charge, on both grounds: that to say what one thinks among the councillors would not be liable to charge, and that the man would easily clear the slander, having lived a temperate and unblamed life.

58.3. The preliminary decree about the trial is written after this, and a time for the preparation of the defence is fixed for the man up to the third market-day. The market-days came about for the Romans, as even to our times, every ninth day. On these, the commoners coming together from the fields into the city made the exchanges of their wares and took justice from one another, and, taking up the vote, ratified the public matters of which they were master by the laws and which the senate permitted them; but the seven days between the market-days, being for the most part themselves labourers and poor, they spent in the fields.

58.4. When the tribunes had received the preliminary decree, going forward into the marketplace they summoned the people to an assembly, and, going through many encomiums of the senate and reading its decrees, proclaimed a day on which they were to complete the trial, to which they thought fit that all the citizens come as men who would decide about the greatest matters.

59.1. When this was noised abroad, there was much zeal and arraying of both commoners and patricians—the one as men who would punish the most arrogant, the other lest he become subject to the enemy, as men contending on behalf of the aristocracy. And it seemed that the whole vindication of life and freedom was being risked for both in the contest then. The third market-day arriving, the crowd from the fields, such as never before, having come together into the city, held the marketplace from early morning; and the tribunes summoned the multitude to the tribal assembly, having roped off parts of the marketplace in which the tribes were to stand by themselves.

59.2. And then for the first time there was held among the Romans an assembly by tribes voting against a man, though the patricians much opposed it, that this might not be, and thought fit to gather the assembly by centuries, as was their custom. For in former times, when the people was to cast a vote about any matter the senate permitted, the consuls summoned the centuriate assembly, first performing the sacrifices which are by law theirs—and to our time some of these are still performed.

59.3. The multitude came together in the Field of Mars before the city, arrayed under centurions and standards as in war, and they cast their vote not all of them taking it up together, but each by his own centuries, when summoned by the consuls. The whole being a hundred and ninety-three centuries, and these divided into six classes, the first class called and casting its vote was that of those having the greatest property assessment and taking the first rank in wars; among whom were eighteen centuries of cavalry and eighty of foot.

59.4. Second voted the class of those inferior in livelihood and fighting in the rank below in battles and having not the same armament as those in the front, but less; this multitude was arrayed in twenty centuries, and there were added to them two companies of carpenters and bronze-smiths and the other artisans of warlike works. Those called in the third class filled twenty centuries, and had an assessment less than the second and the rank below them, and bore arms not equal to those

59.5. before them. Those called after these had a less property assessment and took the safer rank in war and had a lighter armament; these too were divided into twenty centuries; and to these were arrayed two centuries of horn-blowers and trumpeters. The fifth class was called, of those assessed at very little money, whose arms were javelins and slings; these had no rank in the phalanx, but, light-armed and unencumbered, campaigned with the heavy-armed, divided into thirty centuries.

59.6. The poorest of the citizens, being not fewer than all the rest, last took up the vote, having one century only; these were free from the levied campaigns and exempt from the assessments made by property, and for

59.7. both these reasons most without honour in the voting. If, then, in the first centuries—which the cavalry filled and the foot taking the first rank in the wars—ninety-seven centuries should agree, the voting was complete, and the vote was no longer given to the remaining ninety-six centuries; but if this did not happen, the second class of twenty-two centuries was called, and the third; and this continued until ninety-seven centuries should agree.

59.8. And most of the contests reached their end in the first callings, so that there was no further need of the last. Rarely indeed did so doubtful a matter occur that it advanced to the last vote, of the poorest; and it was, as it were, a portent, when the first hundred and ninety-two centuries being split in two, the last vote cast for those should become the cause of the inclination to one side.

59.9. Now those fighting for Marcius thought fit to call this assembly by property classes, supposing that perhaps at the first calling the man would be acquitted by the ninety-eight centuries, or, failing that, by the second or third. But the tribunes, suspecting this, themselves thought fit to gather the tribal assembly and make it master of the contest, that neither the poor be at a disadvantage to the rich, nor the light-armed have a less honoured place than the heavy-armed, nor the commoner multitude, cast off to the last callings, be shut out from equality; but, all having become of equal vote and equal honour with one another, should cast their vote at a single calling by tribes.

59.10. And these seemed to demand more justly than the others, thinking the people's court ought to be popular and not oligarchic, and the decision about those wronging the commonwealth common to all.

60.1. This too being conceded them, with difficulty, by the patricians, when the trial had to be pleaded, first there went up Minucius, one of the consuls, and spoke the words the senate had charged him with: first reminding them of all the benefits the people had received from the patricians, then thinking fit that in return for many fine deeds one necessary favour be rendered by the people to them who begged it, for the common good

60.2. of the city. Besides this, praising concord and peace and recounting how great prosperity each of these brings to cities, accusing dissension and civil wars, by which he declared cities had been destroyed with all their men and whole nations had perished; exhorting them not to choose the worse before the better, yielding to anger, but from sober reckoning to foresee the future, nor to use the worst of the citizens as counsellors when deliberating about the greatest matters, but those who seemed to them best, by whom they knew their country had been much benefited in peace and in war, whom they would not think fit to distrust as having changed their nature.

60.3. And one chief point of all his speech was, that they cast no vote against Marcius, but most of all for his own sake acquit the man of the trial, remembering what he had been toward public affairs and how many wars he had brought to a good issue on behalf of the common freedom and empire, and that they would do nothing holy or just or befitting them, bearing rancour for paltry words and being ungrateful for noble

60.4. deeds. And it was a fair occasion for acquittal, since he himself came offering his person to his opponents and ready to accept whatever they should decide about him. But if they were unable to be reconciled to him, but were harsh and inexorable, reflecting that the senate is present begging on his behalf—three hundred men, the best of the city—to feel something and have their opinions bent, and not to thrust away the entreaty of so many friends for the punishment of one enemy, but, for the favour of many good men, to disregard the suit of one man. Having said this and the like, he added last that speech: that, a vote being cast, if they should acquit the man, they would seem to have released him because the people was wronged in nothing by him;

60.5. but if they should hinder the trial from being completed, they would appear to have gratified those who begged on his behalf.

61.1. When Minucius had ceased, the tribune Sicinius came forward and said that he himself would neither betray the freedom of the commoners nor willingly entrust it to betrayers, but that, if the patricians really offered the man for trial to the commoners, he would give the vote concerning him, and would do nothing else besides this.

61.2. After this Minucius came forward and said: "Since you are by all means eager, tribunes, that a vote be cast about the man, accuse him of nothing outside the charge; but since you indicted him for attempting tyranny, prove this and bring your proofs about it. And of the speeches you charge him with making against the people in the senate, neither make mention nor accuse. For the council voted him released from this charge and thought fit that he come before the people on stated terms."

61.3. And after this he read the preliminary decree. Having said this and called it to witness, he went down. Of the tribunes, Sicinius first laid out the accusation with much care and preparation, referring all that the man had ever done or said against the people to the establishing of a tyranny; then after him the most able of the tribunes to speak.

62.1. When Marcius took up the speech, beginning from above, from his earliest age, he went through how many campaigns he had served on behalf of the city, and how many crowns of victory he had received from the generals, and the enemy prisoners taken by him, and the citizens saved in the contests; and at each thing said he displayed the prizes of valour and offered the generals as witnesses and called by name the citizens saved.

62.2. And these came forward, lamenting and begging the citizens not to destroy as an enemy the author of their safety, asking one life in return for many and offering themselves instead of him to be used as they wished. The greater part of them were of the commoner class and very useful to the commonwealth; whose faces and entreaties the people taking as a disgrace, turned to pity and tears.

62.3. And when Marcius, tearing his clothing, displayed his breast full of wounds and all the rest of his body covered with the blows, and asked whether they thought it the deed of the same men to save the citizens in the wars but to destroy in peace those they had saved; and whether one establishing a tyranny would drive from the city the commoner part, by which a tyranny is most increased and nourished—while he still spoke, the equitable and kindly part of the commoners shouted to acquit the man, and took it as a disgrace if a man who had so often disregarded his own life for the safety of all should undergo trial about such a charge.

62.4. But all who were by nature envious and haters of the good and easily moved to every strife were vexed at being about to acquit the man, yet had nothing else to do, finding no apparent occasion of an attempt at tyranny, about which they had taken up the votes.

63.1. Perceiving this, that Decius—who had made the speeches in the senate and arranged for the preliminary decree about the trial to be written—rose, and, ordering silence, said: "Since, commoners, the patricians acquit him of the speeches made by Marcius in the senate and the violent and arrogant deeds that followed from these, and do not even permit us to accuse him, hear what other deed besides the speeches this noble man happens to have wrought—how arrogant and tyrannic—and learn what law of yours he, being a private man, abolished.

63.2. "You all know, doubtless, that the law orders the spoils from the wars, of as many as we may take by valour, to be public, and of these not only does no private man become master, but not even the commander of the force himself; but the quaestor, receiving them, sells them and brings the money to the treasury; and this law, from the time we have dwelt in this city, no one not only abolished, but did not even charge with being not well; but this Marcius, first and alone, disregarding it, though it stands and is valid, thought fit to appropriate our common spoils, commoners—last year, and not long ago.

63.3. "For when you made an incursion into the land of the Antiates and surrounded yourselves with many persons, many cattle, much grain, and much other property, neither did he display these to the quaestor, nor, having sold them himself, did he bring the money to the treasury, but distributed and bestowed all the booty on his own friends. This deed I say is a proof of tyranny; for how not?—who benefited his own flatterers and bodyguards and the accomplices of his coming tyranny out of the public funds;

63.4. and I say this is a manifest abolition of the law. Let Marcius come forward and declare one of two things—either that he did not distribute among his friends the spoils he took from the enemy's land, or that, doing this, he does not abolish the laws—of which he will have neither to say to you. For you yourselves know both, the law and the deed, and you cannot, having acquitted him, seem to have judged the just and well-sworn things. Leaving, then, the crowns and the prizes of valour and the wounds and the rest of the show, speak to these, Marcius; for I now hand over the speech to you."

64.1. This accusation made much change to the other side. For the more equitable and those eager for the man's acquittal became softer on hearing these things, while all the malicious—which was the greatest part of the people, eager in every way to destroy the man—were still more strengthened toward this, having got a great and manifest

64.2. occasion. For the distribution of the spoils was true—not, however, made of a wicked purpose and for the establishment of a tyranny, as Decius charged, but from the best motive and for the correction of the evils gripping the commonwealth. For while the multitude was still in strife and divided from the patricians, the enemy, despising them, made incursions of the country and continual ravagings; and whenever it seemed good to the senate that the force to hinder these march out, none of the commoners marched out, but they rejoiced and looked on at what was happening; and the patricians' band was not by

64.3. itself a match for the enemy. Perceiving this, Marcius promised the consuls that, if they should entrust him with the command, he would lead a willing army against the enemy and exact justice from them quickly. Receiving the authority, he summoned his clients and friends and those of the other citizens who wished to gain some advantage from the general's fortune and valour in war. And when a sufficient force seemed to him to have come together, he led it against the enemy, who as yet foresaw nothing.

64.4. Invading a land full of many goods and becoming master of abundant booty, he allowed the soldiers to distribute among themselves all that was taken, that those who had shared in the work, carrying off the fruit of their labours, might come eagerly to the other campaigns; and that those who had shrunk back, reflecting how many goods they might have shared but had been hindered through being in strife, might become wiser for the remaining expeditions.

64.5. This was the man's intent about the deed; but, examined by itself with sullen anger and the envy of foes, the act seemed to be a kind of demagoguery and tyrannic bribery. So that the whole marketplace was full of shout and tumult, and neither had Marcius anything to say in defence to this, nor the consul nor anyone else, as the charge had appeared against them unexpected and unlooked-for.

64.6. When no one any longer made defence, the tribunes gave the vote to the tribes, inscribing on the suit as penalty perpetual exile—through fear, I think, lest the man should not be convicted if they had assessed death against him. When all had voted, the votes being counted, the difference appeared not great. For there being then twenty-one tribes to which the vote was given, Marcius had nine acquitting tribes; so that if two tribes had come over to him, on account of the equality of votes he would have been acquitted, as the law thought fit.

65.1. This was the first summons of a patrician man before the people for trial. And from that time it became a custom for those who later took the presidency of the people to summon whom they thought fit of the citizens to undergo trial before the people; and from this beginning the people rose great, and the aristocracy lost much of its ancient dignity, permitting the commoners to share the senate, conceding them to seek offices, not hindering them from taking presidencies of sacred rites, and sharing with all the other most honoured things proper to the patricians alone—some things by necessity and unwillingly, others by forethought and wisdom, about which I shall speak at the proper time.

65.2. This custom, however—I mean the summoning of the powerful in the city to trial, of which the people became master—would afford many occasions of speech to those who wish to praise or blame it. For many good men have already suffered things unworthy of their valour, shamefully and wickedly deprived of their lives by the tribunes; and many arrogant and tyrannic in their characters, forced to render account of their lives and pursuits, have given the fitting penalties.

65.3. When, then, the decisions were made from the best motive, and the boasts of the great were brought down with justice, it seemed a great and wondrous thing and was praised by all; but when the valour of a man administering public affairs well was envied and unjustly destroyed, it appeared dreadful to the rest, and those who began the custom were accused. And the Romans, often deliberating whether they ought to abolish it or keep it as they received it from their forefathers, set no end to the deliberation.

65.4. But if I too must declare an opinion about such great matters, it seems to me that the custom itself, examined by itself, is useful and most necessary to the Roman city, but becomes better and worse according to the characters of the tribunes. For when men just and temperate and reckoning the common matters more necessary than the private obtain this power, the one wronging the commonwealth, having given the punishment that befitted, worked much fear in those prepared to do the like; and the good man, coming from the best motive to public affairs, neither underwent a shameful trial nor was brought into charges foreign to his pursuits.

65.5. But when wicked and licentious and money-loving men obtain so great a power, the contrary of these things happens. So that one ought not to correct the custom as faulty, but consider how good men shall become champions of the people, and that the greatest matters not be entrusted at random to whoever happens.

66.1. The first strife that befell the Romans after the expulsion of the kings had such causes and reached this end. I have lengthened the account of it lest anyone marvel how the patricians endured to make the people master of so great a power, no slaughter of the best men having occurred nor exile, such as in many other cities occurred. For each man longs, at paradoxical reports, to learn the cause, and places his belief in this alone.

66.2. I reckoned, then, that my account would need much—indeed everything—to be credible, if I said only so much, that the patricians gave up their dominion to the commoners, and, though it was in their power to govern under an aristocracy, made the people master of the greatest things; but had passed over the causes for which these things were conceded; for this reason I went through them all.

66.3. And since they reformed their affairs not by forcing and compelling one another with arms, but by persuading with words, I judged it most necessary of all to go through the speeches the powerful in each party then used. And I would marvel if some think they ought to record accurately the deeds in wars, and sometimes spend many words on a single battle—going through the natures of places and the peculiarities of armaments and the modes of formations and the exhortations of generals and the other things that became causes of victory to one side—but, recording civic movements and strifes, do not think they ought to report the speeches by which the paradoxical and wondrous deeds were accomplished.

66.4. For if anything else is a great encomium of the Roman city and worthy to be emulated by all men, this too, in my opinion, was a deed—or rather, above all the many wondrous things, the most brilliant—that neither did the commoners, despising the patricians, attack them and, having wrought much slaughter of the best, take over all their possessions; nor did those in dignities, using either their own resources or foreign aid, destroy all the commoners and dwell fearlessly in the city for the rest of time;

66.5. but, like brothers with brothers or sons with fathers in a temperate household conversing about equal and just things, they dissolved their quarrels by persuasion and reason, and endured to do nothing irreparable or impious against one another—such things as the Corcyraeans wrought in their strife, and the Argives and Milesians and all Sicily and many other cities. I, then, for these reasons chose to make the narrative more accurate rather than briefer; let each judge as he wishes.

67.1. The trial then having this end, the people was dismissed, having taken on a senseless boast and thinking it had brought down the aristocracy; the patricians downcast and humbled and holding Valerius to blame, by whom persuaded they had entrusted the trial to the people; and there was lamentation and tears of those pitying and escorting Marcius.

67.2. But Marcius himself was seen neither bewailing his own fortunes nor lamenting nor saying or doing anything unworthy of his magnanimity whatever; and he showed his nobility and the firmness of his mind still more when, having come home, he saw his wife and mother rending their robes and beating their breasts and crying out what it is natural to say in such calamities, women cut off from their nearest by deaths or exiles.

67.3. For he felt nothing at the tears and lamentations of the women, but, having only embraced them and exhorted them to bear their misfortunes nobly, and committed his children to them—for the elder of the children was ten years old, the younger still in arms—and having neither shown them any other affection nor arranged anything he would need for his exile, he went out in haste to the gates, having told no one whither he would make his withdrawal.

68.1. A few days later the time of the elections came round, and there were appointed consuls by the people Quintus Sulpicius Camerinus and Sergius Larcius Flavius, for the second time. And certain disturbances befell the city from divine terrors, frequent; for unwonted apparitions were seen by many, and voices were heard with no one speaking, and births of men and beasts far departing from the natural were borne to the incredible and monstrous, and oracles were chanted in many places, and women seized by divine inspiration prophesied pitiable and dreadful

68.2. fortunes for the city. And a certain pestilential sickness laid hold of the multitude and worked much destruction of cattle; the death of men, however, was not great, but the terror went only as far as sicknesses. To some these things seemed to come about by the purpose of a god indignant that they had driven the best of the citizens from his country; to others nothing of what happened was a god's work, but these too were chance, and

68.3. all the rest human accidents. Then there came to the council of the senate a sick man, conveyed on a small couch—Titus Latinius by name, an elder and master of sufficient property, a labourer and for the greater part of his life living in the country. He, brought into the senate, said that in his sleep Capitoline Jupiter had seemed to stand over him and say: "Go, Latinius, and tell the citizens that they gave me as the leading dancer of the recent procession one not fair, that they may renew the festivals and perform others from the beginning; for I have

68.4. not accepted these." He said that, rising from sleep, he had counted the dream as nothing, but had supposed it one of the many and deceitful. Then again in his sleep the same image of the god, appearing to him, was angry and indignant that he had not reported to the senate what was bidden, and threatened that, unless he did this quickly, he would learn at great cost not to disregard the divinities. And having seen the second dream also, he said he had formed the same opinion about it, and at the same time took the matter as a disgrace—that a labouring old man should report to the senate dreams full of superstition and terrors, lest he incur ridicule.

68.5. A few days later his son, young and handsome, neither by sickness nor by any other apparent cause, snatched off suddenly, died; and again the apparition of the god, appearing in his sleep, made plain that of his disdain and contempt of the god's words he had now given one penalty, deprived of his son,

68.6. and would give the others a little later. He said that, hearing this, he received the saying with pleasure, if death should come to him who had neglected life; but the god set on him not this punishment, but cast into all the members of his body unbearable and dreadful pains, so that he could move no limb without the utmost wrenching. Then indeed, having communicated to his friends what had befallen and being ordered by them to come to the senate, while going through these things he seemed gradually to be relieved of his pains; and when he had gone through all, rising from the couch and crying out to the god, he went off on his own feet through the city home, sound.

69.1. The senate was filled with fear, and each was speechless, unable to conjecture what was being made plain by the god, and who the leading dancer of the procession was who seemed to him not fair. Then someone of them, recalling what had happened, speaks, and all bore witness. It was of this sort: a Roman man, not obscure, having handed over his own servant to his fellow-slaves to lead off for punishment by death, that the man's punishment might be conspicuous, ordered him to be dragged through the marketplace scourged, and through any other conspicuous place of the city, going before the procession which the city was sending to the god at that time.

69.2. Those leading the servant to punishment, stretching out both his hands and binding them to a piece of wood reaching along his breast and shoulders down to his wrists, followed scourging him, naked, with whips. The man, held in such necessity, both cried out ill-omened cries which the pain prompted, and made unseemly movements through the maltreatment. This man, then, all supposed to be the dancer not fair indicated by the god.

70.1. Since I have come to this part of the history, I do not think I ought to pass over the things performed by them about the festival—not that my narrative may become more pleasing by receiving theatrical additions and more flowery speeches, but that it may confirm one of the necessary matters: that the nations which jointly founded the Roman city were Greek, colonised from the most distinguished places, and not, as some think, barbarous and homeless.

70.2. For I promised at the end of the first writing, which I composed and published about their race, to confirm the proposition with countless proofs, furnishing their ancient customs and usages and pursuits, which they keep to my time, such as they received from their forefathers; not thinking it enough for those who record ancient and local histories to relate them credibly as they received them from the natives, but thinking they need many and irrefutable testimonies if they are to appear

70.3. trustworthy. Among which I am persuaded that first and most sovereign of all are the ancestral worships paid in each city concerning gods and divinities. For these both Greece and barbarian land keep under guard for the longest time, and think fit to innovate nothing about them, restrained by fear of

70.4. the wrath of the divinities. Most of all have the barbarians experienced this, for many reasons which it is not the time to tell at present; and no length of time has yet persuaded the Egyptians or Libyans or Celts or Scythians or Indians or any other barbarian nation whatsoever to unlearn or transgress anything about the rites of the gods—unless some, having at some time come under the power of others, were forced to take over the pursuits of their conquerors. But it has never befallen the Roman city to experience such a fortune; rather, it itself always prescribes justice to others.

70.5. If, then, their race were barbarian, so far would they have been from unlearning their ancestral rites and the native customs through which they advanced to so great prosperity, that they even established it as fair for all the others whom they ruled to honour the gods by their own usages; and nothing would have hindered all the Greek world from being barbarised by the Romans, ruled by them now for the seventh generation, if indeed they were barbarians.

71.1. Another, then, would have supposed that even the things now done in the city were no small indications of the ancient pursuits; but I, that no one may suppose this proof weak—either on that improbable supposition that, having mastered all the Greek world, they would gladly have learned the better customs and disregarded the native ones—shall make my proof from that time when they did not yet hold the leadership of Greece nor any other overseas dominion, using Quintus Fabius as my confirmer and needing no further proof; for he is the most ancient of those who composed Roman histories, and furnishes proof not only from what he heard, but also from what he himself knew.

71.2. This festival, then, the senate of the Romans voted to hold, as I said before, according to the vows made by the dictator Aulus Postumius, when he was about to contend against the revolted Latin cities attempting to bring Tarquinius back to power; and he appointed to be spent each year on the sacrifices and games five hundred minae of silver; and up to the Punic War they spent this on the festival.

71.3. On these sacred days many other things were done by Greek custom—at the assemblies and receptions of strangers and truces—which it would be a long task to tell; but the things about the procession and the sacrifice and the games—for it suffices from these to examine the things not told—were of this sort.

72.1. Before beginning the games, those holding the greatest power sent out a procession to the gods, leading it from the Capitol and through the marketplace to the great hippodrome. There led the procession first their sons who were near manhood and of an age to take part—the cavalry, those whose fathers had the cavalry assessment, the foot those who were to serve among the foot; the former by squadrons and centuries, the latter by classes and ranks, marching as to a school; that there might be made plain to the strangers the coming flower of the city's manhood, what its number and beauty were.

72.2. After these followed charioteers driving four-horse chariots and pairs and the unyoked horses; after whom the contestants in the athletic events, both light and heavy, bare as to the rest of the body, but covering the parts that modesty requires. This custom too continued in Rome to my time, as it was from the beginning among the Greeks; but in Greece it has been abolished, the Lacedaemonians having abolished it.

72.3. The first to attempt to strip his body and run naked at Olympia, in the fifteenth Olympiad, was Acanthus the Lacedaemonian. Before this all the Greeks held it a disgrace to show their bodies wholly bare in the contests, as Homer testifies—being a most trustworthy and ancient witness—making the heroes gird themselves. At any rate, narrating the wrestling of Ajax and Odysseus at the funeral of Patroclus, he says: "And the two, having girded themselves, stepped into the midst of the contest."

72.4. And still more clearly in the Odyssey he makes this plain, at the boxing-match of Irus and Odysseus, in these verses: "So spoke he; and they all approved; but Odysseus girded his rags about his loins, and showed his thighs, fair and great; and his broad shoulders were seen and his breast and stout arms." And introducing the beggar no longer wishing to fight, but playing the coward, he has said this: "So spoke they; but Irus' spirit was evilly stirred; yet even so the suitors led him in, having girded him by force." This ancient custom among the Greeks the Romans, keeping it to this day, are plainly seen not to have learned later from us, nor to have changed it in time, as we did.

72.5. There followed the contestants choruses of dancers, many, divided into three—first of men, second of beardless youths, last of boys—whom there accompanied flute-players blowing on small archaic flutes, as is done even to this time, and harpers plucking seven-stringed ivory lyres and the so-called barbita. Of these the use, among the Greeks, has ceased in my time, though it was ancestral; but among the Romans it is kept in all the ancient sacrifices.

72.6. The equipment of the dancers was crimson tunics girt with bronze belts, and swords slung at the side, and spears shorter than the ordinary; and the men also had bronze helmets adorned with conspicuous crests and feathers. There led each chorus one man, who gave the others the figures of the dance, leading off the warlike and vigorous movements, mostly in trochaic rhythms.

72.7. This too, then, was a Greek pursuit, very ancient among them—the dance in arms called the pyrriche; whether Athena first began to lead the dance and to dance in arms at the destruction of the Titans the victory-song out of joy, or, still earlier, the Curetes established it, when, nursing Zeus, they wished to soothe him by the clash of arms and the rhythmic movement of limbs, as the myth holds.

72.8. Homer shows the antiquity of this too as native to the Greeks in many places, but most of all in the description of the shield which he says Hephaestus gave Achilles. For, supposing on it two cities, the one adorned in peace, the other suffering in war—in which he sets the better fortune by making festivals and weddings and revels, as is fitting—he says this too: "And youths went whirling as dancers; and among them flutes and lyres held their cry; and the women, standing, marvelled, each at her own porch."

72.9. And again, saying that there was wrought on it a Cretan chorus of youths and maidens, he has spoken thus: "And a dancing-floor the renowned god of the two strong arms wrought, like to that which once in broad Knossos Daedalus fashioned for fair-haired Ariadne. There youths and maidens worth many oxen danced, holding one another's hands by the wrist." And describing its adornment, that he might make plain to us that the movement of the males was in arms, he says: "And these had fair garlands, and those had daggers of gold from silver baldrics." And introducing the leaders of their dance, who gave the others the lead and led off, he writes: "And a great crowd stood about the lovely dance, taking delight; and two tumblers among them, leading off the song, whirled through the midst."

72.10. And not only from the contest-like and earnest dance of the choruses, which the Romans used at the sacrifices and processions, might one see their kinship with the Greeks, but also from the mocking and jeering. For after the armed choruses there marched in procession the choruses of satyr-players, representing the Greek sikinnis. Their equipment, for those likened to Sileni, was woolly tunics, which some call "shaggy," and wraps of every flower; for those likened to Satyrs, girdles and goat-skins and upstanding manes of hair upon their heads and the like. These mocked and mimicked the earnest movements, transferring them to the more ridiculous.

72.11. The entries of triumphs too show the mocking and satyric sport to be ancient and native to the Romans. For it is permitted to those who lead home victories to lampoon and jeer at the most distinguished men, even the generals themselves—as at Athens those who marched in procession on the wagons formerly were carried along amid their jests, but now sing improvised verses.

72.12. And I have seen also at the funerals of distinguished men, along with the other processions, the choruses of satyr-players leading the bier, performing the sikinnis dance—and most of all at the funerals of the prosperous. That the satyric sport and dance was not the invention of Ligurians or Umbrians or any other barbarians dwelling in Italy, but of Greeks, I fear lest I seem burdensome to some in wishing to confirm by more words an acknowledged matter.

72.13. After these choruses there went by harpers in numbers and many flute-players; and after them those carrying the censers, on which spices and frankincense were burned the whole way, and those bearing the procession-vessels made of silver and gold, both the sacred and the public. Last of all there marched the images of the gods, borne on the shoulders of men, presenting forms like those fashioned among the Greeks, and equipment and symbols and gifts, of which each is handed down as the finder and giver to men—not only of Zeus and Hera and Athena and Poseidon and the others whom the Greeks reckon among the twelve gods, but also of the more ancient, from whom the twelve gods are fabled to have been born—Cronus and Rhea and Themis and Leto and the Fates and Mnemosyne and all the others to whom there are sacred rites and precincts among the Greeks; and of the later ones, fabled to have been born after Zeus took the rule—Persephone, Eileithyia, the Nymphs, the Muses, the Seasons, the Graces, Dionysus—and of as many demigods as, their souls having left their mortal bodies, are said to have gone up to heaven and obtained honours like the gods'—Heracles, Asclepius, the Dioscuri, Selene, Pan, and countless others.

72.14. And yet, if the founders of Rome and the establishers of this festival were barbarians, what fitted them to revere all the Greek gods and divinities, but to disregard their ancestral ones? Or let someone show us another race, outside the Greek, to whom these sacred rites are ancestral, and then let him impugn this proof as unsound.

72.15. The procession completed, the consuls and those of the priests whose office it was at once sacrificed oxen; and the manner of the sacrifices was the same as among us. For, having washed their hands and purified the victims with clean water and sprinkled the fruits of Demeter on their heads, then having prayed, they ordered the attendants to sacrifice them. Of these, some, while the victim still stood, struck its temples with a club; others, as it fell, put the slaughtering-knives beneath; and after this, having flayed and dismembered it, they took first-fruits from each entrail and every other limb, which, having moistened with spelt-meal, they offered on baskets to the sacrificers; and these, placing them on the altars, kindled them and poured wine over

72.16. the offerings as they were consecrated. That each thing was done by the laws established about sacrifice by the Greeks, it is easy to learn from the poetry of Homer. For he introduces the heroes washing their hands and using barley-meal, where he says: "Then they washed their hands and took up the barley-grains." And cutting the hair in three from the head and placing it on the fire, writing thus: "But he, taking first-fruits, cast the hairs of the head into the fire." And striking the foreheads of the victims with clubs and sacrificing them when fallen, as he does at the sacrifice of Eumaeus: "And he struck, taking first-fruits, with a billet of oak which he left when splitting. And the life left it; and they slaughtered and singed it."

72.17. And taking first-fruits from the entrails and from the other limbs, and moistening these with barley-meal and consecrating them on the altars, as he does at the same sacrifice: "And the swineherd laid the raw pieces, beginning from all the limbs, on the rich fat; and these he cast on the fire, having sprinkled them with barley-grits."

72.18. These things, which I have seen the Romans still doing in my time at the sacrifices, I know; and content with this one proof, I am persuaded that the founders of Rome were not barbarians, but Greeks gathered from many places. For a few pursuits about sacrifices and festivals it is possible that certain barbarians too perform like the Greeks; but to do all the same is incredible.

73.1. It remains for me to go through a few things about the games which they performed after the procession. First was the race of four-horse chariots and pairs and unyoked horses, as among the Greeks of old at Olympia and to

73.2. the present. And in the equestrian contests, two of the very ancient pursuits, as established from the beginning and kept by the Romans, continue to my times: that about the three-horse chariots, which among the Greeks has ceased, though it is an ancient and heroic practice, which Homer makes the Greeks use in the battles—for to two horses yoked, in the manner a pair is yoked, a third trace-horse was added at the side, held by a leading-rein, which the ancients called the "trace-horse" from its being hung at the side and not yoked; and another, kept still by a few Greek cities in certain archaic rites—the race of those who leap from the chariots.

73.3. For when the horse-races take their end, those riding beside the charioteers—whom the poets call parabatai, but the Athenians apobatai—leaping down from the chariots, contend the stadium-race themselves against one another. And the horse-races completed, then there entered those contending with their own bodies—runners and boxers and wrestlers. For these three were the events among the ancient Greeks, as Homer shows at the funeral of Patroclus.

73.4. And in the intervals between the events they displayed a most Greek and best of all customs—making crownings and proclamations of the honours with which they honoured their benefactors, as at Athens was done at the Dionysiac sacrifices, and displays of as many spoils as they had taken from wars to those who had come together to view.

73.5. But indeed it was neither well, the subject not requiring it, to make no mention of these, nor fitting to lengthen beyond what was needed. It is time to return to the remaining narrative. For when the senate learned the matters about the man led off to punishment by his master and going before the procession, from him who renewed the account of what had been done, supposing this to be the not-fair leader of the dancers spoken of by the god, as I said, and having sought out the one who had maltreated the servant and imposed the penalty he deserved, it voted that another procession be performed for the god and other games from the beginning at double the money than before. And the things accomplished in the consulship of these consuls were of this sort.