ould avoid delivering Marcius up to them, and prevent their mob orators
from exciting them. Appius Claudius, who had the reputation of being the
bitterest enemy of the people in Rome, gave it as his opinion that the
Senate would destroy itself and ruin the State utterly if it permitted
the people to assume the power of trying patricians and voting on their
trials; while the older men, and those who were more inclined to the
popular side, thought that this power would render the people gentle and
temperate, and not savage and cruel. The people, they said, did not
despise the Senate, but imagined that they were despised by it, so that
this privilege of holding the trial would agreeably salve their wounded
vanity, and, as they exercised their franchise, they would lay aside
their anger.

XX. Marcius, perceiving that the Senate, divided between their regard
for himself and their fear of the people, knew not what to do, himself
asked the tribunes of the people what it was that he was charged with,
and what indictment they intended to bring against him at his trial.
When they answered that the charge against him was one of treason,
because he had attempted to make himself absolute despot in Rome, and
that they would prove it, he at once rose, saying that he would at once
defend himself before the people on that score, and that if he were
convicted, he would not refuse to undergo any punishment whatever;
"Only," said he, "do not bring forward some other charge against me, and
deceive the Senate." When they had agreed upon these conditions, the
trial took place.

The tribunes, however, when the people assembled, made them vote by
tribes, and not by centuries;[A] by which device the votes of rich
respectable men who had served the State in the wars would be swamped by
those of the needy rabble who cared nothing for truth or honour. In the
next place, they passed by the charge of treason, as being impossible to
prove, and repeated what Marcius had originally said before the Senate,
when he dissuaded them from lowering the price of corn, and advised the
abolition of the office of tribune. A new count in the indictment was
that he had not paid over the money raised by the sale of the plunder
after his expedition against Antium, but had divided it among his own
followers. This last accusation is said to have disturbed Marcius more
than all the rest, as he had never expected it, and was not prepared
with any answer that would satisf