consul in some annals. In this year
(whoever were the consuls) Furius and Manlius, being summoned to trial
before the people, in sordid garb solicited the aid of the younger
patricians as much as that of the commons: they advised, they
cautioned them to keep themselves from public offices and the
administration of public affairs, and indeed to consider the consular
fasces, the toga praetexta and curule chair, as nothing else but a
funeral parade: that when decked with these splendid insignia, as with
fillets, [70] they were doomed to death. But if the charms of the
consulate were so great they should even now rest satisfied that the
consulate was held in captivity and crushed by the tribunician power;
that everything had to be done by the consul, at the beck and command
of the tribune, as if he were a tribune's beadle. If he stirred, if he
regarded the patricians at all, if he thought that there existed any
other party in the state but the commons, let him set before his
eyes the banishment of Gnaeeus Marcius, the condemnation and death of
Menenius. Fired by these words, the patricians from that time held
their consultations not in public, but in private houses, and remote
from the knowledge of the majority, at which, when this one point only
was agreed on, that the accused must be rescued either by fair means
or foul, the most desperate proposals were most approved; nor did any
deed, however daring, lack a supporter.[71] Accordingly, on the day of
trial, when the people stood in the forum on tiptoe of expectation,
they at first began to feel surprised that the tribune did not come
down; then, the delay now becoming more suspicious, they believed that
he was hindered by the nobles, and complained that the public cause
was abandoned and betrayed. At length those who had been waiting
before the entrance of the tribune's residence announced that he
had been found dead in his house. As soon as rumour spread the news
through the whole assembly, just as an army disperses on the fall
of its general, so did they scatter in different directions. Panic
chiefly seized the tribunes, now taught by their colleague's death how
utterly ineffectual was the aid the devoting laws afforded them.[72]
Nor did the patricians display their exultation with due moderation;
and so far was any of them from feeling compunction at the guilty act,
that even those who were innocent wished to be considered to have
perpetrated it, and it was openly decla