day, which the
fomenter was now rendering more than ordinarily formidable. For now it
was easy to see from what motives proceeded not only the discourses of
Manlius, but his actions also, apparently suggested by popular zeal, but
at the same time tending to create disturbance. When he saw a centurion,
illustrious for his military exploits, leading off to prison by reason
of a judgment for debt, he ran up with his attendants in the middle of
the forum and laid hands on him; and exclaiming aloud against the
insolence of the patricians, the cruelty of the usurers, and the
grievances of the commons, and the deserts and misfortunes of the man.
"Then indeed," said he, "in vain have I preserved the Capitol and
citadel by this right hand, if I am to see my fellow-citizen and
fellow-soldier, as if captured by the victorious Gauls, dragged into
slavery and chains." He then paid the debt to the creditor openly before
the people, and having purchased his freedom with the scales and brass,
he sets the man at liberty, whilst the latter implored both gods and
men, that they would grant a recompence to Marcus Manlius, his
liberator, the parent of the Roman commons; and being immediately
received into the tumultuous crowd, he himself also increased the
tumult, displaying the scars received in the Veientian, Gallic, and
other succeeding wars: "that he, whilst serving in the field, and
rebuilding his dwelling which had been demolished, though he had paid
off the principal many times over, the interest always keeping down the
principal, had been overwhelmed with interest: that through the kind
interference of Marcus Manlius, he now beheld the light, the forum, and
the faces of his fellow-citizens: that he received from him all the kind
services usually conferred by parents; that to him therefore he devoted
whatever remained of his person, of his life, and of his blood; whatever
ties subsisted between him and his country, public and private guardian
deities, were all centred in that one man." When the commons, worked
upon by these expressions, were now wholly in the interest of the one
individual, another circumstance was added, emanating from a scheme
still more effectually calculated to create general confusion. A farm in
the Veientian territory, the principal part of his estate, he subjected
to public sale: "that I may not," says he, "suffer any of you, Romans,
as long as any of my property shall remain, to be dragged off to prison,
after