haken out of them rather than resign it, unless some fraud lurks
beneath? The more you require your own impositions to be examined into,
the more do I dread lest you should blind the eyes of those narrowly
watching you. Wherefore, it is not I that am to be compelled to discover
your hoard, but you must be forced to produce it to the public."

16. When the dictator ordered him to lay aside evasion, and urged him to
prove the truth of his information, or to own the guilt of having
advanced a false accusation against the senate, and of having exposed
them to the odium of a lying charge of concealment; when he refused to
speak, to meet the wishes of his enemies, he ordered him to be carried
off to prison. When arrested by the sergeant, he said, "O Jupiter,
supremely great and good, imperial Juno, and Minerva, and ye other gods
and goddesses, who inhabit the Capitol and citadel, do ye suffer your
soldier and defender to be thus harassed by his enemies? Shall this
right hand, by which I beat off the Gauls from your temples, be now in
bonds and chains?" Neither the eyes nor ears of any one could well
endure the indignity [thus offered him], but the state, most patient of
legitimate authority, had rendered certain offices absolute to
themselves; nor did either the tribunes of the commons, nor the commons
themselves, dare to raise their eyes or utter a sentence in opposition
to the dictatorial power. On Manlius being thrown into prison, it
appears that a great part of the commons put on mourning, that a great
many persons had let their hair and beard grow, and that a dejected
crowd presented itself at the entrance of the prison. The dictator
triumphed over the Volscians; and that triumph was the occasion rather
of ill-will than of glory. For they murmured that "it had been acquired
at home, not abroad, and that it was celebrated over a citizen, not over
an enemy; that only one thing was wanting to his arrogance, that Manlius
was not led before his car." And now the affair fell little short of
sedition, for the purpose of appeasing which, the senate, without the
solicitation of any one, suddenly becoming bountiful of their own
free-will, decreed that a colony of two thousand Roman citizens should
be conducted to Satricum; two acres and half of land were assigned to
each. And when they considered this, both as scanty in itself, conferred
on a few, and as a bribe for betraying Marcus Manlius, the sedition was
irritated by the remedy