he same sentiments with which they had inspired him when
protecting the fortress of the Capitol, for the preservation of the
Roman people, they would now inspire the Roman people with in his
critical situation: and he entreated them singly and collectively, that
they would form their judgment of him with their eyes fixed on the
Capitol and citadel and their faces turned to the immortal gods. As the
people were summoned by centuries in the field of Mars, and as the
accused, extending his hands towards the Capitol, directed his prayers
from men to the gods; it became evident to the tribunes, that unless
they removed the eyes of men also from the memory of so great an
exploit, the best founded charge would find no place in minds
prejudiced by services. Thus the day of trial being adjourned, a meeting
of the people was summoned in the Poeteline grove outside the Nomentan
gate, from whence there was no view of the Capitol; there the charge was
made good, and their minds being now unmoved [by adventitious
circumstances], a fatal sentence, and one which excited horror even in
his judges, was passed on him. There are some who state that he was
condemned by duumvirs appointed to inquire concerning cases of treason.
The tribunes cast him down from the Tarpeian rock: and the same place in
the case of one man became a monument of distinguished glory and of
extreme punishment. Marks of infamy were offered to him when dead: one,
a public one; that, when his house had been that where the temple of
Moneta and the mint-office now stand, it was proposed to the people,
that no patrician should dwell in the citadel and Capitol: the other
appertaining to his family; it being commanded by a decree that no one
of the Manlian family should ever after bear the name of Marcus Manlius.
Such was the fate of a man, who, had he not been born in a free state,
would have been celebrated with posterity. In a short time, when there
was no longer any danger from him, the people, recollecting only his
virtues, were seized with regret for him. A pestilence too which soon
followed, no causes of so great a calamity presenting themselves, seemed
to a great many to have arisen from the punishment inflicted on Manlius:
"The Capitol" [they said] "had been polluted with the blood of its
preserver; nor was it agreeable to the gods that the punishment of him
by whom their temples had been rescued from the hands of the enemy, had
been brought in a manner before their