themselves and of their proposers, and when the first tribes pronounced,
"Be it as you propose," then Camillus says, "Since, Romans, tribunitian
extravagance, not authority, sways you now, and ye are rendering the
right of protest, acquired formerly by a secession of the commons,
totally unavailing by the same violent conduct by which you acquired it,
I, as dictator, will support the right of protest, not more for the
interest of the whole commonwealth than for your sake; and by my
authority I will defend your rights of protection, which have been
overturned. Wherefore if Caius Licinius and Lucius Sextius give way to
the protest of their colleagues, I shall not introduce a patrician
magistrate into an assembly of the commons. If, in opposition to the
right of protest, they will strive to saddle laws on the state as though
captive, I will not suffer the tribunitian power to be destroyed by
itself." When the plebeian tribunes still persisted in the matter with
unabated energy and contemptuously, Camillus, being highly provoked,
sent his lictors to disperse the commons; and added threats, that if
they persisted he would bind down the younger men by the military oath,
and would forthwith lead an army out of the city. He struck great terror
into the people; by the opposition he rather inflamed than lessened the
spirits of their leaders. But the matter inclining neither way, he
abdicated his dictatorship, either because he had been appointed with
some informality, as some have stated; or because the tribunes of the
people proposed to the commons, and the commons passed it, that if
Marcus Furius did any thing as dictator, he should be fined five hundred
thousand _asses_. But both the disposition of the man himself, and the
fact that Publius Manlius was immediately substituted as dictator for
him, incline me to believe, that he was deterred rather by some defect
in the auspices than by this unprecedented order. What could be the use
of appointing him (Manlius) to manage a contest in which Camillus had
been defeated? and because the following year had the same Marcus Furius
dictator, who certainly would not without shame have resumed an
authority which but the year before had been worsted in his hands; at
the same time, because at the time when the motion about fining him is
said to have been published, he could either resist this order, by which
he saw himself degraded, or he could not have obstructed those others
on account of