made consuls; a treaty
was struck with the Hernici; two-thirds of their land were taken from
them: of this the consul Cassius was about to distribute one half among
the Latins, the other half among the commons. To this donation he was
adding a considerable portion of land, which, though public property, he
alleged was possessed by private individuals. This proceeding alarmed
several of the senators, the actual possessors, at the danger of their
property; the senators felt, moreover, a solicitude on public grounds,
that the consul by his donation was establishing an influence dangerous
to liberty. Then, for the first time, the Agrarian law was proposed,
which even down to our own recollection was never agitated without the
greatest commotions in the state. The other consul resisted the
donation, the senators seconding him, nor were all the commons opposed
to him; they had at first begun to despise a gift which was extended
from citizens to allies: in the next place they frequently heard the
consul Virginius in the assemblies as it were prophesying--"that the
gift of his colleague was pestilential--that those lands were sure to
bring slavery to those who should receive them; that the way was paving
to a throne." For why was it that the allies were included, and the
Latin nation? What was the object of a third of the land that had been
taken being given back to the Hernici so lately our enemies, except that
instead of Coriolanus being their leader they may have Cassius? The
dissuader and opposer of the agrarian law now began to be popular. Both
consuls then vied with each other in humouring the commons. Virginius
said that he would suffer the lands to be assigned, provided they were
assigned to no one but to a Roman citizen. Cassius, because in the
agrarian donation he sought popularity among the allies, and was
therefore lowered in the estimation of his countrymen, in order that by
another donation he might conciliate their affections, ordered that the
money received for the Sicilian corn should be refunded to the people.
That indeed the people rejected as nothing else than a present bribe for
regal authority: so strongly were his gifts spurned in the minds of men,
as if they possessed every thing in abundance, in consequence of their
inveterate suspicions of his aiming at sovereign power. As soon as he
went out of office, it is certain that he was condemned and put to
death. There are some who represent his father as the