e same manner did the consuls conduct themselves
in obstructing the law which was brought on every assembly day. The
commencement of the riot was, when the tribunes ordered the people to
proceed to the vote, because the patricians refused to withdraw. The
elder citizens scarcely attended the contest, inasmuch as it was one
likely not to be directed by prudence, but abandoned to temerity and
daring. The consuls also generally kept out of the way, lest in the
general confusion they should expose their dignity to any insult. There
was a young man, Caeso Quintius, a daring youth, as well by the nobility
of his descent, as by his personal size and strength; to those
endowments granted by the gods he himself had added many military
honours, and eloquence in the forum; so that no person in the state was
considered more efficient either in speaking or in acting. When this
person took his place in the centre of a body of the patricians,
conspicuous above the rest, carrying as it were in his eloquence and
bodily strength dictatorships and consulships combined, he alone
withstood the storms of the tribunes and the populace. Under his
guidance the tribunes were frequently driven from the forum, the commons
routed and dispersed; such as came in his way, went off after being
ill-treated and stripped; so that it became sufficiently evident, that,
if he were allowed to proceed in this way, the law would be defeated.
Then the other tribunes being now almost thrown into despair, Aulus
Virginius, one of the college, institutes a criminal prosecution on a
capital charge against Caeso. By this proceeding he rather irritated than
intimidated his violent temper: so much the more vigorously did he
oppose the law, annoyed the commons, and persecuted the tribunes, as it
were by a regular war. The prosecutor suffered the accused to rush on
headlong, and to heighten the charges against him by the flame and
material of the popular odium thus incurred: in the mean time he
proceeded with the law, not so much in the hope of carrying it through,
as to provoke the temerity of Caeso. There many inconsiderate expressions
and actions passing among the young men, are charged on the temper of
Caeso, through the prejudice raised against him; still the law was
resisted. And Aulus Virginius frequently remarks to the people, "Are you
even now sensible that you cannot have Caeso, as a fellow-citizen, with
the law which you desire? Though why do I say law? he is an