, he went the
following night into exile among the Etrurians. When on the day of trial
it was pleaded that he had quitted his home in order to go into exile,
Virginius notwithstanding holding the comitia, his colleagues when
appealed to dismissed the assembly: the fine was rigorously exacted[120]
from the father; so that after selling all his effects, he lived for a
considerable time in a solitary cottage on the other side of the Tiber,
as if in exile. This trial and the proposing of the law gave full
employment to the state: there was quiet from foreign arms.

[Footnote 117: Niebuhr denies that the tribunes had the power before the
establishment of the decemviri to commit patricians to prison. See
however Dion. vii. 17.]

[Footnote 118: In the original the words are, _Medio decreto jus auxilii
sui expediunt_. The tribunes were afraid lest, if they allowed Caeso to
go entirely at large, the commons might become irritated; whilst if they
refused to listen to the application of a patrician when he craved their
assistance, they feared lest they should lose an excellent opportunity
of establishing their influence and increasing their power. By adopting
a line of conduct then which conceded something both to the commons and
to Caeso, they as it were _extricate_ (expediunt) their power from this
double danger.]

[Footnote 119: _Vadis publicos_. According to Gronovius, _publico_,
scil. _plebi_. Niebuhr prefers this reading.]

[Footnote 120: _Rigorously exacted_. See Niebuhr ii. p. 289, who
expresses a different opinion on the matter.]

14. When the tribunes, flushed as it were with victory, imagined that
the law was in a manner passed, the patricians being now dismayed by the
banishment of Caeso, and when, with respect to the seniors of the
patricians, they had relinquished all share in the administration of the
commonwealth; the juniors, more especially those who were the intimate
friends of Caeso, redoubled their resentful feelings against the
commons, and suffered not their spirits to droop; but the greatest
improvement was made in this particular, that they tempered their
animosity by a certain degree of moderation. When for the first time
after Caeso's banishment the law began to be brought forward, arrayed and
well prepared with a numerous body of clients, they attacked the
tribunes, on their affording a pretext for it by attempting to remove
them, in such a manner, that no one individual carried home from thence
a