Ab urbe condita

Servilius and Ap. Claudius, promptly intervened to quell the outbreak. The crowd surged round them, showed their chains and other marks of degradation. These, they said, were their rewards for having served their country; they tauntingly reminded the consuls of the various campaigns in which they had fought, and peremptorily demanded

rather than petitioned that the senate should be called together. Then they closed round the Senate-house, determined to be themselves the arbiters and directors of public policy.

A very small number of senators, who happened to be available, were got together by the consuls, the rest were afraid to go even to the Forum, much more to the Senate-house. No business could

be transacted owing to the requisite number not being present. The people began to think that they were being played with and put off, that the absent senators were not kept away by accident or by fear, but in order to prevent any redress of their grievances, and that

the consuls themselves were shuffling and laughing at their misery. Matters were reaching the point at which not even the majesty of the consuls could keep the enraged people in check, when the absentees, uncertain whether they ran the greater risk by staying away or coming, at last entered the Senate-house. The House was now full, and a division of opinion showed itself not

only amongst the senators but even between the two consuls. Appius, a man of passionate temperament, was of opinion that the matter ought to be settled by a display of authority on the part of the consuls; if one or two were brought up for trial, the rest would calm down. Servilius, more inclined to gentle measures, thought that when men's passions are aroused it was safer and easier to bend them than to break them.

In the middle of these disturbances, fresh alarm was created by some Latin horsemen who galloped in with the disquieting tidings that a Volscian army was on the march to attack the City. This intelligence affected the patricians and the plebeians very differently; to such an extent had civic discord rent the State in twain.