Ab urbe condita

Let men cast their eyes on that tribunal, the fortress of all villainies, where that perpetual decemvir, surrounded by hangmen not lictors, in contempt of gods and men alike, wreaked his vengeance on the goods, the backs, and the lives of the

citizens, threatening all indiscriminately with the rods and axes, and then when his mind was diverted from rapine and murder to lust, tore a free-born maiden from her father's arms, before the eyes of Rome, and gave her to a client, the minister of his intrigues —that

tribunal where by cruel decree and infamous judgment he armed the father's hand against the daughter, where he ordered those who took up the maiden's lifeless body — her betrothed lover and her grandfather —to be thrown into prison, moved less by her death than by the check to his criminal gratification. For him as much as for others was that prison built which he used to call “the domicile of the Roman plebs.”

Let him appeal again and again, he (the speaker) would always refer him to an umpire on the charge of having sentenced a free person to slavery. If he would not go before an umpire he should order him to be imprisoned as though found guilty.

He was accordingly thrown into prison, and though no one actually opposed this step, there was a general feeling of anxiety, since even the plebeians themselves thought it an excessive use of their liberty to inflict punishment on so great a man. The tribune adjourned the day of trial.