Ab urbe condita

Why do we attack the plebs through him when it is so much safer to attack him through the plebs, so that he may sink into ruin under the weight of his own strength? It is our intention to fix a day for his trial.

Nothing is less desired by the people than kingly power. As soon as that body of plebeians become aware that the quarrel is not with them, and find that from being his supporters they have become his judges; as soon as they see a patrician on his trial, and learn that the charge before them is one of aiming at monarchy, they will not show favour to any man more than to their own liberty.”

Amidst universal approval they fixed a day for the trial of Manlius.

There was at first much perturbation amongst the plebs, especially when they saw him going about in mourning garb without a single patrician, or any of his relatives or connections and, strangest of all, neither of his brothers, Aulus and Titus Manlius, being similarly attired. For up to that day such a thing had never been known, that at such a crisis in a man's fate even those nearest to him did not put on mourning.

They remembered that when Appius Claudius was thrown into prison, his personal enemy, Caius Claudius, and the whole house of the Claudii, wore mourning. They regarded it as a conspiracy to crush a popular hero, because he was the first man to go over from the patricians to the plebs.