Ab urbe condita

The people assigned the dedication of the temple to M. Laetorius, the first centurion of the legion, a choice obviously made not so much to honour the man, by conferring upon him an office so far above his station, as to bring discredit on the consuls.

One of them, at all events, was excessively angry, as were the senate, but the courage of the plebs had risen, and they went to work in a very different method from that which they had adopted at first.

For as any prospect of help from the consuls or the senate was hopeless, they took matters into their own hands, and whenever they saw a debtor brought before the court, they rushed there from all sides, and by their shouts and uproar prevented the consul's sentence from being heard, and when it was pronounced no one obeyed it.

They resorted to violence, and all the fear and danger to personal liberty was transferred from the debtors to the creditors, who were roughly handled before the eyes of the consul.

In addition to all this there were growing apprehensions of a Sabine war. A levy was decreed, but no one gave in his name. Appius was furious; he accused his colleague of courting the favour of the people, denounced him as a traitor to the common-wealth because he refused to give sentence where debtors were brought before him, and moreover he refused to raise troops after the senate had ordered a levy.

Still, he declared, the ship of State was not entirely deserted nor the consular authority thrown to the winds; he, single-handed, would vindicate his own dignity and that of the senate.

Whilst the usual daily crowd were standing round him, growing ever bolder in licence, he ordered one conspicuous leader of the agitation to be arrested. As he was being dragged away by the lictors, he appealed. There was no doubt as to what judgment the people would give, and he would not have allowed the appeal had not his obstinacy been with great difficulty overcome more by the prudence and authority of the senate than by the clamour of the people, so determined was he to brave the popular odium.

From that time the mischief became more serious every day, not only through open clamour but, what was far more dangerous, through secession and secret meetings. At length the consuls, detested as they were by the plebs, went out of office —Servilius equally hated by both orders, Appius in wonderful favour with the patricians.

Then A. Verginius and T. Vetusius took office. As the plebeians were doubtful as to what sort of consuls they would have, and were anxious to avoid any precipitate and ill-considered action which might result from hastily adopted resolutions in the Forum, they began to hold meetings at night, some on the Esquiline and others on the Aventine.

The consuls considered this state of things to be fraught with danger, as it really was, and made a formal report to the senate. But any orderly discussion of their report was out of the question, owing to the excitement and clamour with which the senators received it, and the indignation they felt at the consuls throwing upon them the odium of measures which they ought to have carried on their own authority as consuls.

“Surely,” it was said, “if there were really magistrates in the State, there would have been no meetings in Rome beyond the public Assembly; now the State was broken up into a thousand senates and assemblies, since some councils were being held on the Esquiline and others on the Aventine.