Ab urbe condita

After a great struggle he succeeded so far that the senate should be consulted as to whether the next elections should be held for consuls or for consular tribunes. They ordered consuls to be elected. The tribune's menaces were laughed at when he threatened to obstruct the levy at a time when all the neighbouring States were quiet and there was no necessity for war or for any preparations for war. Proculus[*](Internal Troubles.) Geganius Macerinus and Lucius Menenius Lanatus were the consuls for the year which followed this state of tranquillity; a year remarkable for a multiplicity of disasters and dangers, seditions, famine, and the imminent risk of the people being bribed to bow their necks to despotic power.

A foreign war alone was wanting. Had this come to aggravate the universal distress, resistance would hardly have been possible even with the help of all the gods. The misfortunes began with a famine, owing either to the year being unfavourable to the crops, or to the cultivation of the land being abandoned for the attractions of political meetings and city life; both causes are assigned. The senate blamed the idleness of the plebeians, the tribunes charged the consuls at one time with dishonesty, at another with negligence. At last they induced the plebs, with the acquiescence of the senate, to appoint as Prefect of the Corn-market L. Minucius.

In that capacity he was more successful in guarding liberty than in the discharge of his office, though in the end he deservedly won gratitude and reputation for having relieved the scarcity. He despatched numerous agents by sea and land to visit the surrounding nations, but as, with the sole exception of Etruria, who furnished a small supply, their mission was fruitless, he made no impression on the market. He then devoted himself to the careful adjustment of the scarcity, and obliged all who possessed any corn to declare the amount, and after retaining a month's supply for themselves, sell the rest to the Government. By cutting down the daily rations of the slaves to one half, by holding up the corn-merchants to public execration, by rigorous and inquisitorial methods, he revealed the prevailing distress more than he relieved it. Many of the plebs lost all hope, and rather than drag on a life of misery muffled their heads[*](Veiling the head by throwing a part of the toga over it was an act of reverence on the part of all who sought to approach the gods in prayer or sacrifice, and also before death, which was the passage to the gods of the under world. So Plato tells us that Socrates veiled his head after he had drunk the poison. So Suetonius tells us that when Julius Caesar “found himself attacked on all sides with naked daggers, he muffled his head in his toga and with his left hand let the rest drop to his feet that he might fall the more decorously.” ) and threw themselves into the Tiber.

It[*](The Treason and Death of Spurius Maelius.) was at that time that Spurius Maelius, a member of the equestrian order and a very wealthy man for those days, entered upon an undertaking, serviceable in itself, but forming a very bad precedent and dictated by still worse motives.

Through the instrumentality of his clients and foreign friends he purchased corn in Etruria, and this very circumstance, I believe, hampered the Government in their efforts to cheapen the market.

He distributed this corn gratis, and so won the hearts of the plebeians by this generosity that wherever he moved, conspicuous and consequential beyond an ordinary mortal, they followed him, and this popularity seemed to his hopes a sure earnest of a consulship.

But the minds of men are never satisfied with Fortune's promises, and he began to entertain loftier and unattainable aims; he knew the consulship would have to be won in the teeth of the patricians, so he began to dream of royalty.

After all his grand schemes and efforts he looked upon that as the only fitting reward which owing to its greatness must be won by the greatest exertions. The consular elections were now close at hand, and as his plans were not yet matured, this circumstance proved his ruin.