Ab urbe condita

The[*](Internal Troubles —Impeachment of Sergius and Verginius.) newly elected tribunes were L. Valerius Potitus —for the fourth time —M. Furius Camillus-for the second time —Manius Aemilius Mamercus —for the third time —Cnaeus Cornelius Cossus —for the second time — Kaeso Fabius Ambustus, and L. Julius Julus. Their year of office was marked by many incidents at home and

abroad. There was a multiplicity of wars going on at once —at Veii, at Capena, at Falerii, and against the Volscians for the recovery of

Anxur. In Rome the simultaneous demands of the levy and the war-tax created distress; there was a dispute about the co-opting of tribunes of the plebs, and the trial of two men who had recently held consular power caused great excitement. The consular tribunes made it their first business to raise a

levy. Not only were the “juniors” enrolled, but the “seniors” were also compelled to give in their names that they might act as City guards. But the increase in the number of soldiers necessitated a corresponding increase in the amount required for their pay, and those who remained at

home were unwilling to contribute their share because, in addition, they were to be harassed by military duties in defence of the City, as servants of the

State. This was in itself a serious grievance, but it was made to appear more so by the seditious harangues of the tribunes of the plebs, who asserted that the reason why military pay had been established was that one half of the plebs might be crushed by the war-tax, and the other by military

service. One single war was now dragging along into its third year, and it was being badly managed deliberately in order that they might have it the longer to manage. Then, again, armies had been enrolled for four separate wars in one levy, and even boys and old men had been torn from their

homes. There was no difference made now between summer and winter, in order that the wretched plebeians might never have any

respite. And now, to crown all, they even had to pay a war-tax, so that when they returned, worn out by toil and wounds, and last of all by age, and found all their land untilled through want of the owner's care, they had to meet this demand out of their wasted property and return to the State their pay as soldiers many times over, as though they had borrowed it on

usury. What with the levy and the war-tax and the preoccupation of men's minds with still graver anxieties, it was found impossible to get the full number of plebeian tribunes elected. Then a struggle began to secure the co-optation of patricians into the vacant

places. This proved to be impossible, but in order to weaken the authority of the Trebonian Law, it was arranged, doubtless through the influence of the patricians, that C. Lucerius and M. Acutius should be co-opted as tribunes of the plebs.

As chance would have it, Cnaeus Trebonius was tribune of the plebs that year, and he came forward as a champion of the Trebonian Law, as a duty apparently to his family and the name he bore.

He declared in excited tones that the position which the senate had assailed, though they had been repulsed in their first attack, had been at last carried by the consular tribunes. The Trebonian Law had been set aside and the tribunes of the plebs had not been elected by the vote of the people, but co-opted at the command of the patricians, matters had now come to

this pass, that they must have either patricians or the hangers-on to patricians as tribunes of the plebs.

The Sacred Laws were being wrested from them, the power and authority of their tribunes was being torn away. This, he contended, was done through the craft and cunning of the patricians and the treacherous villainy of his colleagues. The flame of popular indignation was now beginning to scorch not only the senate, but even the tribunes of the plebs, co-opted and co-opters alike, when three members of the tribunitian college —P. Curatius, M. Metilius, and M. Minucius —trembling for their own safety, instituted proceedings against Sergius and Verginius, the consular tribunes of the preceding year.

By fixing a day for their trial, they diverted from themselves on to these men the rage and resentment of the plebs. They reminded the people that those who had felt the burden of the levy, the war-tax, and the long duration of the war, those who were distressed at the defeat sustained at Veii, those whose homes were in mourning for

the loss of children, brothers, and relations, had every one of them the right and the power to visit upon two guilty heads their own personal grief and that of the whole State.