ch. 523.52M. Duillius, a former tribune, informed the plebs
that, owing to incessant wranglings, no business was
being transacted in the senate. He did not believe
that the senators would trouble about them till they
saw the City deserted; the Sacred Hill would remind
them of the firm determination once shown by the
plebs, and they would learn that unless the
tribunitian power was restored there could be no
concord in the State. The armies left the Aventine
and, going out by the Nomentan—or, as it was then
called, the Ficulan—road, they encamped on the Sacred
Hill, imitating the moderation of their fathers by
abstaining from all injury. The plebeian civilians
followed the army, no one whose age allowed him to go
hung back. Their wives and children followed them,
asking in piteous tones, to whom would they leave them
in a City where neither modesty nor liberty were
respected? The unwonted solitude gave a dreary and
deserted look to every part of Rome; in the Forum
there were only a few of the older patricians, and
when the senate was in session it was wholly deserted.
Many besides Horatius and Valerius were now angrily
asking, What are you waiting for, senators? If the
decemvirs do not lay aside their obstinacy, will you
allow everything to go to wrack and ruin? And what,
pray, is that authority, decemvirs, to which you cling
so closely? Are you going to administer justice to
walls and roofs? Are you not ashamed to see a greater
number of lictors in the Forum than of all other
citizens put together? What will you do if the enemy
approach the City? What if the plebs seeing that their
secession has no effect, come shortly against us in
arms? Do you want to end your power by the fall of the
City? Either you will have to do without the plebeians
or you will have to accept their tribunes; sooner than
they will go without their magistrates, we shall have
to go without ours. That power which they wrested from
our fathers, when it was
an untried novelty, they will not submit to be
deprived of, now that they have tasted the sweets of
it, especially as we are not making that moderate use
of our power which would prevent their needing its
protection. Remonstrances like these came from all
parts of the House; at last the decemvirs, overborne
by the unanimous opposition, asserted that since it
was the general wish, they would submit to the
authority of the senate. All they asked for was that
they might be protected against the popular rage; they
warned the senate against the plebs becoming by their
death habituated to inflicting punishment on the
patricians.
