then, the delay now becoming more suspicious, they believed that he was hindered by the nobles, and complained that the public cause was abandoned and betrayed.  At length those who had been waiting before the entrance of the tribune’s residence announced that he had been found dead in his house.  As soon as rumour spread the news through the whole assembly, just as an army disperses on the fall of its general, so did they scatter in different directions.  Panic chiefly seized the tribunes, now taught by their colleague’s death how utterly ineffectual was the aid the devoting laws afforded them.[72] Nor did the patricians display their exultation with due moderation; and so far was any of them from feeling compunction at the guilty act, that even those who were innocent wished to be considered to have perpetrated it, and it was openly declared that the tribunician power ought to be subdued by chastisement.

Immediately after this victory, that involved a most ruinous precedent, a levy was proclaimed; and, the tribunes being now overawed, the consuls accomplished their object without any opposition.  Then indeed the commons became enraged more at the inactivity of the tribunes than at the authority of the consuls:  they declared there was an end of their liberty:  that things had returned to their old condition:  that the tribunician power had died along with Genucius and was buried with him; that other means must be devised and adopted, by which the patricians might be resisted:  and that the only means to that end was for the people to defend themselves, since they had no other help:  that four-and-twenty lictors waited on the consuls, and they men of the common people:  that nothing could be more despicable, or weaker, if only there were persons to despise them; that each person magnified those things and made them objects of terror to himself.  When they had excited one another by these words, a lictor was despatched by the consuls to Volero Publilius, a man belonging to the commons, because he declared that, having been a centurion, he ought not to be made a common soldier.  Volero appealed to the tribunes.  When no one came to his assistance, the consuls ordered the man to be stripped and the rods to be got ready.  “I appeal to the people,” said Volero, “since the tribunes prefer to see a Roman citizen scourged before their eyes, than themselves to be butchered by you each in his bed.”  The more vehemently he cried out, the more violently did the lictor tear off his clothes and strip him.  Then Volero, being both himself a man of great bodily strength, and aided by his partisans, having thrust back the lictor, retired into the thickest part of the crowd, where the outcry of those who expressed their indignation was loudest, crying out:  “I appeal, and implore the protection of the commons; assist me, fellow-citizens:  assist me, fellow-soldiers:  it is no use to wait for the tribunes, who themselves stand in need of your aid.”  The men, excited, made ready