to employ force, that even in that case they would be no unequal match for him.  Hence arose a violent quarrel.  The decemvir’s lictor attacked Valerius and Horatius:  the fasces were broken by the people.  Appius ascended the tribunal; Horatius and Valerius followed him.  They were attentively listened to by the assembly:  the voice of the decemvir was drowned with clamour.  Now Valerius, as if he possessed the authority to do so, was ordering the lictors to depart from one who was but a private citizen, when Appius, whose spirits were now broken, alarmed for his life, betook himself into a house in the vicinity of the forum, unobserved by his enemies, with his head covered up.  Spurius Oppius, in order to assist his colleague, rushed into the forum by the opposite side:  he saw their authority overpowered by force.  Distracted then by various counsels and by listening to several advisers from every side, he had become hopelessly confused:  eventually he ordered the senate to be convened.  Because the official acts of the decemvirs seemed displeasing to the greater portion of the patricians, this step quieted the people with the hope that the government would be abolished through the senate.  The senate was of opinion that the commons should not be stirred up, and that much more effectual measures should be taken lest the arrival of Verginius should cause any commotion in the army.

Accordingly, some of the junior patricians, being sent to the camp which was at that time on Mount Vecilius, announced to the decemvirs that they should do their utmost to keep the soldiers from mutinying.  There Verginius occasioned greater commotion than he had left behind him in the city.  For besides that he was seen coming with a body of nearly four hundred men, who, enraged in consequence of the disgraceful nature of the occurrence, had accompanied him from the city, the unsheathed knife, and his being himself besmeared with blood, attracted to him the attention of the entire camp; and the gowns,[56] seen in many parts of the camp had caused the number of people from the city to appear much greater than it really was.  When they asked him what was the matter, in consequence of his weeping, for a long time he did not utter a word.  At length, as soon as the crowd of those running together became quiet after the disturbance, and silence ensued, he related everything in order as it had occurred.

Then extending his hands toward heaven, addressing his fellow-soldiers, he begged of them, not to impute to him that which was the crime of Appius Claudius, nor to abhor him as the murderer of his child.  To him the life of his daughter was dearer than his own, if she had been allowed to live in freedom and chastity.  When he beheld her dragged to prostitution as if she were a slave, thinking it better that his child should be lost by death rather than by dishonour, through compassion for her he had apparently fallen into cruelty.  Nor would he have survived his