The people being informed by Marcus Duillius, who had been tribune of the people, that by reason of their continual contentions no business was transacted, passed from the Aventine to the Sacred Mount, as Duillius asserted that no concern for business would enter the minds of the patricians, until they saw the city deserted:  that the Sacred Mount would remind them of the people’s firmness:  that they would then know that matters could not be brought back to harmony without the restoration of the tribunician power.  Having set out along the Nomentan way, which was then called the Ficulean,[58] they pitched their camp on the Sacred Mount, imitating the moderation of their fathers by committing no violence.  The commons followed the army, no one whose age would permit him declining to go.  Their wives and children attended them, piteously asking to whom they were leaving them, in a city where neither chastity nor liberty were respected.  When the unusual solitude had created everywhere at Rome a feeling of desolation; when there was no one in the forum but a few old men:  when, after the patricians had been summoned into the senate, the forum appeared deserted, by this time more besides Horatius and Valerius began to exclaim, “What will you now wait for, conscript fathers?  If the decemvirs do not put an end to their obstinacy, will you suffer all things to go to wreck and ruin?  What power is that of yours, decemvirs, which you embrace and hold so firmly?  Do you mean to administer justice to walls and houses?  Are you not ashamed that an almost greater number of your lictors is to be seen in the forum than of the other citizens?  What are you going to do, in case the enemy should approach the city?  What, if the commons should come presently in arms, in case we show ourselves little affected by their secession?  Do you mean to end your power by the fall of the city?  Well, then, either we must not have the commons, or they must have their tribunes.  We shall sooner be able to dispense with our patrician magistrates, than they with their plebeian.  That power, when new and untried, they wrested from our fathers; much less will they now, when once captivated by its charm, endure the loss of:  more especially since we do not behave with such moderation in the exercise of our power that they are in no need of the aid of the tribunes.”  When these arguments were thrown out from every quarter, the decemvirs, overpowered by the united opinions of all, declared that, since such seemed to be the feeling, they would submit to the authority of the patricians.  All they asked for themselves was that they might be protected from popular odium; they warned the senate, that they should not, by shedding their blood, habituate the people to inflict punishment on the patricians.