u up
in the senate-house, and pretending myself to be an accomplice in the
meditated crime, I will, by approving measures which I should in vain
oppose, find out a way for your safety. For the performance of this
take whatever pledge you please." Having given his honour, he went
out; and having ordered the house to be closed, placed a guard in the
lobby that no one might enter or leave it without his leave.

3. Then assembling the people, he thus addressed them: "What you have
so often wished for, Campanians, the power of punishing an
unprincipled and detestable senate, you now have, not at your own
imminent peril, by riotously storming the houses of each, which are
guarded and garrisoned with slaves and dependants, but free and
without danger. Take them all, shut up in the senate-house, alone and
unarmed; nor need you do any thing precipitately or blindly. I will
give you the opportunity of pronouncing upon the life or death of
each, that each may suffer the punishment he has deserved. But, above
all, it behoves you so to give way to your resentment, as considering
that your own safety and advantage are of greater importance. For I
apprehend that you hate these particular senators, and not that you
are unwilling to have any senate at all; for you must either have a
king, which all abominate, or a senate, which is the only course
compatible with a free state. Accordingly you must effect two objects
at the same time; you must remove the old senate and elect a new one.
I will order the senators to be summoned one by one, and I shall put
it to you to decide whether they deserve to live or die: whatever you
may determine respecting each shall be done; but before you execute
your sentence on the culprit, you shall elect some brave and strenuous
man as a fresh senator to supply his place." Upon this he took his
seat, and, the names having been thrown together into an urn, he
ordered that the name which had the lot to fall out first should be
proclaimed, and the person brought forward out of the senate-house.
When the name was heard, each man strenuously exclaimed that he was a
wicked and unprincipled fellow, and deserved to be punished. Pacuvius
then said, "I perceive the sentence which has been passed on this man;
now choose a good and upright senator in the room of this wicked and
unprincipled one." At first all was silence, from the want of a better
man whom they might substitute; afterwards, one of them, laying aside
his