reat consequence, but because he
considered this to be the beginning of an outburst of democratic
insolence which a wise government would take timely measures to suppress
before it gathered strength.

VI. As the Senate, although it frequently met, came to no decision on
this matter, the plebeians suddenly assembled in a body, left the city,
and established themselves on what was afterwards called the Mons Sacer,
or Sacred Hill, near the river Anio. They abstained from all factious
proceedings, and merely stated that they had been driven from the city
by the wealthy classes. Air and water and a place in which to be buried,
they said, could be obtained anywhere in Italy, and they could get
nothing more than this in Rome, except the privilege of being wounded or
slain in fighting battles on behalf of the rich. At this demonstration,
the Senate became alarmed, and sent the most moderate and popular of its
members to treat with the people. The spokesman of this embassy was
Menenius Agrippa, who, after begging the plebeians to come to terms, and
pleading the cause of the Senate with them, wound up his speech by the
following fable: Once upon a time, said he, all the members revolted
against the belly, reproaching it with lying idle in the body, and
making all the other members work in order to provide it with food; but
the belly laughed them to scorn, saying that it was quite true that it
took all the food which the body obtained, but that it afterwards
distributed it among all the members. "This," he said, "is the part
played by the Senate in the body politic. It digests and arranges all
the affairs of the State, and provides all of you with wholesome and
useful measures."

VII. Upon this they came to terms, after stipulating that five men
should be chosen to defend the cause of the people, who are now known as
tribunes of the people. They chose for the first tribunes the leaders of
the revolt, the chief of whom were Junius Brutus and Sicinius Vellutus.
As soon as the State was one again, the people assembled under arms, and
zealously offered their services for war to their rulers. Marcius,
though but little pleased with these concessions which the plebeians had
wrung from the patricians, yet, noticing that many patricians were of
his mind, called upon them not to be outdone in patriotism by the
plebeians, but to prove themselves their superiors in valour rather than
in political strength.

VIII. Corioli was the most impo