h, and giving him
his right hand, answered, "Rise, Marcius, and be of good courage. You
have brought us a noble present, yourself; rest assured that the
Volscians will not be ungrateful." He then feasted Marcius with great
hospitality, and for some days they conferred together as to the best
method of carrying on the war.

XXIV. Rome meanwhile was disturbed by the anger of the patricians
towards the plebeians, especially on account of the banishment of
Marcius, and by many portents which were observed both by the priests
and by private persons, one of which was as follows. There was one Titus
Latinus, a man of no great note, but a respectable citizen and by no
means addicted to superstition. He dreamed that he saw Jupiter face to
face, and that the god bade him tell the Senate that "they had sent a
bad dancer before his procession, and one who was very displeasing to
him."

On first seeing this vision he said that he disregarded it; but after it
had occurred a second and a third time he had the unhappiness to see his
son sicken and die, while he himself suddenly lost the use of his limbs.

He told this story in the senate house, to which he had been carried on
a litter; and as soon as he had told it, he found his bodily strength
return, rose, and walked home.

The senators, greatly astonished, inquired into the matter. It was found
that a slave, convicted of some crime, had been ordered by his master to
be flogged through the market-place, and then put to death. While this
was being done, and the wretch was twisting his body in every kind of
contortion as he writhed under the blows, the procession by chance was
following after him. Many of those who walked in it were shocked at the
unseemliness of the spectacle, and disgusted at its inhumanity, but no
one did anything more than reproach and execrate a man who treated his
slaves with so much cruelty.

At that period men treated their slaves with great kindness, because
the master himself worked and ate in their company, and so could
sympathise more with them. The great punishment for a slave who had done
wrong was to make him carry round the neighbourhood the piece of wood on
which the pole of a waggon is rested. The slave who has done this and
been seen by the neighbours and friends, lost his credit, and was called
_furcifer_, for the Romans call that piece of timber _furca_, "a fork,"
which the Greeks call _hypostates_, "a supporter."

XXV. So when Latinus relat