t he tried in vain; flattery
succeeded at court, and triumphed over truth.

[e] The argument is this: If the great year is the measure of time;
then, as it consists, according to Cicero, of 12,954 solar years, the
whole being divided by twelve, every month of the great year would be
clearly 1080 years. According to that calculation, Demosthenes not
only lived in the same year with the persons engaged in the Dialogue,
but, it may be said, in the same month. These are the months to which
Virgil alludes in the fourth eclogue:

Incipient magni procedere menses.

Section XVII.

[a] Menenius Agrippa was consul A.U.C. 251. In less than ten years
afterwards, violent dissensions broke out between the patrician order
and the common people, who complained that they were harassed and
oppressed by their affluent creditors. One Sicinius was their
factious demagogue. He told them, that it was in vain they fought the
battles of their country, since they were no better than slaves and
prisoners at Rome. He added, that men are born equal; that the fruits
of the earth were the common birth-right of all, and an agrarian law
was necessary; that they groaned under a load of debts and taxes; and
that a lazy and corrupt aristocracy battened at ease on the spoils of
their labour and industry. By the advice of this incendiary, the
discontented citizens made a secession to the MONS SACER, about three
miles out of the city. The fathers, in the meantime, were covered with
consternation. In order, however, to appease the fury of the
multitude, they dispatched Menenius Agrippa to their camp. In the rude
unpolished style of the times (_prisco illo dicendi et horrido modo_,
says Livy), that orator told them:

"At the time when the powers of man did not, as at present,
co-operate to one useful end, and the members of the human
body had their separate interest, their factions, and
cabals; it was agreed among them, that the belly maintained
itself by their toil and labour, enjoying, in the middle of
all, a state of calm repose, pampered with luxuries, and
gratified with every kind of pleasure. A conspiracy
followed, and the several members of the body took the
covenant. The hand would no longer administer food; the
mouth would not accept it, and the drudgery of mastication
was too much for the teeth. They continued in this
resolution, determined to starve the TREASURY of the body,