he assemblies as it were prophesying, that the
gift of his colleague was pestilential: that those lands were sure to
bring slavery to those who received them: that the way was being paved
to a throne. Else why were it that the allies were thus included, and
the Latin nation? What was the object of a third of the land that had
been taken being restored to the Hernicans, so lately their enemies,
except that those nations might have Cassius for their leader instead
of Coriolanus? The dissuader and opposer of the agrarian law now began
to be popular. Both consuls then vied with each other in humouring the
commons. Verginius said that he would suffer the lands to be assigned,
provided they were assigned to no one but a Roman citizen. Cassius,
because in the agrarian donation he sought popularity among the
allies, and was therefore lowered in the estimation of his countrymen,
commanded, in order that by another gift he might win the affections
of the citizens, that the money received for the Sicilian corn should
be refunded to the people. That, however, the people spurned as
nothing else than a ready money bribe for regal authority: so
uncompromisingly were his gifts rejected, as if there was abundance of
everything, in consequence of their inveterate suspicion that he was
aiming at sovereign power. As soon as he went out of office, it is
certain that he was condemned and put to death. There are some
who represent that his father was the person who carried out the
punishment: that he, having tried the case at home, scourged him and
put him to death, and consecrated his son's private property to Ceres;
that out of this a statue was set up and inscribed, "Presented out of
the property of the Cassian family." In some authors I find it stated,
which is more probable, that a day was assigned him to stand his
trial for high treason, by the quaestors,[50] Caeso Fabius and Lucius
Valerius, and that he was condemned by the decision of the people;
that his house was demolished by a public decree: this is the spot
where there is now an open space before the Temple of Tellus.[51]
However, whether the trial was held in private or public, he was
condemned in the consulship of Servius Cornelius and Quintus Fabius.

The resentment of the people against Cassius was not lasting. The
charm of the agrarian law, now that its proposer was removed, of
itself entered their minds: and their desire of it was further kindled
by the meanness of the sena