red that the tribunician power
ought to be subdued by chastisement.

Immediately after this victory, that involved a most ruinous
precedent, a levy was proclaimed; and, the tribunes being now
overawed, the consuls accomplished their object without any
opposition. Then indeed the commons became enraged more at the
inactivity of the tribunes than at the authority of the consuls: they
declared there was an end of their liberty: that things had returned
to their old condition: that the tribunician power had died along with
Genucius and was buried with him; that other means must be devised and
adopted, by which the patricians might be resisted: and that the only
means to that end was for the people to defend themselves, since they
had no other help: that four-and-twenty lictors waited on the consuls,
and they men of the common people: that nothing could be more
despicable, or weaker, if only there were persons to despise them;
that each person magnified those things and made them objects of
terror to himself. When they had excited one another by these words,
a lictor was despatched by the consuls to Volero Publilius, a man
belonging to the commons, because he declared that, having been a
centurion, he ought not to be made a common soldier. Volero appealed
to the tribunes. When no one came to his assistance, the consuls
ordered the man to be stripped and the rods to be got ready. "I appeal
to the people," said Volero, "since the tribunes prefer to see a Roman
citizen scourged before their eyes, than themselves to be butchered
by you each in his bed." The more vehemently he cried out, the more
violently did the lictor tear off his clothes and strip him. Then
Volero, being both himself a man of great bodily strength, and aided
by his partisans, having thrust back the lictor, retired into the
thickest part of the crowd, where the outcry of those who expressed
their indignation was loudest, crying out: "I appeal, and implore the
protection of the commons; assist me, fellow-citizens: assist me,
fellow-soldiers: it is no use to wait for the tribunes, who themselves
stand in need of your aid." The men, excited, made ready as if for
battle: and it was clear that a general crisis was at hand, that no
one would have respect for anything, either public or private right.
When the consuls had faced this violent storm, they soon found out
that authority unsupported by strength had but little security; the
lictors being maltreated, and the