invited them home: they attended them in the forum,[24] and suffered
the tribunes themselves to hold the rest of their meetings without
interruption: they were never discourteous to any one either in public
or in private, except on occasions when the matter of the law began
to be agitated. In other respects the young men were popular. And
not only did the tribunes transact all their other affairs without
disturbance, but they were even re-elected or the following year.
Without even an offensive expression, much less any violence being
employed, but by soothing and carefully managing the commons the young
patricians gradually rendered them tractable. By these artifices the
law was evaded through the entire year.

The consuls Gaius Claudius, the son of Appius, and Publius Valerius
Publicola, took over the government from their predecessors in a more
tranquil condition. The next year had brought with it nothing new:
thoughts about carrying the law, or submitting to it, engrossed the
attention of the state. The more the younger patricians strove
to insinuate themselves into favour with the plebeians, the more
strenuously did the tribunes strive on the other hand to render them
suspicious in the eyes of the commons by alleging that a conspiracy
had been formed; that Caeso was in Rome; that plans had been concerted
for assassinating the tribunes, for butchering the commons. That the
commission assigned by the elder members of the patricians was, that
the young men should abolish the tribunician power from the state, and
the form of government should be the same as it had been before the
occupation of the Sacred Mount. At the same time a war from the
Volscians and AEquans, which had now become a fixed and almost regular
occurrence every year, was apprehended, and another evil nearer home
started up unexpectedly. Exiles and slaves, to the number of two
thousand five hundred, seized the Capitol and citadel during the
night, under the command of Appius Herdonius, a Sabine. Those who
refused to join the conspiracy and take up arms with them were
immediately massacred in the citadel: others, during the disturbance,
fled in headlong panic down to the forum: the cries, "To arms!" and
"The enemy are in the city!" were heard alternately. The consuls
neither dared to arm the commons, nor to suffer them to remain
unarmed; uncertain what sudden calamity had assailed the city, whether
from without or within, whether arising from the hatre