the decemvirs. It was resolved that Valerius
and Horatius should proceed to the Aventine. They refused to go on any
other condition than that the decemvirs should lay down the badges of
that office, which they had resigned at the end of the previous year.
The decemvirs, complaining that they were now being degraded, declared
that they would not resign their office until those laws, for the sake
of which they had been appointed, were passed.

The people being informed by Marcus Duillius, who had been tribune of
the people, that by reason of their continual contentions no business
was transacted, passed from the Aventine to the Sacred Mount, as
Duillius asserted that no concern for business would enter the minds
of the patricians, until they saw the city deserted: that the Sacred
Mount would remind them of the people's firmness: that they would then
know that matters could not be brought back to harmony without the
restoration of the tribunician power. Having set out along the
Nomentan way, which was then called the Ficulean,[58] they pitched
their camp on the Sacred Mount, imitating the moderation of their
fathers by committing no violence. The commons followed the army,
no one whose age would permit him declining to go. Their wives and
children attended them, piteously asking to whom they were leaving
them, in a city where neither chastity nor liberty were respected.
When the unusual solitude had created everywhere at Rome a feeling
of desolation; when there was no one in the forum but a few old men:
when, after the patricians had been summoned into the senate, the
forum appeared deserted, by this time more besides Horatius and
Valerius began to exclaim, "What will you now wait for, conscript
fathers? If the decemvirs do not put an end to their obstinacy, will
you suffer all things to go to wreck and ruin? What power is that of
yours, decemvirs, which you embrace and hold so firmly? Do you mean to
administer justice to walls and houses? Are you not ashamed that an
almost greater number of your lictors is to be seen in the forum than
of the other citizens? What are you going to do, in case the enemy
should approach the city? What, if the commons should come presently
in arms, in case we show ourselves little affected by their secession?
Do you mean to end your power by the fall of the city? Well, then,
either we must not have the commons, or they must have their tribunes.
We shall sooner be able to dispense with our patr