One other example bearing on the same subject I must not omit. Constant
disturbances were occasioned in Rome by the tribune Terentillus, who,
for reasons to be noticed in their place, sought to pass a certain law.
The nobles, in their efforts to baffle him, had recourse to religion,
which they sought to turn to account in two ways. For first they caused
the Sibylline books to be searched, and a feigned answer returned, that
in that year the city ran great risk of losing its freedom through civil
discord; which fraud, although exposed by the tribunes, nevertheless
aroused such alarm in the minds of the commons that they slackened in
their support of their leaders. Their other contrivance was as follows:
A certain Appius Herdonius, at the head of a band of slaves and outlaws,
to the lumber of four thousand, having seized the Capitol by night, an
alarm was spread that were the Equians and Volscians, those perpetual
enemies of the Roman name, then to attack the city, they might succeed
in taking it. And when, in spite of this, the tribunes stubbornly
persisted in their efforts to pass the law, declaring the act of
Herdonius to be a device of the nobles and no real danger. Publius
Rubetius, a citizen of weight and authority, came forth from the Senate
House, and in words partly friendly and partly menacing, showed them the
peril in which the city stood, and that their demands were unseasonable;
and spoke to such effect that the commons bound themselves by oath to
stand by the consul; in fulfilment of which engagement they aided the
consul, Publius Valerius, to carry the Capitol by assault. But Valerius
being slain in the attack, Titus Quintius was at once appointed in his
place, who, to leave the people no breathing time, nor suffer their
thoughts to revert to the Terentillian law, ordered them to quit Rome
and march against the Volscians; declaring them bound to follow him by
virtue of the oath they had sworn not to desert the consul. And though
the tribunes withstood him, contending that the oath had been sworn to