previous next
49. The people were excited partly by the atrocity of the deed, partly by the opportunity now offered of recovering their liberties. [2] Appius first ordered. Icilius to be summoned before him, then, on his refusal to come, to be arrested. As the lictors were not able to get near him, Appius himself with a body of young patricians forced his way through the crowd and ordered him to be taken to prison. [3] By this time Icilius was not only surrounded by the people, but the people's leaders were there —L. Valerius and M. Horatius. They drove back the lictors and said, if they were going to proceed by law, they would undertake the defence of Icilius against one who was only a private citizen, but if they were going to attempt force, they would be no unequal match for him. [4] A furious scuffle began; the decemvir's lictors attacked Valerius and Horatius; their ‘fasces’ were broken up by the people; Appius mounted the platform, Horatius and Valerius followed him; the Assembly listened to them, Appius was shouted down. [5] Valerius, assuming the tone of authority, ordered the lictors to cease attendance on one who held no official position; on which Appius, thoroughly cowed, and fearing for his life, muffled his head with his toga and retreated into a house near the Forum, without his adversaries perceiving his flight. [6] Sp. Oppius burst into the Forum from the other side to support his colleague, and saw that their authority was overcome by main force. Uncertain what to do and distracted by the conflicting advice given him on all sides, he gave orders for the senate to be summoned. [7] As a great number of the senators were thought to disapprove of the conduct of the decemvirs, the people hoped that their power would be put an end to through the action of the senate, and consequently became quiet. [8] The senate decided that nothing should be done to irritate the plebs, and, what was of much more importance, that every precaution should be taken to prevent the arrival of Verginius from creating a commotion in the army.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Notes (W. Weissenborn, H. J. Müller, 1898)
load focus Summary (Latin, W. Weissenborn, H. J. Müller, 1898)
load focus Summary (English, Benjamin Oliver Foster, Ph.D., 1922)
load focus Summary (Latin, Benjamin Oliver Foster, Ph.D., 1922)
load focus English (D. Spillan, A.M., M.D., 1857)
load focus Latin (Benjamin Oliver Foster, Ph.D., 1922)
load focus Latin (Robert Seymour Conway, Charles Flamstead Walters, 1914)
load focus English (Benjamin Oliver Foster, Ph.D., 1922)
load focus Latin (W. Weissenborn, H. J. Müller, 1898)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (20 total)
  • Commentary references to this page (3):
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 33-34, commentary, 33.7
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 35-38, commentary, 38.42
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 39-40, commentary, 40.9
  • Cross-references to this page (10):
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (7):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: