6.11
The
consular tribunes who succeeded were A. Manlius, P. Cornelius, T. and L.
Quinctius Capitolinus, L. Papirius Cursor (for the second time), and C.
Sergius (for the second time). In this year a serious war broke out, and a still
more serious disturbance at home. The war was begun by the Volscians,
aided by the revolted Latins and Hernici. The domestic trouble arose in a
quarter where it was least to be apprehended, from a man of patrician birth
and brilliant reputation -M. Manlius Capitolinus. Full of pride and
presumption, he looked down upon the foremost men with scorn; one in
particular he regarded with envious eyes, a man conspicuous for his
distinctions and his merits -M. Furius Camillus. He bitterly resented this
man's unique position amongst the magistrates and in the affections of the
army, and declared that he was now such a superior person that he treated
those who had been appointed under the same auspices as himself, not as his
colleagues, but as his servants, and yet if any one would form a just
judgment he would see that M. Furius could not possibly have rescued his
country. When it was beleaguered by the enemy had not he, Manlius, saved
the Capitol and the Citadel? Camillus attacked the Gauls while they were off
their guard, their minds pre-occupied with obtaining the gold and securing
peace; he, on the other hand, had driven them off when they were armed for
battle and actually capturing the Citadel. Camillus' glory was shared by every
man who conquered with him, whereas no mortal man could obviously claim
any part in his victory.
With his head full of these notions and being unfortunately a man of
headstrong and passionate nature, he found that his influence was not so
powerful with the patricians as he thought it ought to be, so he went over to
the plebs -the first patrician to do so -and adopted the political methods of
their magistrates. He abused the senate and courted the populace and,
impelled by the breeze of popular favour more than by conviction or
judgment, preferred notoriety to respectability. Not content with the agrarian
laws which had hitherto always served the tribunes of the plebs as the
material for their agitation, he began to undermine the whole system of
credit, for he saw that the laws of debt caused more irritation than the
others; they not only threatened poverty and disgrace, but they terrified the
freeman with the prospect of fetters and imprisonment. And, as a matter of
fact, a vast amount of debt had been contracted owing to the expense of
building, an expense most ruinous even to the rich. It became, therefore, a
question of arming the government with stronger powers, and the Volscian
war, serious in itself but made much more so by the defection of the Latins
and Hernici, was put forward as the ostensible reason. It was, however, the
revolutionary designs of Manlius that mainly decided the senate to nominate
a Dictator. A. Cornelius Cossus was nominated, and he named T. Quinctius
Capitolinus as his Master of the Horse.