5.2
As the Roman generals
placed more reliance on a blockade than on an
assault, they began to build huts for winter
quarters, a novelty to the Roman soldier. Their plan
was to keep up the war through the winter. The
tribunes of the plebs had for a long time been
unable to find any pretext for creating a revolt.
When, however, news of this was brought to Rome,
they dashed off to the Assembly and produced great
excitement by declaring that this was the reason why
it had been settled to pay the troops. They, the
tribunes, had not been blind to the fact that this
gift from their adversaries would prove to be
tainted with poison. The liberties of the plebs had
been bartered away, their able-bodied men had been
permanently sent away, banished from the City and
the State, without any regard to winter or indeed to
any season of the year, or to the possibility of
their visiting their homes or looking after their
property. What did they think was the reason for
this continuous campaigning? They would most
assuredly find it to be nothing else but the fear
that if a large body of these men, who formed the
whole strength of the plebs, were present, it would
be possible to discuss reforms in favour of the
plebeians. Besides, they were suffering much more
hardship and oppression than the Veientines, for
these passed the winter under their own roofs in a
city protected by its magnificent walls and the
natural strength of its position, whilst the Romans,
amidst labour and toil, buried in frost and snow,
were roughing it patiently under their skin-covered
tents, and could not lay aside their arms even in
the season of winter, when there is a respite from
all wars, whether by land or sea. This form of
slavery, making military service perpetual, was
never imposed either by the kings, or by the consuls
who were so domineering before the institution of
the tribuneship, or during the stern rule of the
Dictator, or by the unscrupulous decemvirs -it was
the consular tribunes who were exercising this regal
despotism over the Roman plebs. What would these men
have done had they been consuls or Dictators, seeing
that they have made their proconsular authority,
which is only a shadow of the other, so outrageously
cruel? But the commons had got what they had
deserved. Amongst all the eight consular tribunes
not a single plebeian had found a place. Hitherto,
with their utmost efforts, the patricians had
usually filled only three places at a time; now a
team of eight were bent on maintaining their power.
Even in such a crowd not a single plebeian could get
a footing, to warn his colleagues, if he could do
nothing else, that those who were serving as
soldiers were free men, their own fellow-citizens,
and not slaves, and that they ought to be brought
back, at all events in the winter, to their houses
and their homes, and during some part of the year
visit their parents and wives and children, and
exercise their rights as free citizens in electing
the magistrates.