2.32
The senate now began to
feel apprehensive lest on the disbandment of the
army there should be a recurrence of the secret
conclaves and conspiracies. Although the Dictator
had actually conducted the enrolment, the soldiers
had sworn obedience to the consuls. Regarding them
as still bound by their oath, the senate ordered the
legions to be marched out of the City on the pretext
that war had been recommenced by the Aequi. This
step brought the revolution to a head. It is said
that the first idea was to put the consuls to death
that the men might be discharged from their oath;
then, on learning that no religious obligation could
be dissolved by a crime, they decided, at the
instigation of a certain Sicinius, to ignore the
consuls and withdraw to the Sacred Mount, which lay
on the other side of the Anio, three miles from the
City. This is a more generally accepted tradition
than the one adopted by Piso that the secession was
made to the Aventine. There, without any commander
in a regularly entrenched camp, taking nothing with
them but the necessaries of life, they quietly
maintained themselves for some days, neither
receiving nor giving any provocation. A great panic
seized the City, mutual distrust led to a state of
universal suspense. Those plebeians who had been
left by their comrades in the City feared violence
from the patricians; the patricians feared the
plebeians who still remained in the City, and could
not make up their minds whether they would rather
have them go or stay. "How long," it was asked,
"would the multitude who had seceded remain quiet?
What would happen if a foreign war broke out in the
meantime?" They felt that all their hopes rested on
concord amongst the citizens, and that this must be
restored at any cost.
The senate decided, therefore, to send as
their spokesman Menenius Agrippa, an eloquent man,
and acceptable to the plebs as being himself of
plebeian origin. He was admitted into the camp, and
it is reported that he simply told them the
following fable in primitive and uncouth fashion.
"In the days when all the parts of the human body
were not as now agreeing together, but each member
took its own course and spoke its own speech, the
other members, indignant at seeing that everything
acquired by their care and labour and ministry went
to the belly, whilst it, undisturbed in the middle
of them all, did nothing but enjoy the pleasures
provided for it, entered into a conspiracy; the
hands were not to bring food to the mouth, the mouth
was not to accept it when offered, the teeth were
not to masticate it. Whilst, in their resentment,
they were anxious to coerce the belly by starving
it, the members themselves wasted away, and the
whole body was reduced to the last stage of
exhaustion. Then it became evident that the belly
rendered no idle service, and the nourishment it
received was no greater than that which it bestowed
by returning to all parts of the body this blood by
which we live and are strong, equally distributed
into the veins, after being matured by the digestion
of the food." By using this comparison, and showing
how the internal disaffection amongst the parts of
the body resembled the animosity of the plebeians
against the patricians, he succeeded in winning over
his audience.