History of Rome

​The dictator was keeping his army in permanent camp, in no doubt that the senate would order war with those peoples, when a greater trouble arising at home forced him to be summoned to Rome on account of a sedition that was growing day by day, which its author rendered more to be dreaded than usual.

​For now not only the speeches of M. Manlius, but his deeds, popular in appearance but at the same time tumultuous, were clear to anyone who observed with what mind they were done.

​When he saw a centurion, distinguished for his military deeds, led away after being judged liable for debt, he ran up to the middle of the forum with his crowd and laid hand on him, crying out against the pride of the patricians, the cruelty of the usurers, the miseries of the plebs, and about the virtues and fortune of that man: ”Then indeed,” he said, “should I in vain have saved the Capitol and the citadel with this right hand, if I were to see my fellow-citizen and fellow-soldier led away into slavery and chains, as though captured by the victorious Gauls.”

​Thereupon he paid the money to the creditor openly before the people, and released the man, set free by the scales and bronze, who implored gods and men to return thanks to M. Manlius, his deliverer and the father of the Roman plebs.

​Having been immediately received into the turbulent crowd, he himself also increased the tumult, showing the scars received in the Veientine, the Gallic, and other successive wars:

​saying that while serving in the army and rebuilding his destroyed household gods, though the principal had already been paid many times over, he had been overwhelmed by interest which always sank the principal, and was crushed by debt;

​that it was by the help of M. Manlius that he beheld the light, the forum, and the faces of his fellow-citizens; that from him he held all the benefits of parents; to him he devoted what remained of his body, life, and blood; whatever right he had had with his country, and with his public and private household gods, was now with this one man.

​When the plebs, incited by these words, already belonged to this one man, another matter of a counsel more convenient for throwing everything into confusion was added.

​He put up for auction his estate in the Veientine territory, the chief part of his patrimony. “Lest any of you,” he said, “Quirites, as long as anything remains of my property, I will not suffer any of you who has been judged or assigned for debt to be led away.” This indeed so inflamed their minds, that they seemed ready to follow the champion of their liberty through all right and wrong. In addition to this, at his house, ​after the manner of one holding a public assembly, speeches were made full of accusations against the patricians; among which, throwing out without distinction whether they were true or false, he cast the charge that treasures of Gallic gold were being hidden by the patricians, and that they were no longer content with possessing public lands unless they also embezzled public money; if that matter should be made public, the plebs could be released from their debt.

​When this hope was held out, it indeed seemed a shameful deed: that when gold had to be collected to ransom the state from the Gauls, the contribution was made by a tribute, but that the same gold, captured from the enemy, had fallen into the booty of a few.

​Therefore they persisted in asking where the theft of so great a matter was hidden; and since he delayed and said that he would disclose it in his own time, all other things being set aside, the attention of all was turned thither, and it was evident that neither the gratitude for a true disclosure nor the offense of a false one would be moderate.