History of Rome

​In proportion as everything abroad was peaceful that year thanks to the successful wars, so much did the power of the patricians and the misery of the plebeians increase daily within the city, since the very ability to pay was hindered by the very fact that payment was necessary. And so, when nothing could now be paid from their property, ​they satisfied their creditors with their reputation and their bodies, having been judged and surrendered as debtors, and punishment had taken the place of good faith.

​Therefore, not only the lowest but even the leading men of the plebeians had so far submitted their spirits in subjection, that not only to seek the military tribuneship among the patricians, ​which they had striven with such great force to make lawful, but not even for undertaking and seeking the plebeian magistracies did any active and experienced man have the spirit, and the patricians seemed to have recovered for ever the possession of the office which had been only temporarily exercised by the plebeians for a few years.

​Lest this should be too joyful for the other party, a small cause, as is usually the case, intervened to bring about a mighty matter. Marcus Fabius Ambustus, a man of great influence both among the men of his own class and also with the plebeians, because he was by no means regarded among his peers as a despiser of them, had two daughters, the elder married to Servius Sulpicius, the younger to Gaius Licinius Stolo, a distinguished man indeed, yet a plebeian; and that very alliance, not being despised, had sought for Fabius favor among the common people.

​It happened by chance that, while the Fabian sisters were spending time in conversation with each other, as is usual, in the house of Servius Sulpicius, the military tribune, Sulpicius’s lictor, when he was returning home from the forum, struck the door with his rod, as is the custom. When the younger Fabia, unaccustomed to that custom, had been startled at this, she was laughed at by her sister, who wondered that her sister was ignorant of it.

​But that laughter added a sting to a woman’s mind, which is easily moved by small things. Also, from the crowd of those who followed and asked if he wanted anything, I believe her sister’s marriage seemed fortunate to her, and she regretted her own from that evil disposition by which everyone least wishes to be surpassed by those nearest to them.

​When her father by chance had seen her confused from this recent sting of mind, having asked ‘Is everything well?’, she averted the cause of her grief, since it was indeed neither sufficiently affectionate toward her sister nor very honorable toward her husband. ​By kindly questioning, he enticed her to confess that this was the cause of her grief: that she was joined to an unequal partner, married into a house which neither honor nor influence could enter.

​Thereupon Ambustus, comforting his daughter, bade her be of good cheer: she would see before long the same honors at her own home which she saw at her sister’s.

​Thence he began to form plans with his son-in-law, having called in Lucius Sextius, an active young man, to whose expectations nothing was lacking except a patrician birth.