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muffled up their heads and precipitated themselves into the Tiber.

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      Then Spurius Mælius, of the equestrian order, extremely rich considering these times, set about a project useful in itself, but having a most pernicious tendency, and a still more pernicious motive. For having, by the assistance of his friends and clients, bought up corn from Etruria at his private expense, (which very circumstance, I think, had been an impediment in the endeavour to reduce the price of corn by the exertions of the state,) he set about giving out largesses of corn: and having won over the commons by this munificence, he drew them with him wherever he went, conspicuous and consequential beyond the rank of a private citizen, insuring to him as undoubted the consulship by the favour (they manifested towards him) and the hopes (they excited in him.) He himself, as the mind of man is not to be satiated with that which fortune holds out the hope of, began to aspire to things still higher, and altogether unwarrantable; and since even the consulship would have to be taken from the patricians against their will, he began to set his mind on kingly power;—that that would be the only prize worthy of such grand designs and of the struggle which would have to be endured. The consular elections were now coming on, which circumstance destroyed him completely, his plans being not yet arranged or sufficiently matured. Titus Quintius Capitolinus was elected consul for the sixth time, a man by no means well suited to answer the views of one meditating political innovations: Agrippa Menenius is attached to him as colleague, who bore the cognomen of Lanatus: and Lucius Minutius as president of the markets, whether he was re-elected, or created for an indefinite period, as long as circumstances should require; for there is nothing certain in the matter, except this, his name was entered as president in the linen books among the magistrates for both years. Here Minucius, conducting the same office in a public capacity which Mælius had undertaken to conduct in a private character, the same class of persons frequenting the houses of both, having ascertained the matter, lays it before the senate, "that arms were collecting in the house of Mælius, and that he held assemblies in his house: and that his designs were unquestionably bent on regal dominion: that the time for the execution of the project was not yet fixed: that all other matters were settled; and that the tribunes were bought over for hire to betray the public liberty, and that the several parts were assigned to the leaders of the multitude. That he laid these things before them almost later than was consistent with safety, lest he might be the reporter of any thing uncertain or ill-grounded." When these things were heard, the chiefs of the patricians both rebuked the consuls of the former year, for having suffered those largesses and meetings of the people to go on in a private house, as well as the new consuls for having waited until a matter of such importance should be reported to the senate by the president of the markets, which required the consul to be not only the reporter, but the punisher also; then Titus Quintius said, "that the consuls were unfairly censured, who being fettered by the laws concerning appeal, enacted to weaken their authority, by no means possessed as much power in their office as will, to punish that proceeding according to its atrocity. That there was wanting a man not only determined in himself, but one who was unshackled and freed from the fetters of those laws. That he would therefore appoint Lucius Quintius dictator; that in him there would be a determination suitable to so great a power." Whilst all approved, Quintius at first refused; and asked them what they meant, in exposing him in the extremity of age to such a contest. Then when they all said that in that aged mind there was not only more wisdom, but more energy also, than in all the rest, and went on loading him with deserved praises, whilst the consul relaxed not in his original determination; Cincinnatus at length having prayed to the immortal gods, that his old age might not prove a detriment or disgrace to the republic at so dangerous a juncture, is appointed dictator by the consul: he himself then appoints Caius Servilius Ahala his master of the horse.

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      On the next day, having stationed proper guards, when he had gone down to the forum, and the attention of the commons was attracted to him by the strangeness and extraordinary nature of the thing, and Mælius's friends and himself their leader perceived that the power of such high authority was directly aimed at them; when, moreover, those who were not aware of the designs on regal power, went on asking, "what tumult, what sudden war, had called for either the dictatorial authority, or Quintius, after his eightieth year, administrator of affairs," Servilius, master of the horse, being sent by the dictator to Mælius, says, "The dictator summons you." When he, being alarmed, asked what he meant, and Servilius stated that "he must stand a trial," and answer the charge brought against him before the senate by Minucius, Mælius drew back into the band of his adherents, and at first, looking around him, he began to skulk off: at length when the beadle, by order of the master of the horse, was bringing him off, being rescued by those present, and running away, he implored the protection of the Roman people, and alleged that he was persecuted by a conspiracy of the patricians because he had acted kindly towards the people: he besought them that they would assist him in this critical emergency, and not suffer him to be butchered before their eyes. Ahala Servilius overtook and slew him whilst exclaiming in this manner; and smeared with the blood of the person so slain, and surrounded by a body of young nobles, he carries back word to the dictator that Mælius having been summoned to him, and commencing to excite the multitude after he had repulsed the beadle, had received condign punishment. "Thou hast acted nobly, Caius Servilius," said the dictator, "in having saved the republic."

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      He then ordered the multitude, who were much agitated, not knowing what judgment to form of the deed, to be called to an assembly: and he openly declared, "that Mælius had been justly put to death, even though he may have been innocent of the charge of aiming at regal power, who, when summoned to attend the dictator by the master of the horse, had not come. That he himself had taken his seat to examine into the case; that, after it had been investigated, Mælius should have met a result corresponding to his deserts; that when employing force, in order that he might not commit himself to a trial, he had been checked by force. Nor should they proceed with him as with a citizen, who, born in a free state amid laws and rights, in a city from which he knew that kings had been expelled, and on the same year the sons of the king's sister and the children of the consul, the liberator of his country, had been put to death by their father, on a plot for readmitting the royal family into the city having been discovered, from which Collatinus Tarquinius the consul, through a hatred of his name, was ordered to resign his office and go into exile; in which capital punishment was inflicted on Spurius Cassius several years after for forming designs to assume the sovereignty; in which the decemvirs were recently punished with confiscation, exile, and death, in consequence of regal tyranny in that city, Spurius Mælius conceived a hope of attaining regal power. And who was this man? Although no nobility, no honours, no deserts should open to any man the road to domination, yet still the Claudii and Cassii, by reason of the consulates, the decemvirates, the honours of their own and those of their ancestors, and from the splendour of their families, had raised their aspiring minds to heights to which it was impious to raise them: that Spurius Mælius, to whom a tribuneship of the commons should rather be an object of wishes than of hope, a wealthy corn-merchant, had conceived the hope to purchase the liberty of his countrymen for two pounds of corn; had supposed that a people victorious over all their neighbours could be cajoled into servitude by throwing them a morsel of food; so that a person whom the state could scarcely digest as a senator, it should tolerate as king, possessing the ensigns and authority of Romulus their founder, who had descended from and had returned to the gods. This was to be considered not more criminal than it was monstrous: nor was it sufficiently expiated by his blood; unless the roof and walls within which so mad a project had been conceived, should be levelled to the ground, and his effects were confiscated, as being contaminated with the price of purchasing kingly domination. He ordered, therefore, that the quæstors should sell this property and deposit the proceeds in the treasury."

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      He then ordered his house to be immediately razed, that the vacant ground might serve as a monument of nefarious hopes destroyed. This was called Æquimælium. Lucius Minucius was presented with a gilded ox on the outside of the gate Trigemina, and this not even against the will of the commons, because he distributed Mælius's corn, after valuing it at one as

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