1The proposal both seemed too harsh to the senate and nearly drove the plebs to arms in anger: they were now being attacked with hunger as if they were enemies, and cheated of food and sustenance; 1the foreign grain, the only nourishment which fortune had unexpectedly given them, was being snatched from their mouths unless the tribunes were handed over in chains to Gnaeus Marcius, unless he took satisfaction on the backs of the Roman plebs. 1He had risen up as a new executioner for them, to order them either to die or to be slaves. 2He would have been attacked as he came out of the senate house, had not the tribunes very opportunely named a day for his trial.
2At that their anger was checked: each saw himself made judge, made master of life and death over his enemy. 3At first Marcius heard the tribunes' threats with contempt: the right given to that office was to help, not to punish, and they were tribunes of the plebs, not of the senators. 3But the plebs had risen in such hostility that the senators had to settle the matter by the punishment of one man. 4They resisted the ill will against them, nevertheless, and used both each man's own strength and that of the whole order. 4And first they tried whether, by posting their clients here and there and scaring individuals away from meetings and assemblies, they could break the business up.
5Then they came forward all together — you would have said that the whole body of senators were on trial — begging the plebs with prayers that, if they would not acquit one citizen, one senator, as innocent, they would make them a gift of him as one guilty. 6When he himself did not appear on the appointed day, they persisted in their anger. 6Condemned in his absence, he went into exile among the Volsci, threatening his country and already then bearing an enemy's spirit. 6The Volsci received him kindly when he came, and courted him more kindly every day, the more his anger against his own people stood out, and now complaints, now threats were frequently heard.
6He enjoyed the hospitality of Attius Tullius. 7He was at that time by far the leading man of the Volscian name, and always hostile to the Romans. 7So, since old hatred spurred the one and fresh anger the other, they put their heads together about a war with Rome. 8They did not easily believe that their people could be driven to take up arms so often tried without success: their spirits had been broken by many wars, often fought, and lastly by the loss of their young men to plague; 8they must act with cunning, since the hatred was now worn out by age, so that their minds might be embittered by some fresh anger.