1But on the other side the consuls, having placed their chairs in full view of the tribunes, were holding the levy. 1There the tribunes hurried down and dragged the assembly with them. 1A few men were called up, as if to test the matter, and at once violence broke out. 2Whomever the lictor seized at the consul's order, the tribune ordered to be released; 2nor did each man's right set the limit, but his hope of strength, and what you claimed had to be maintained by force. 3Just as the tribunes had conducted themselves in preventing the levy, so the patricians conducted themselves in obstructing the law, which was brought forward on every day on which assemblies could be held.
4The brawling would begin when the tribunes had ordered the people to separate, because the patricians would not allow themselves to be moved aside. 4The older men hardly took part in the matter, since it was not something to be governed by counsel but had been abandoned to recklessness and audacity. 5The consuls too largely kept themselves away, so as not to expose their dignity to insult amid the confusion of affairs. 6There was one Caeso Quinctius, a young man high-spirited both from the nobility of his family and from the size and strength of his body. 6To these gifts given by the gods he had himself added many honours in war and eloquence in the Forum, so that no one in the state was thought readier either with tongue or with hand.
7When he had taken his stand in the middle of the patrician throng, towering above the others, as if he bore all dictatorships and consulships in his voice and his strength, he alone withstood the onslaughts of the tribunes and the storms of the people. 8Under his leadership the tribunes were often driven from the Forum, and the plebs routed and put to flight; 8anyone who had got in his way went off beaten and stripped, so that it was quite clear that, if things could be done like this, the law was defeated. 9Then, when the other tribunes were now almost crushed, Aulus Verginius, one of the college, indicted Caeso on a capital charge.
9By this action he had inflamed his violent nature rather than frightened it; 9all the more fiercely he opposed the law, harried the plebs and pursued the tribunes as if in a regular war. 10The accuser let the defendant rush headlong and feed the flame of resentment and supply material for the charges against himself; 10meanwhile he pressed the law not so much in hope of carrying it as to provoke Caeso's rashness. 11Then many things often said and done thoughtlessly by the young men were laid to the suspected temper of Caeso alone. 12Still, the law was resisted. 12And Aulus Verginius said again and again to the plebs: 'Do you not see now, Quirites, that you cannot have Caeso as a fellow citizen and the law you long for at the same time?
13And yet why do I speak of the law? 13He stands in the way of liberty; 13he outdoes all the Tarquins in arrogance. 13Wait until he becomes consul or dictator, whom you see playing the king as a private citizen by his strength and audacity.' 13Many agreed, complaining that they had been beaten, and even urged the tribune on to carry the prosecution through.