1Besides the general resentment, one charge bore heavily on the defendant: Marcus Volscius Fictor, who some years before had been tribune of the plebs, had come forward as a witness that not long after the pestilence had been in the city he had fallen in with a band of young men roaming about in the Subura. 2There a brawl had broken out, and his elder brother, not yet strong enough after his illness, had been struck by Caeso's fist and fallen; 3he had been carried home half-dead in men's arms and, he believed, had died of it, and he had not been allowed by the consuls of previous years to pursue so atrocious a matter.
3As Volscius kept shouting this, people were so roused that Caeso came close to perishing at the hands of the people. 3Verginius ordered the man to be seized and taken off to prison. 4The patricians met force with force. 4Titus Quinctius kept shouting that a man against whom a capital charge had been laid, and about whom a trial was to be held shortly, ought not to be harmed uncondemned and without a hearing. 5The tribune said he would not inflict punishment on a man uncondemned; 5but he would keep him in prison until the day of the trial, so that the Roman people might have the opportunity of punishing one who had killed a man.
6The tribunes, being appealed to, by a compromise decision exercised their right of protection: they forbade his being thrown into prison; 7they announced their decision that the defendant should appear and that money should be promised to the people if he did not appear. 7How large a sum of money it was fair to promise came into doubt; 8that was referred to the senate. 8While the senators were being consulted, the defendant was detained in public. 8It was decided that sureties should be given; 8they bound each surety for three thousand pounds of bronze; 8how many should be given was left to the tribunes. 8They fixed it at ten. 8With that many sureties the accuser held the defendant on bail.
8He was the first to give sureties to the public treasury. 8Released from the Forum, he went off the next night into exile among the Etruscans. 9On the day of the trial, when it was pleaded in excuse for him that he had left the country to go into exile, nevertheless, as Verginius was holding the assembly, his colleagues, being appealed to, dismissed the gathering. 9The money was exacted from his father so pitilessly that, after selling off all his property, he lived for some time across the Tiber, as if banished, in some out-of-the-way hut.