1The consuls Gaius Claudius, son of Appius, and Publius Valerius Publicola take over a calmer city. 1The new year had brought nothing new; 1concern with carrying or accepting the law preoccupied the citizens. 2The more the younger patricians ingratiated themselves with the plebs, the more keenly the tribunes strove against them, so as to make them suspect to the plebs by their accusations: a conspiracy, they said, had been formed; 3Caeso was in Rome; 3plans had been laid for killing the tribunes and butchering the plebs; 3the task had been given by the older patricians that the young men should remove the tribunician power from the state, and that the form of the state should be the same as it had been before the Sacred Mount was occupied.
3War with the Volsci and Aequi, by now regular and almost an annual fixture, was feared, and another, new evil had arisen unexpectedly closer at hand. 5Exiles and slaves, about two thousand five hundred men, led by Appius Herdonius, a Sabine, seized the Capitol and the citadel by night. 6At once there was a slaughter in the citadel of those who had refused to join the conspiracy and take up arms with them; 6others, amid the confusion, rush headlong in panic down into the Forum; 6cries of 'To arms!' 6and 'The enemy is in the city!' were heard by turns. 7The consuls were afraid both to arm the plebs and to leave them unarmed, uncertain what sudden evil, foreign or domestic, arising from the hatred of the plebs or from the treachery of slaves, had fallen upon the city.
7They tried to quieten the uproar, and by quietening it sometimes stirred it up; 7for a frightened and dismayed crowd could not be controlled by command. 8Still, they hand out arms, not to all and sundry, but only so that, while the enemy was unknown, there might be a guard reliable enough for any emergency. 8The rest of the night they spent, anxious and uncertain who the men were and how great the number of the enemy, in posting guards at all the suitable places in the city. 8Daylight then revealed the war and the leader of the war. 9From the Capitol Appius Herdonius was calling the slaves to freedom: he had taken up, he said, the cause of all the most wretched, in order to bring back to their native land the exiles unjustly driven out, and to lift the heavy yoke from the slaves.
9He preferred that this should be done with the sanction of the Roman people; 9if there were no hope there, he would try and rouse the Volsci and Aequi and resort to every extreme.