1The situation became clearer to the senators and the consuls. 1Yet besides what was being openly declared, they feared that this might be a plan of the Veientes or of the Sabines, and that, while there were so many enemies in the city, Sabine and Etruscan legions might soon arrive by arrangement, and then those eternal enemies the Volsci and Aequi might come, not to ravage their lands as before, but to a city already partly captured. 3Many and various were the fears; 3above the rest stood out the terror of the slaves, that each man might have an enemy in his own house, whom it was safe neither to trust nor, by refusing trust, to deny confidence, lest he become more hostile; 4and it seemed that even harmony could scarcely stem the danger.
4With other evils so overwhelming and swamping them, no one feared the tribunes or the plebs; 4that evil was a mild one, always springing up when other evils were at rest, and it seemed then to be quiet, lulled to sleep by the terror from abroad. 5But it was this, almost alone, that bore down most heavily on their tottering fortunes. 5For such madness possessed the tribunes that they maintained that it was not a war but an empty semblance of war that had occupied the Capitol, in order to divert the minds of the plebs from concern for the law, and that the men there were the guest-friends and clients of the patricians; 5if, once the law was passed, they realised that they had raised their tumult in vain, they would go away more quietly than they had come.
6Then they held an assembly to pass the law, calling the people away from arms. 6Meanwhile the consuls hold a meeting of the senate, as another fear, greater than the one the enemy by night had brought, showed itself from the tribunes.