Their wives and children attended their steps, piteously asking to whom would they leave them, in a city in which neither chastity nor liberty were respected?
When the unusual solitude rendered every place in Rome void; when there was in the forum no one but a few old men; when, the patricians being convened into the senate, the forum appeared deserted; more now besides Horatius and Valerius began to exclaim, "What will ye now wait for, conscript fathers?
If the decemvirs do not put an end to their obstinacy, will ye suffer all things to go to wreck and ruin?
What power is that, decemvirs, which ye embrace and hold so firmly?
do you mean to administer justice to walls and mere houses?
Are you not ashamed that an almost greater number of your lictors is to be seen in the forum than of the other citizens?
What are ye to do, in case the enemy should approach the city?
What, if the commons should come presently in arms, if we seem not to be moved by their secession?
do you mean to conclude your power by the fall of the city?
But (the case is this,) either we must not have the commons, or they must have their tribunes.

We would sooner dispense with our patrician magistrates, than they with their plebeian.

That power, when new and untried, they wrested from our fathers; much less will they, now that they have tested the sweets of it, endure its loss: more especially since we make not a moderate use of our power, so that they may not stand in need of (tribunitian) aid." When these arguments were thrown out from every quarter, the decemvirs, overpowered by the united opinions of all, declare that, since such seems to be the feeling, they would submit to the authority of the patricians.

All they ask is, that they may be protected from popular rage; they give a warning, that they should not through shedding their blood habituate the people to inflict punishment on the patricians.
53.

Then Valerius and Horatius, having been sent to bring back the people on such terms as might seem fit, and to adjust all differences, are directed to make provision also for the decemvirs from the resentment and violence of the multitude.