He was the first who gave public sureties.

Being discharged from the forum, he went the following night into exile among the Etrurians.

When on the day of trial it was pleaded that he had quitted his home in order to go into exile, Virginius notwithstanding holding the comitia, his colleagues when appealed to dismissed the assembly: the fine was rigorously exacted[120] from the father; so that after selling all his effects, he lived for a considerable time in a solitary cottage on the other side of the Tiber, as if in exile.

This trial and the proposing of the law gave full employment to the state: there was quiet from foreign arms.
[Footnote 117: Niebuhr denies that the tribunes had the power before the establishment of the decemviri to commit patricians to prison.

See however Dion.vii.