Internal History from the Destruction of the Fabii to the first Pestilence

Summary

As soon as the pressing danger was removed, two of the tribunes impeacht the former consul T. Menenius for having left the Fabii without assistance. Their object was merely to get a declaration of his being guilty, not to take vengeance on an offender in behalf of whom his father's memory pleaded: hence the penalty was fixt at only two thousand ases, not more than a knight's yearly pay; and a sum many times as large would have been raised by his gentiles and clients. Thus far therefore his condemnation was of no importance: and in times of distraction such a sentence, pronounced by a court governed by the spirit of the opposite faction, rather raises a man in the estimation of his own. Hence we are perplext to find that it broke the heart of Menenius: he shut himself up in his house and died of grief. But it is no less incomprehensible that the tribunes should have been able to accuse him before the tribunal of their order for a matter not affecting its rights: though we may easily suppose that they brought their charge before the curies. And if these sacrificed him, for the sake of washing off their own guilt, if with vulgar thoughtlessness they estimated the sentence by the insignificance of the penalty, we can conceive that Menenius, who may have known that many of his judges, as far as wishes and commands went, were more culpable than he, should have sunk under his shame.