was in the Roman books dated as far back as T. Tatius, who refused to give up to the people of Lavinium his kinsmen, by whom they had been aggrieved; for which he was murdered. Afterwards, the Romans bring those who had wronged the Lavinians, and the latter the murderers of T. Tatius, mutually before each other’s tribunal. A tribune of the people, Cn. Genucius, of a family already then important, had appointed the charge against the former consuls _in trinundinum_; and here the _Plebes_ itself was to judge. Its right, according to the treaty solemnly sworn on the Sacred Mount, was by no means doubtful, as little indeed as the issue of the trial. The patricians, as the rage of faction was at its height, now found their readiest expedient in an atrocious crime, in the murder of Genucius; and thus the impeachment was put an end to. Dionysius justly remarks, that if the perpetrators had contented themselves with this enormity, the panic which they had spread might have sufficed. The tribunes were thoroughly alarmed: their sacred office had been violated; as their houses were to be open day and night, no precaution could guard them against such foul play, against the intrusion of disguised assassins;--the bravest man shrinks from such a danger. The assassins of Genucius were not discovered; every one was paralysed with terror. The patricians were in high glee at what they had done; and they thought to make use of the first moment of fear for levying an army, adding insult and outrage to crime. It was their intention to enlist the most illustrious plebeians, and to execute them in the field, or to let them fall a prey to the enemy. But they overshot themselves in their overbearing insolence: for in their exultation they could not wait, and they caused a distinguished plebeian, Volero Publilius, who had before been a centurion, to be summoned, and wanted to enrol him as a common soldier. Among the plebeians, as well as among the patricians, there were distinguished families, there were rich and poor: to the former class the Publilii belonged. Publilius refused; the consuls sent their lictors to drag him _obtorto collo_ before their tribunal, to strip him, and to flog him _servili modo_. The toga was a very wide garment, of one piece, in the form of a semicircle, on which nothing was sewn; the Romans entirely wrapped themselves up in it. Now, if one was to be taken before the authorities, the beadles flung the ends of the toga round his head, and thus dragged him before the magistrate, often throttling him so tight about the neck that the blood flowed from his mouth and nose. A man who was thus dragged away, tried to defend himself by drawing the end of the toga to himself and pressing his arm against it, on which the lictor would take a knife, and slit the toga: he had then a place where he might lay hold on the prisoner and pull him away. This was called _vestem scindere_. Yet the beadles were very shy of having recourse to this means.