Yet the tribunes went further: as the laws also affected political rights, the lawgivers had likewise to reform the constitution. By the Publilian Rogations, a life had been awakened in the nation which was not in harmony with the ruling power: a new state of things was necessarily to spring up from it; but against this new state of things the old was arrayed in opposition. The most violent resistance was made to this law, and the patricians had recourse to the same outrages of which they had formerly been guilty. In this Cæso Quinctius, a son of Cincinnatus, particularly distinguished himself. He repeated all the intrigues of Appius Claudius, and at the head of the young men of his order and of the clients, he again prevented the plebeians by force from voting. Against this, either at that time, or a year before, a law had been passed, the _lex Junia_, which is inconceivably dated by Dionysius[102] thirty years earlier (262). By virtue of it, any one who molested the tribunes in the discharge of their duty was guilty of high treason against the commonalty. He had to find bail for an amount to be fixed by the tribunes (the usual number was ten sureties, for three thousand asses each), and if he did not attend to receive sentence, the sureties and their goods were forfeited to the commonalty. When the trial began, the charge was brought against him, that with a gang of young patricians he had caused the death of a plebeian by ill usage. Thus the Pentalides ran about in Mitylene with clubs, and ill used the plebeians there; as late as during the minority of Louis XIV. similar scenes took place in Paris, where people would not go out into the streets unarmed, as they were afraid of being attacked; in the times of Queen Anne, there was also in London a band of young men of rank, called Mohocks, who infested the streets in disguise; under King William, Lord Bolingbroke belonged to such a crew, as we see from Swift’s correspondence. The charge raised such a feeling of exasperation against Cæso Quinctius, that he left the city. It is now stated that his father was ruined in consequence, the tribunes having cruelly exacted the whole amount of the bail from him. This is impossible; for the tribunes could only come upon the securities. If these chose to come upon the father, a _sponsio_ must have preceded; and even then, a man of so distinguished a house could not possibly have been bereft of rights which belonged to the very meanest of his order, but he might have called upon his clansmen and clients to indemnify him. The story is a fiction, like so many others which go a step beyond the truth. These embellishments might have been made skilfully so as to deceive us; but luckily we cannot be mistaken in this case.