the _Plebes_ as a murderer, and withdrew into exile: whether he was recalled afterwards, is unknown to us. This gives the whole affair an ugly look. Mælius’ house was pulled down; the Æquimælium, the place where it had stood, was under the walls of the Capitol, and is now entirely buried in the rubbish which forms a mound at the foot of the hill. This is a point of some importance for the understanding of Roman topography.[112] When the Valerian laws, as we have seen before, so far limited the old right of the consuls to enforce obedience, that any one sentenced by them to receive corporal punishment might appeal to his community, they were yet to be allowed a certain sphere of jurisdiction without appeal: otherwise their authority would have been reduced to a mere nothing. That power extended to fines, the fixing of which is also ascribed to Valerius. Yet this is not likely, as there is too positive an evidence in the law of the consuls Tarpeius and Aternius, passed by the centuries, in which the _multa_ was estimated in heads of cattle, as Cicero _de Republica_ expressly tells us. This would not have been possible, if the Valerian law had already fixed the limitation; or else the rulers must afterwards again have seized upon the absolute authority. On the whole, all that is mentioned of the Valerii is not to be trusted, as Valerius Antias, who reckoned himself of the Valerian house, invented a good deal about it, and the Valerii moreover were rather vain of their popularity. That law fixed two sheep and thirty oxen as the highest _multa_, with regard to which Gellius makes a very heedless statement; for he says that sheep were at that time so rare, that two of them were estimated as equal to thirty beeves, though he himself immediately afterwards informs us that a sheep was worth ten, and an ox a hundred _asses_. The explanation of the fact is simply this,--that the consuls were obliged to increase the amount of the fine only by degrees, that the way might always be left open for a return to obedience: he who did not make his appearance on the first day, was mulcted of a sheep; on the following day, of two; then of an ox; and so on. We know from Cicero of another circumstance besides, which proves to us how little other accounts are to be relied on. Only twenty-five years later, the value of these payments was fixed in money, and that at a moderate estimation. Cicero justly looks upon this as denoting a progress of individual liberty.