XIV. A torrent of rain happened to fall just then, and the meeting was dissolved. Early on the following day Opimius summoned the senate to transact business. In the mean time the naked body of Antyllius was placed on a bier, and, according to arrangement, carried through the Forum past the senate-house with loud cries and lamentations. Opimius, though he knew what was going on, pretended to be surprised at the noise, and the senators went out to see what was the matter. When the bier had been set down in the midst of the crowd, the senators began to express their indignation at so horrible and monstrous a crime; but this only moved the people to hate and execrate the oligarchs, who, after murdering Tiberius Gracchus in the Capitol, a tribune, had treated his body with insult; while Antyllius, a mere servant, who perhaps had not deserved his fate, yet was mainly to blame for what happened, was laid out in the Forum, and surrounded by the Roman senate lamenting and assisting at the funeral of a hireling; and all this merely to accomplish the ruin of the only remaining guardian of the people's liberties. On returning to the senate-house, the senators passed a decree[111] by which the consul Opimius was directed to save the state in such way as he could, and to put down the tyrants. Opimius gave notice to the senators to arm, and each eques was commanded to bring in the morning two armed slaves. On the other side, Fulvius also made preparation and got together a rabble; but Caius as he left the Forum stood opposite his father's statue, and looking at it for some time without speaking, at last burst into tears, and fetching a deep sigh, walked away. The sight of this moved many of the spectators to compassion, and blaming themselves for deserting the man and betraying him, they came to the house of Caius and passed the night at his door; but not in the same manner as those who watched about the house of Fulvius, for they spent the night in tumult and shouting, drinking, and bragging what they would do. Fulvius himself, who was the first to get drunk, spoke and acted in a way quite unseemly for a man of his age. The followers of Caius, viewing the state of affairs as a public calamity, kept quiet, thinking of the future, and they passed the night watching and sleeping in turns.