publick taxes; that this debt, accumulated by usury, reduced him to the sad necessity of selling the estate descended to him from his ancestors, with what little effects he had remaining: but that all this proving insufficient, his devouring debts, like a wasting consumption, had attacked his person, and he, with his two sons, were delivered up as slaves, and led away to the slaughterhouse by his creditors.” When he had said this, he threw off his rags, and showed his back yet bleeding from the scourge of his merciless master. This sight inflamed the people greatly, but the debtors breaking out of their creditor’s houses, most of whom were loaded with chains and fetters, raised their fury even to madness. If any one desired them to take up arms in defence of their country, the debtors showed their chains,[255] as the reward they had met with for their past services, and asked with indignation, whether such blessings were worth fighting for. Whilst numbers of them openly declared that it was much more eligible to be slaves to the Volscians than the Patricians. The senate, quite disconcerted by the violence of the tumult, entreated Servilius to take the management of the people. For an express was just arrived from the Latins, with advice that a numerous army of the enemy had already entered their territories. Servilius remonstrated to the people the consequences of disunion at so critical a juncture, and pacified them by the assurance that the senate would confirm whatever concessions he should make; he then ordered the crier to proclaim that no citizen who voluntarily enlisted should be subject to the demands or insults of his creditors whilst the army continued in the field. The people now flocked in with cheerfulness, and the levies were soon completed. Servilius took the field and defeated the Volscians, made himself master of their camp, took several of their cities, and divided the whole plunder amongst his soldiers. At the news of this success the sanguinary Appius ordered all the Volscian hostages to be brought into the forum,[256] there to be whipped and publickly beheaded. And when at his return Servilius demanded a triumph, he loudly opposed it, called him a factious man, and accused him of defrauding the treasury of the booty, and prevailed upon the senate to deny him that honour. Servilius, enraged at this usage, entered the city in triumph with his army, amidst the acclamations of the people, to the great mortification of the Patricians.