event was always termed the _mons sacer_, or the holy mountain. When the news of this secession was brought to Rome, the confusion was so great, that the city had the appearance of a place taken by storm, and the Appian faction were severely reproached as the cause of this desertion. Their enemies at the same time making inroads up to the very gates of Rome, increased the general consternation, as the Patricians were terribly afraid they would be joined by the seceders. But the soldiers behaved with so much decency and moderation, that the senate after long debates sent deputies to invite them to return, with the promise of a general amnesty. The offer was received with scorn, and the Patricians were charged with dissimulation, in pretending ignorance of the just demands of the Plebeians, and the true cause of their secession. At the return of the deputies, the affair was again debated in the senate. Agrippa Menenius, a man respectable for his superior wisdom and thorough knowledge of the true principles of government, and who was alike an enemy to tyranny in the aristocracy, and licentiousness in the people, advised healing measures, and proposed to send such persons as the people could confide in with full power to put an end to the sedition in the manner they should judge most proper, without farther application to the senate. Manius Valerius, the last dictator, spoke next, and reminded the senate, “that his predictions of the evils which would result from their breach of promise were now verified, that he advised a speedy accommodation with the people, lest the same evils, if suffered to make a farther progress, should become incurable: that in his opinion the demands of the people would rise higher than the bare abolition of debts, and that they would insist upon such security as might be the firm guardian of their rights and liberty for the future. Because the late institution of the dictatorship had superseded the Valerian law which was before the only guardian of their liberty, and the late denial of a triumph to the consul Servilius, who had deserved that honour more than any man in Rome, evidently proved, that the people were deprived of almost all those privileges they had formerly enjoyed, since a consul and a dictator who showed the least concern for the interests of the people, were treated with abuse and ignominy by the senate: that he did not impute these arbitrary measures to the most considerable and respectable persons amongst the Patricians, but to a combination of proud and avaricious men wholly intent upon unwarrantable gain; who by advancing large sums at excessive interest, had enslaved many of their fellow-citizens, and by their cruel and insulting treatment of their unhappy debtors, had alienated the whole body of the Plebeians from the aristocracy: that these men, by forming themselves into a faction, and placing Appius, a known enemy to the people and abettor of the oligarchy, at their head, had under his patronage,