The whole affair now began to be clearer to the patricians and consuls; besides the news, however, which was officially announced, they dreaded lest this might be a scheme of the Veientines or Sabines; and, further, as there were so many of the enemy in the city, lest the Sabine and Etruscan troops might presently come up according to a concerted plan, and their inveterate enemies, the Volscians and Aequans should come, not to ravage their territories, as before, but even to the gates of the city, as being already in part taken. Many and various were their fears, the most prominent among which was their dread of the slaves, lest each should harbour an enemy in his own house, one whom it was neither sufficiently safe to trust, nor, by distrusting, to pronounce unworthy of confidence, lest he might prove a more deadly foe. And it scarcely seemed that the evil could be resisted by harmony: no one had any fear of tribunes or commons, while other troubles so predominated and threatened to swamp the state: that fear seemed an evil of a mild nature, and one that always arose during the cessation of other ills, and then appeared to be lulled to rest by external alarm. Yet at the present time that, almost more than anything else, weighed heavily on their sinking fortunes: for such madness took possession of the tribunes, that contended that not war, but an empty appearance of war, had taken possession of the Capitol, to divert the people's minds from attending to the law: that these friends and clients of the patricians would depart in deeper silence than they had come, if they once perceived that, by the law being passed, they had raised these tumults in vain. They then held a meeting for passing the law, having called away the people from arms. In the meantime, the consuls convened the senate, another dread presenting itself by the action of the tribunes, greater than that which the nightly foe had occasioned.