The Senate, unable to maintain any charge, and tired, perhaps, of the expense of keeping him in prison, sent him forth to maintain himself at his own charge; but his means having been greatly reduced, he found a corresponding reduction in his popularity. While his resources flowed in a golden stream, he was a rich pump that any one was ready to make a handle of; but no sooner did the supply fall off, and the pump cease to act, than he was left destitute of the commonest succour. He was eventually brought to trial; and being called upon for his defence, he produced four hundred insolvents whose debts he had paid--and who passed through the Court of Justice--as witnesses to his liberality. He then showed his wounds, which were not the sore places of which the patricians complained; and he ultimately pointed to the Capitol, in the preservation of which he had acquitted himself so well, that on the recollection of it, his acquittal was pronounced by the citizens. His persecutors, however, obtained a new trial, upon which he was condemned to death; and a slave having been sent with the despatch containing the news, proceeded to the despatch of Manlius himself in a treacherous manner. Proposing a walk along the cliff, under the pretence of friendship, the slave gradually got Manlius near the edge, until the latter suddenly found himself driven to the last extremity. Upon this he received a push which sent him down the Tarpeian Rock; and the man who pretended to have come as a friend, had been base enough to throw him over. The sudden idea of the traitor was afterwards carried into frequent execution; for the practice he had commenced, was subsequently applied to the execution of criminals. After the death of Manlius, his house was levelled with the ground, and he himself experienced the fate of most men when thoroughly down, for he was repudiated even by his own family. The gens, or gents, of the Manlii, with a contemptible want of manliness, resolved that none of the members should ever bear the name of Marcus, which they avoided as a mark of disgrace, though at one time it had been a title of honour. Rome seemed now to be declining, and going down all its seven hills at once; pestilence killed some, and gave the vapours to others, and the sewers no longer fulfilled their office, but overflowing, in consequence of the irregular rebuilding of the city, they threw a damp upon the inhabitants. The free population was growing daily less, while the number of patricians continued the same, and there seemed reason to fear that Rome would soon become one of those most inconvenient of oligarchies, in which there are many to govern and comparatively few to be governed. The "eternal city" was in danger of being prematurely cut off by an early decline, for its constitution was not yet matured; and though it had once been saved by mere quackery,[25] it was now to be preserved by a bolder and wiser regimen. FOOTNOTES: