story to touch the feelings and secure the patriotism of the Plebeians. Once upon a time, he says, the members and organs of the body refused to labor longer in providing the great stomach in their centre with food; but after sticking awhile to their resolution, they found they were not only starving the stomach, but famishing themselves. The fable succeeds; it sets the Patricians in a new light, and stirs the associations which bind the seceders, in spite of all their injuries, to Rome. Menenius marks the impression he has made; and when he or another of the commissioners promises relief to every debtor or bondman who shall return with honest heart, a cry, loud and prolonged, for peace, goes through the crowd.44

The terms of reconciliation were undoubtedly prepared amongst the seceders, before the coming of the Patrician embassy. Abolition of existing debts, and the institution of some Plebeian magistracy as a guard upon the consulship, were the chief demands; and their presentation proved that the fable of Menenius bore a double application, entitling the members, if they kept the stomach full, to make sure that the stomach should, in turn, impart some nourishment to them. The commissioners, however, had come with no other offers than amnesty and discharge from debts or claims; for neither they nor the Senate had imagined there would be any further conditions proposed. Some of them, therefore, hurried back to Rome to inform the Senate of the wariness and fortitude which

44 Dion. Hal., VI. 86, 87. Near with the harangues of the histotwenty sections preceding are filled rian.