Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 3
Benjamin Oliver Foster, Ph.D., Ed.

52. Having learned from Marcus Duillius, who had been a plebeian tribune, that nothing was coming of the endless bickerings of the senate, the commons quitted the Aventine for the Sacred Mount, since Duillius assured them that not until the patricians beheld the City deserted would they feel any real concern; [2] the Sacred Mount would remind them of the firmness of the plebs, and they would know whether it were possible or not that affairs should be reduced to harmony without the [p. 173]restoration of the tribunician power. [3] Marching out¹ by the Via Nomentana, then called Ficulensis, they pitched their camp on the Sacred Mount, having imitated the good behaviour of their fathers and made no depredations. [4] Following the army came the plebeian civilians; nor did any one who was of an age to go hold back. They were attended a little way forth by their wives and children, who inquired pathetically to whose protection they were leaving them, in that City where neither chastity nor liberty was sacred.

[5] Now that all Rome was desolate with an unwonted loneliness, and there was nobody in the Forum but a few old men, and it appeared, particularly when the Fathers had been summoned to the senate-house, quite deserted, there were many others besides Horatius and Valerius who remonstrated. “What will you wait for, Conscript Fathers?” [6] they cried out. “If the decemvirs persist in their obstinacy, will you suffer everything to go to wrack and ruin? Pray what is that authority, decemvirs, to which you cling with such tenacity? Is it to roofs and walls you will render judgment? [7] Are you not ashamed that your lictors should be seen in the Forum in almost larger numbers than the other citizens? What do you mean to do if the enemy should come to the City? What if, by and bye, the plebs, finding us unmoved by their secession, come with sword in hand? Do you wish the downfall of the City to be the end of your rule? And yet, either we must have no plebs, or we must have plebeian tribunes. [8] We will sooner dispense with patrician magistrates than they with plebeian. It was a new and untried power when they extorted it from our fathers: [9] now [p. 175]that they have once been captivated by its charm,² they would be even less willing to forgo it, especially when we on our side do not so temper the exercise of our authority that they stand in no need of help.” [10] As these reproaches were flung at them from every quarter, the decemvirs were overborne by the consensus of opinion and gave assurances that they would submit, since it was thought best, to the authority of the senate. [11] They had but this one request to make —which was also a warning, —that their persons might be protected from men's hate, and that their blood might not be the means of accustoming the plebs to punish senators.