were occasioned by their own knavery, and not by accident.  Their plan was to put a few goods of little value into old and shattered vessels, which they sank in the deep, taking up the sailors in boats prepared for the purpose, and then returning falsely the cargo as many times more valuable than it was.  This fraudulent practice had been pointed out to Marcus Atilius, the praetor in a former year, who had communicated it to the senate; no decree, however, had been passed censuring it, because the fathers were unwilling that any offence should be given to the order of revenue farmers while affairs were in such a state.  The people were severer avengers of the fraud; and at length two tribunes of the people, Spurius and Lucius Carvilius, being moved to take some active measure, as they saw that this conduct excited universal disgust, and had become notorious, proposed that a fine of two hundred thousand asses should be imposed on Marcus Posthumius.  When the day arrived for arguing the question, the people assembled in such numbers, that the area of the Capitol could scarcely contain them; and the cause having been gone through, the only hope of safety which presented itself was, that Caius Servilius Casca, a tribune of the people, a connexion and relation of Posthumius, should interpose his protest before the tribes were called to give their votes.  The witnesses having been produced, the tribunes caused the people to withdraw, and the urn was brought, in order that the tribes should draw lots which should give the vote first.  Meanwhile, the farmers of the revenue urged Casca to stop the proceedings for that day.  The people, however, loudly opposed it; and Casca happened to be sitting on the most prominent part of the rostrum, whose mind fear and shame were jointly agitating.  Seeing that no dependence was to be placed in him for protection, the farmers of the revenue, forming themselves into a wedge, rushed into the void space occasioned by the removal of the people for the purpose of causing disturbance, wrangling at the same time with the people and the tribunes.  The affair had now almost proceeded to violence, when Fulvius Flaccus, the consul, addressing the tribunes, said, “Do you not see that you are degraded to the common rank, and that an insurrection will be the result, unless you speedily dismiss the assembly of the commons.”

4.  The commons being dismissed, the senate was assembled, when the consuls proposed the consideration of the interruption experienced by the assembly of the commons, in consequence of the violence and audacity of the farmers of the revenue.  They said, that “Marcus Furius Camillus, whose banishment was followed by the downfall of the city, had suffered himself to be condemned by his exasperated countrymen.  That before him, the decemviri, according to whose laws they lived up to the present day, and afterwards many men of the first rank in the state, had submitted to have sentence passed upon them by the people.