31
The Romans being in war with the Gauls, and provisions for the belly being very scarce, Cinna contracted the soldiers’ allowance to a less proportion than they had formerly. The citizens interpreted this abatement to an ambitious design he had upon the government, and so stoned him for it.—Aristides, Book Third of his Italian History.
32
In the time of the Peloponnesian war, Pisistratus an Orchomenian had a spite at the nobility, and to make himself popular, favored the common people. The Senate conspired against him, and treacherously killed him, cutting him into small gobbets which they carried away with them in their bosoms, and paring off the surface of the ground that no signs of the murder might appear. The common people, however, upon a jealousy of the matter, went tumultuously to the senate house; but the king’s younger son Telesimachus that was dipped in the conspiracy, diverted them with a sham story, telling them that he himself had seen his father in a form more than human, walking as lively as was possible up the Pisaean mountain. And so he imposed upon the people.—Theophilus’s Second Book of Peloponnesian Histories.
32
The Senate of Rome, being hard put to it for the maintaining of a war with so many of their neighbors, thought it good husbandry to shorten the people’s allowance of corn, which Romulus the king took very ill; and not only did he restore it to the people, but several great men were punished for it. Upon this he was murdered in the Senate by a conspiracy of the nobles, who cut him all to pieces, and carried them severally away in the lappets of their garments. The Romans came to the senate house in a hurry, and brought fire with them to set all in a flame; but Julius Proculus, one that was in the plot, told them that he saw Romulus upon a mountain, of a size larger than any man, and that he was translated into the number of the Gods. The Romans believed him, and quietly withdrew.—Aristobulus, in the Third Book of his History of Italy.
