THE SECOND FOUNDER OF ROME
it would be dishonorable of me to make captives of these boys whom you have brought to my camp by a mean trick.”
He turned to the lictors, and bade them seize the schoolmaster. They tied his hands behind him, and gave rods to the lads.
“Boys,” said Camillus, “drive him back to the city. He is a traitor.”
Fathers and mothers and friends had gathered on the walls, in great grief for the loss of the boys. Presently, to their surprise, they beheld the lads returning, and the biggest scholars were laying the rods smartly upon the traitor's back.
Soon afterward the city yielded to the Romans. Camillus was a man of the upper or richer classes. The poorer classes, or plebeians (ple-bee-ans), often quarrelled with their richer neighbors; and I am sorry to say the quarrel of the rich and poor lasts even to our own day. Camillus, quiet as he was, was obliged to fly from Rome because his deeds and his ideas did not please the mass of the people. As he left the city he paused, looked back at its walls and towers, and stretched out his hands and said:
“Through no fault of mine, I am forced to leave Rome. Some day Rome will regret having driven me out.”
Much trouble then happened to the Romans and to Italy. The Gauls from the north had
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