# CHAPTER 44 — A Crowd Is Ineffective Without a Leader; and How One Should Not Make Threats First and Then Request Authority

The Roman plebeians equipped with arms withdrew to the Mons Sacer because of the incident involving Virginia. The senate sent its ambassadors to ask on what authority they had abandoned their commanders and withdrawn to the Mons, and so greatly respected was the authority of the senate that, since the plebeians did not have a leader among them, no one dared to reply. Livy says that they did not lack a response but rather they lacked a person to give it. This demonstrates precisely the ineffectiveness of a crowd without a leader. Virginius was aware of this disorder, and on his command twenty military tribunes were created to act as leaders in responding to and dealing with the senate. When they asked that Valerius and Horatius be sent to them so that they could explain their wishes to them, they did not want to go there unless the decemvirs first relinquished their magistracy, and once they arrived at the Mons Sacer, where the plebeians were located, they were told that the plebeians wanted the appointment of the tribunes of the plebeians, the right of appeal to the people from every magistrate, and the handing over of all the decemvirs to them, for they wanted to burn them alive.

Valerius and Horatius praised their first demands and criticized the last one as impious, saying: ‘you are tumbling headlong into that very vice you profess so bitterly to hate.’ * And they advised them to avoid saying anything about the decemvirs and to wait until they regained their own authority and power; then, they would not lack the means to obtain satisfaction. In this, one clearly recognizes how much stupidity and how little prudence there is in asking for something and later declaring: ‘I want to do such and such evil deed with this’, for one must not reveal one’s intentions, but instead should attempt to obtain what one wants by any means possible. For it is enough to ask somebody for his weapons without saying, ‘I want to kill you with them’, because when you have his weapons in hand, you can then satisfy your desire.