Ab urbe condita

Her father happened to see her whilst she was still upset by this mortifying incident and asked her if she was well. She tried to conceal the real reason, as showing but little affection for her sister and not much respect for her own husband.

He kindly but firmly insisted upon finding out, and she confessed the real cause of her distress; she was unwed to one who was her inferior in birth, married into a house where neither honour nor political influence could enter.

Ambustus consoled his daughter and bade her keep up her spirits; she would very soon see in her own house the same honours which she saw at her sister's. From that time he began to concert plans with his son-in-law;

they took into their counsels L. Sextius, a pushing young man who regarded nothing as beyond his ambition except patrician blood.

A favourable opportunity for making innovations presented itself in the terrible pressure of debt, a burden from which the plebs did not hope for any alleviation until they had raised men of their own order to the highest authority in the State . This, they thought, was