The name of the hill is from a Latin word meaning "head," and the legend arose that a head or skull was uncovered when the foundations of the temple were being dug. The Senate met in the Capitol fortress and so it was the center of the city's politics; in that sense the hill was the head (or most important part) of the city, and perhaps that is how the name really arose.
Naturally, the plebeians would want to storm the Capitol and seize control of it.
Worthy Menenius Agrippa.. .
But now a patrician steps on the scene who is not assaulted. He is a very unusual patrician; one who can speak to the people bluffly and pleasantly and make himself liked by them-the antithesis of Marcius. The newcomer is Menenius Agrippa, and the Second Citizen identifies him at once as:
Worthy Menenius Agrippa,
one that hath always loved the people.
- Act I, scene i, lines 52-53
Even the extremist First Citizen says, rather churlishly:
He's one honest enough;
would all the rest were so!
- Act I, scene i, lines 54-55
Menenius Agrippa's role in history (even the legendary history of the times before 390 b.c., as purveyed by Livy and Plutarch) is confined to the one incident that is about to be related. Nothing else is known of him either before or after. Everything else about him in this play is Shakespeare's own invention.
In the actual tale told by Livy and Plutarch, the occasion is not a brawl in the street but, in a way, something more serious. The plebeians have decided to secede altogether. If Rome takes all and gives nothing, she is not a true mother and the plebeians will make one for themselves. They withdraw to a neighboring hill and prepare to found a city of their own.
This is a deadly danger for the patricians, for they need plebeian hands on the farms and in the army. What's more, Rome cannot endure the founding of a neighboring city that is bound to become and remain a deadly enemy. The plebeians must be brought back and, for a wonder, the Senate tried persuasion and gentleness. They sent Menenius Agrippa, a patrician with a reputation for good humor and with no record of animosity toward the plebeians.
A pretty tale...
Menenius urges the citizens to desist, saying the shortage of food is the fault of the gods, not of the patricians. The First Citizen answers bitterly that the patricians have cornered the food market and now grind the faces of the poor for their own profit. We are strongly tempted to believe the First Citizen, for all he speaks in prose where Menenius orates La gentle pentameters, especially since Menenius drops the subject and decides to be more indirect. He says:
/ shall tell you A pretty tale;
it may be you have heard it;
- Act I, scene i, lines 90-91
The tale he tells is the fable of the organs of the body rebelling against the belly. The organs complain that they do all the work while the belly gets all the food. The belly answers that it is his function to digest the food and send it out to all the body. Without the belly, all the rest of the organs would weaken and die. The Senate and the patricians are then compared to the belly by Menenius. Through their careful management of the commonwealth, the patricians distribute benefits to all.
The fable may sound well, but surely to the plebeians of the time it must have been unconvincing, since it was precisely their complaint that the patricians were not distributing benefits to all the commonwealth but were reserving them for themselves.
Plutarch says of the tale, "These persuasions pacified the people conditionally." Note the word "conditionally." Words alone were not enough. The people demanded a reform of the government and got it.
... let me use my sword.. .
Before Shakespeare gets to these reforms, however, he wants to bring on Marcius and display him as he is. Marcius comes whirling in, acknowledges Menenius' greetings in the briefest possible way, and grates out harshly to the citizens:
What's the matter, you dissentious rogues
That, nibbing the poor itch of your opinion,
Make yourself scabs?
- Act I, scene i, lines 165-67
Menenius is attended because he speaks gently. Does Marcius think he can get anywhere by scolding? It doesn't matter whether he does or not, for there is no other way he can act, and the First Citizen indicates that by his dryly ironic rejoinder: