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Updated: June 20, 2025
The expectation of this, as the day of election approached, created a desire to appoint decemvirs again. The commons now, besides that they detested the name of consuls as much as that of kings, required not even the tribunitian aid, as the decemvirs in turn submitted to appeal.
He crying out aloud, "that a point which some patricians had aimed at, though baffled in their first attempt, had yet been carried by the military tribunes; that the Trebonian law had been subverted, and tribunes of the commons had been elected not by the suffrages of the people but by the mandate of the patricians; and that the thing was now come to this, that either patricians or dependants of patricians were to be had for tribunes of the commons; that the devoting laws were taken away, the tribunitian power wrested from them; he alleged that this was effected by some artifice of the patricians, by the villany and treachery of his colleagues."
He wished that the tribunitian office, inviolate itself, would not by its interposition violate the authority of the Roman government; nor the Roman people, to their own detriment particularly, annihilate the dictator and the rights of the dictatorship together.
For they were mistaken in expecting that the patricians would tolerate the unbridled licentiousness of that office. If tribunitian violence could not be repelled by tribunitian aid, that the patricians would find out some other weapon." By openly expressing these sentiments, he every day still further exasperated the angry feelings of the people.
The severity of Appius was the same in war as at home, being more unrestrained because he was free from tribunitian control. They executed every measure slowly, indolently, negligently, and with stubbornness: neither shame nor fear restrained them.
The principle of his policy was to absorb into his own functions all those offices which conferred any real power to balance or to control his own. For this reason he appropriated the tribunitian power; because that was a popular and representative office, which, as occasions arose, would have given some opening to democratic influences.
In which alarm, so far was the fear of the foreign enemy from putting a check to the domestic feuds, that on the contrary the tribunitian power became even more vehement in obstructing the levy; until these conditions were imposed on the patricians, that no one was to pay tribute as long as the war lasted, nor issue any judicial process respecting money due.
The close of his speech was: "That he would take up arms, that he invited every citizen of Rome to arms; if any one should oppose, that he, forgetful of the consular authority, the tribunitian power, and the devoting laws, would consider him as an enemy, whoever he may, wheresoever he may, in the Capitol, or in the forum.
The Tribunitian power in this country, as in ancient Rome, was wisely kept distinct and separate from the executive power; in this government it was constitutionally lodged where it was naturally to be lodged, in the House of Commons; and to that House the people ought first to carry their complaints, even when they were directed against the measures of the House itself.
Then the contest about the law being given up, a new dispute arose regarding the levy. And the consular authority was about to be overpowered by tribunitian influence, when an additional cause of alarm comes on them: that the Sabine army had made a descent into the Roman lands to commit depredations; that from thence they were advancing to the city.
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