y of the
kings: that forsooth in place of one, two masters had been accepted,
with unbounded and unlimited power, who, themselves unrestrained and
unbridled, directed all the terrors of the law, and all kinds of
punishments against the commons. Now, in order that their unbounded
license might not last forever, he would bring forward a law that five
persons be appointed to draw up laws regarding the consular power, by
which the consul should use that right which the people should have
given him over them, not considering their own caprice and license
as law. Notice having been given of this law, as the patricians were
afraid, lest, in the absence of the consuls, they should be subjected
to the yoke; the senate was convened by Quintus Fabius, prefect of the
city, who inveighed so vehemently against the bill and its proposer
that no kind of threats or intimidation was omitted by him, which both
the consuls could supply, even though they surrounded the tribune in
all their exasperation: That he had lain in wait, and, having seized a
favourable opportunity, had made an attack on the commonwealth. If
the gods in their anger had given them any tribune like him in the
preceding year, during the pestilence and war, it could not have
been endured: that, when both the consuls were dead, and the state
prostrate and enfeebled, in the midst of the general confusion he
would have proposed laws to abolish the consular government altogether
from the state; that he would have headed the Volscians and AEquans in
an attack on the city. What, if the consuls behaved in a tyrannical or
cruel manner against any of the citizens, was it not open to him to
appoint a day of trial for them, to arraign them before those very
judges against any one of whom severity might have been exercised?
That he by his conduct was rendering, not the consular authority, but
the tribunician power hateful and insupportable; which, after having
been in a state of peace, and on good terms with the patricians, was
now being brought back anew to its former mischievous practices; nor
did he beg of him not to proceed as he had begun. "Of you, the other
tribunes," said Fabius, "we beg that you will first of all consider
that that power was appointed for the aid of individuals, not for the
ruin of the community; that you were created tribunes of the commons,
not enemies of the patricians. To us it is distressing, to you
a source of odium, that the republic, now bereft of its