commons ordered in the assembly of the tribes, should be binding on
the entire people; by which law a most keen-edged weapon of offence
was given to the motions introduced by tribunes. Then another law made
by a consul concerning the right of appeal, a singularly effective
safeguard of liberty, that had been upset by the decemviral power,
was not only restored but also guarded for the time to come, by the
passing of a new law, that no one should appoint any magistrate
without appeal:[61] if any person should so appoint, it should be
lawful and right that he be put to death; and that such killing should
not be deemed a capital offence. And when they had sufficiently
secured the commons by the right of appeal on the one hand by
tribunician aid on the other, they revived for the tribunes themselves
the privilege that their persons should be considered inviolable--the
recollection of which was now almost forgotten--by renewing after a
long interval certain ceremonies which had fallen into disuse; and
they rendered them inviolable by religion, as well as by a law,
enacting that whosoever should offer injury to tribunes of the people,
aediles, or judicial decemvirs, his person should be devoted to
Jupiter, and his property be sold at the Temple of Ceres, Liber, and
Libera. Expounders of the law deny that any person is by this law
inviolable, but assert that he, who may do an injury to any of them,
is deemed by law accursed: and that, accordingly, an aedile may be
arrested and carried to prison by superior magistrates, which, though
it be not expressly warranted by law (for an injury is done to a
person to whom it is not lawful to do an injury according to this
law), is yet a proof that an aedile is not considered as sacred and
inviolable; the tribunes, however, are sacred and inviolable according
to the ancient oath of the commons, when first they created that
office. There have been some who supposed that by this same Horatian
law provision was made for the consuls also and the praetors, because
they were elected under the same auspices as the consuls; for a consul
was called a judge. This interpretation is refuted, because at this
time it had not yet been customary for the consul to be styled judge,
but praetor.[62] These were the laws proposed by the consuls. It was
also arranged by the same consuls, that decrees of the senate, which
before that used to be suppressed and altered at the pleasure of the
consuls, should be dep