th sufficiently grateful feelings, if, whilst receiving the
measures respecting their own interests, they cut away from the authors
of them all hopes of distinction? That it was not becoming the modesty
of the Roman people to require that they themselves be eased from usury,
and be put in possession of the land unjustly occupied by the great,
whilst they leave those persons through whom they attained these
advantages, become old tribunitians, not only without honour, but even
without the hope of honour. Wherefore they should first determine in
their minds what choice they would make, then declare that choice at the
tribunitian elections. If they wished that the measures published by
them should be passed collectively, there was some reason for
re-electing the same tribunes; for they would carry into effect what
they published. But if they wished that only to be entertained which may
be necessary for each in private, there was no occasion for the
invidious continuation of honour; that they would neither have the
tribuneship, nor the people those matters which were proposed."

40. In reply to such peremptory language of the tribunes, when amazement
at the insolence of their conduct and silence struck all the rest of the
patricians motionless, Appius Claudius Crassus, the grandson of the
decemvir, is said to have stepped forward to refute their arguments,
[urged on] more by hatred and anger than by hope [of succeeding], and to
have spoken nearly to this effect: "Romans, to me it would be neither
new nor surprising, if I too on the present occasion were to hear that
one charge, which has ever been advanced against our family by turbulent
tribunes, that even from the beginning nothing in the state has been of
more importance to the Claudian family than the dignity of the
patricians; that they have ever resisted the interests of the commons.
Of which charges I neither deny nor object to the one, that we, since we
have been admitted into the state and the patricians, have strenuously
done our utmost, that the dignity of those families, among which ye were
pleased that we should be, might be truly said rather to have been
increased than diminished. With respect to the other, in my own defence
and that of my ancestors, I would venture to maintain, Romans, (unless
any one may consider those things, which may be done for the general
good of the state, were injurious to the commons as if inhabitants of
another city,) that we, neithe