my
by the senate. The year now passed, with varied success in war, and
furious dissensions at home and abroad, was rendered memorable chiefly
by the elections by tribes; the matter was more important from the
victory in the contest entered into, than from any real advantage; for
there was more of dignity abstracted from the elections themselves by
the exclusion of the patricians, than there was influence either added
to the commons or taken from the patricians.

61. A more turbulent year[99] next followed, Lucius Valerius, Tiberius
AEmilius being consuls, both by reason of the struggles between the
different orders concerning the agrarian law, as well as on account of
the trial of Appius Claudius; for whom, as a most active opposer of the
law, and as one who supported the cause of the possessors of the public
land, as if a third consul, Marcus Duilius and Caius Sicinius appointed
a day of trial.[100] Never before was an accused person so hateful to
the commons brought to trial before the people; overwhelmed with their
resentment on his own account,[101] and also on account of his father.
The patricians too seldom made equal exertions in behalf of any one:
"that the champion of the senate, and the assertor of their dignity,
opposed to all the storms of the tribunes and commons, was exposed to
the resentment of the commons, merely for having exceeded bounds in the
contest." Appius Claudius himself was the only one of the patricians who
made light both of the tribunes and commons and his own trial. Neither
the threats of the commons, nor the entreaties of the senate, could ever
persuade him not only to change his garb, or address persons as a
suppliant, but not even so far as to soften or relax any thing from the
usual asperity of his style, when his cause was to be pleaded before the
people. The expression of his countenance was the same; the same
stubbornness in his looks, the same spirit of pride in his language; so
that a great part of the commons felt no less awe of Appius when
arraigned, than they had felt of him when consul. He pleaded his cause
once, and with the same spirit of an accuser which he had been
accustomed to adopt on all occasions: and he so far astounded both the
tribunes and the commons by his intrepidity, that, of their own accord,
they postponed the day of trial; then they allowed the matter to be
protracted. Nor was the time now very distant; before, however, the
appointed day came, he dies of some