this measure,
(viz. that, besides the two city quaestors, two should attend the
consuls to discharge some duties of the military service,) after it was
moved by the consuls, the tribunes of the commons contended in
opposition to the consuls, that half of the quaestors should be appointed
from the commons; for up to that time all patricians were appointed.
Against this proceeding both the consuls and patricians at first strove
with all their might; then by making a concession that the will of the
people should be equally free in the case of quaestors, as they enjoyed
in the election of tribunes with consular power, when they produced but
little effect, they gave up the entire matter about increasing the
number of quaestors. When relinquished, the tribunes take it up, and
other seditious schemes are continually started, among which is that of
the agrarian law. On account of these disturbances the senate was
desirous that consuls should be elected rather than tribunes, but no
decree of the senate could be passed in consequence of the protests of
the tribunes; the government from being consular came to an interregnum,
and not even that without a great struggle (for the tribunes prevented
the patricians from meeting). When the greater part of the following
year was wasted in contentions by the new tribunes of the commons and
some interreges, the tribunes at one time hindering the patricians from
assembling to declare an interrex, at another time preventing the
interrex from passing a decree regarding the election of consuls; at
length Lucius Papirius Mugillanus, being nominated interrex, censuring
now the patricians, now the tribunes of the people, asserted "that the
state, deserted and forsaken by man, being taken up by the providence
and care of the gods, subsisted by the Veientian truce and the
dilatoriness of the AEquans. From which quarter if any alarm of danger be
heard, did it please them that the state, left without a patrician
magistrate, should be taken by surprise? that there should be no army,
nor general to enlist one? Will they repel a foreign war by an intestine
one? And if they both meet, the Roman state can scarcely be saved, even
by the aid of the gods, from being overwhelmed. That they, by resigning
each a portion of their strict right, should establish concord by a
compromise; the patricians, by suffering military tribunes with consular
authority to be elected; the tribunes of the commons, by ceasing to
p