accompanied by the lictors without the axes, and likewise had their _fasces_ lowered before the _concio_. Hence the name _Poplicola_. Here also the _populus_ is undoubtedly the patricians, the commonalty of the old citizens, from whom the consular power was derived. Such an homage before the plebeian commonalty would have been demagogical, and had this been the case, he must have been called _Plebicola_. This fine story cannot now be of any historical value for us; because according to the documents we have, Valerius could not certainly have been the only consul, tradition always mentioning Sp. Lucretius as his first colleague. The reason why he did not at once fill up the consulship, is said to have been his dread of the opposition of those who had equal claims. Sp. Lucretius occurs in some Fasti in the third year as consul instead of Horatius; but then there follows that unfortunate accommodation by which, in order that the father of Lucretia might not be passed over, his consulship is transferred from the third year into the first. The Valerian laws are genuine; and it is on the whole a settled fact that the legislation of Servius was restored. The patricians, as Livy says, tried to gain over the plebeians; and Sallust also tells us, that as in the times immediately following the change the state had been governed by just laws and fairly, so it had afterwards been quite the reverse. The election of the consuls by the centuries is preserved from the ritual books, and therefore it is not absolutely certain. That the first law of the centuries was that Valerian one, by which to the _Plebes_ was given the right of appeal to their commonalty, looks very authentic, but is not so. Perhaps it may be that the first elections were made by the Curies, as was unquestionably the case afterwards; yet the explicit tradition that the original condition of the _Plebes_ was far more favourable than the later one, pleads against it.