oligarchical governments against the peasants. This explains also how it was that the senate could hold out under such circumstances. There are allusions to it from the annals still extant in Dionysius. Appius says, that the Latins, if isopolity were granted them, would assist them against the _Plebes_. According to Dionysius, the secession lasted four months, from August to December; and this he proves from the circumstance, that the tribune always entered upon their office on the 10th of December. There was likewise a tradition that on the Ides of September the dictator had knocked in the _clavus_, and that consequently about that time there had been no consuls at Rome. Yet the troubles are said to have broken out under the consuls Virginius and Vetusius; these consuls then, so Dionysius concludes, must have resigned their office at the end of August, and the insurrection have lasted four months. Had the succession of the tribunes never been interrupted at all, there would have been no difficulty whatever as to the same rule having applied to the time of their inauguration from the first, as that which was afterwards followed; but Dionysius overlooks the fact, that during the decemvirate the tribunate had ceased to exist, so that the tribunes hardly entered upon their office on the same day as before, but rather as soon as they were allowed to meet again. The consuls were inaugurated on the first of August, and it seems certain that the peace between the two orders was concluded by the new consuls Vetusius and Virginius. The secession cannot have lasted longer than about a fortnight: the city could not have held out in this condition; a famine would have broken out if the legions had occupied the fields. The rapidity of Livy’s narrative allows us to suppose a short duration only.