In the year after Cassius’ death, or even in the same year, when consuls were to be elected, the election was no more held by the centuries; but the senate nominated the candidates, and the curies confirmed them. Yet owing to this there arose the most violent contention between the _Plebes_ headed by the tribunes and the consuls. For though the tribunes at that time were still confirmed by the curies, yet the wrong was so glaring, that even the meekest could not have borne it. And hence the character of the tribunate is now suddenly changed. Up to that time no traces are found of tribunician commotions. The honour of the order was too deeply wounded: on one side the agrarian law had not been carried out; on the other, unlawfully elected consuls were in power. The tribune Ti. Pontificius therefore puts a veto to the levy, on the ground that the people ought not to serve under an illegal government. The old annals would hardly have recorded his name, if his resistance had not been the first made by a tribune. The enlistment was then carried on by force, be it, that open defiance was now bidden to the tribunes, and that those who did not answer were seized and punished; or that the consuls ordered the houses of those living in the country to be set on fire, and their cattle to be driven away; or finally, that they transferred the place of enlistment from the town to the country, whither the power of the tribunes did not reach. An army being raised in this manner, the despair of the plebeians went so far that they would rather let themselves be killed by the enemy like victims, than fight in behalf of their tyrants. This fermentation lasted for two years, and at length it came to such a height, that the senate, as if by a free act of grace, consented to give up to the _Plebes_ the election of one consul by the centuries, perhaps without a senatus-consultum. The consequence of which was, that the consul whom the centuries had chosen, met with no resistance from the plebeians; whilst, on the other hand, they in every possible way opposed the other. Meanwhile the times were so bad, the neighbouring nations also growing more and more bold against Rome, that the tribunes themselves saw, that one ought rather to put up with a wrong, than to let the commonwealth go to ruin. The _Plebes_ therefore in the following year (272) conceded to the senate and the curies the election of one of the consuls. Yet on that occasion it must also have wrung from them the right, that the tribunes no more needed to be confirmed by the curies. Publilius could never have become a tribune, if this change had not already taken place before his law was passed. According to the traditions, there must even at that time have been as many as five tribunes.