And thus the Latins are once more subjected to the Roman sovereignty, as they were under Tarquin the Proud. The distinction between the different times is the only clue to this labyrinth. Of the Hernicans I cannot assert this with positive certainty; yet it seems to me very likely. After the burning of the city by the Gauls, the Latins again broke loose from the Roman sway, and renewed their claims to equality; and, in consequence, there arose a war of thirty-two, or according to the more probable chronology, of twenty-eight years, which ended in a peace by which the old league of Sp. Cassius was re-established. In the meanwhile, the Volscian war had for Rome this advantage, that it stood alone indeed, but unmolested. In Rome there was still at that time a considerable degree of fermentation. According to Dio Cassius, it was by no means seldom that distinguished plebeians were made away with by assassination. During these dissensions, the agrarian law, and that on the νομοθέται, are brought forward at every turn. It cannot be made out what interest the _Plebes_ had in the increase of the number of tribunes to ten, two for each class: their authority could not have been raised by this means. A strange story, which is, however, enveloped in great obscurity, belongs to this time of the increase of the tribunes. It is stated in Valerius Maximus, that a tribune, P. Mucius, had caused his nine colleagues to be burnt alive as traitors, because, headed by Sp. Cassius, they had hindered the election of the magistrates. There is here an evident confusion of dates, as ten tribunes were first elected in 297, twenty-eight years after the consulship of Sp. Cassius. Two hypotheses may be set up to account for this. Either these tribunes were traitors to the _Plebes_, which is not likely, as the election lay with the tribes; or P. Mucius was not a tribune of the people; or at least he did not pronounce the sentence, but it was the curies which did so, and they must have condemned the tribunes as breakers of the peace. There must be something in this story, as Zonaras (from Dio) likewise mentions it; perhaps this event is identical with the impeachment of nine tribunes in Livy, about the time of the Canuleian quarrels. LEGISLATION OF THE TWELVE TABLES.