The decemvirs laid down their office. The first election which was now proceeded with, was that of the ten tribunes under the presidency of the _Pontifex Maximus_, which is the strongest possible form of acknowledgment on the part of the patricians; the plebeian magistracy makes its own inviolability part and parcel of the sacred law. By a most remarkable anomaly, they hold the councils in what was in later times the _Circus Flaminius_, which was for the plebeians what the _Circus Maximus_ was for the patricians. This happened in December: since that time the tribunes regularly entered upon their office in that month. In order to settle the affairs of the state, it was resolved to elect again two patrician magistrates; yet not under the former title of prætors, but under that of consuls, as Zonaras tells us. This change of designation proves, that the magistracy was considered as distinct from the former one; it was a less elevated dignity: _prætores_ were “such as took the lead, generals;” _consules_ were only “colleagues,” quite a general name like _decemviri_. This new form of the consulate was not, however, designed to reintroduce the old constitution, and to abolish the decemvirate; but it was merely an extraordinary and temporary measure, a proof of which is the further extension, at this period, of the law which denounced outlawry against him who had offended against tribunes or ædiles, in favour of the tribunes, ædiles, judges, and decemvirs. This law has been much discussed; the mention of the decemvirs in it is a certain fact. The great Antonius Augustinus, bishop of Tarragona,--a man highly distinguished for his knowledge of the old monuments and of the political law, but who, with great historical talent, was unfortunately deficient in grammatical acuteness,--has already seen that the _judices_ here are the _Centumviri_, the judges who were appointed by the _Plebes_, three for each tribe, to decide in all causes concerning Quiritary property. He merely threw out this assertion; I have proved it fully in the latest edition of my History. Even as these _judices_ were said to have meant the consuls, and the inviolability of these were derived from thence, thus also with equal incorrectness, the decemvirs in the law were made out to have been the _decemviri stlitibus judicandis_; yet these were first appointed in the fifth century. It refers without doubt to the former _decemviri consulari potestate_, and indeed to the plebeians among them, as the patricians were already protected by their old laws.