Several of the poorer sort demanded an immediate abolition of their debts, as the condition for their taking a share in the dangers of the war, and looked upon this delay rather as an imposition. The senate, who, as the event showed, were determined never to grant their request, and yet were afraid of new commotions, resolved to abolish the consulship, and all other magistracies for the present, and to invest a new magistrate with absolute and unlimited power, and subject to no account for his actions. This new officer was termed the dictator, and the duration of his office was limited to six months, at the end of which term the consuls were to resume their former authority. The chief reason, as Dionysius informs us, which induced the senate to make use of this dangerous expedient, was to evade that law which Poplicola had procured in favour of the Plebeians, which made it death for a magistrate to punish a Roman without a legal trial, or before he was condemned by the people.[251] The senate then made a decree for the election of a dictator, and the Plebeians ignorant, as Dionysius observes, of the importance of that decree, not only confirmed the resolutions of the senate, but gave up to them the power of choosing the person who should be invested with that dignity. Titus Lartius, one of the consuls, was nominated by his colleague according to the form at that time agreed upon in the senate. When the dictator appeared in all the pomp and grandeur of his new office, he struck a terror into the most turbulent, and the people, thus tricked out of that law which was their only protection, immediately submitted. Lartius, who seems to have been one of the greatest men of his time, ordered in a general register of all the Romans, and formed his army after that wise method first instituted by Servius Tullius. When he took the field he persuaded the Latins, by his singular address, to disband their forces and conclude a truce, and thus diverted the impending storm without fighting. He then returned home, and resigned his office before the time was expired, without having exercised any one act of severity upon a single Roman. A noble instance of moderation and publick virtue!