Gaius Apronius, Appius Villius, and Gaius Oppius, were elected more
from hope entertained of them than from any actual services. When he
entered on his tribuneship, Lucius Icilius immediately brought before
the people, and the people enacted, that the secession from the
decemvirs which had taken place should not prove detrimental to any
individual. Immediately after Duillius carried a proposition for
electing consuls, with right of appeal[59]. All these things were
transacted in an assembly of the commons in the Flaminian meadows,
which are now called the Flaminian Circus.[60]
Then, through an interrex, Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius were
elected consuls, and immediately entered on their office; their
consulship, agreeable to the people, although it did no injury to
the patricians, was not, however, without giving them offence; for
whatever measures were taken to secure the liberty of the people, they
considered to be a diminution of their own power. First of all, when
it was as it were a disputed point of law, whether patricians were
bound by regulations enacted in an assembly of the commons, they
proposed a law in the assembly of the centuries, that whatever the
commons ordered in the assembly of the tribes, should be binding on
the entire people; by which law a most keen-edged weapon of offence
was given to the motions introduced by tribunes. Then another law made
by a consul concerning the right of appeal, a singularly effective
safeguard of liberty, that had been upset by the decemviral power,
was not only restored but also guarded for the time to come, by the
passing of a new law, that no one should appoint any magistrate
without appeal:[61] if any person should so appoint, it should be
lawful and right that he be put to death; and that such killing should
not be deemed a capital offence. And when they had sufficiently
secured the commons by the right of appeal on the one hand by
tribunician aid on the other, they revived for the tribunes themselves
the privilege that their persons should be considered inviolable--the
recollection of which was now almost forgotten--by renewing after a
long interval certain ceremonies which had fallen into disuse; and
they rendered them inviolable by religion, as well as by a law,
enacting that whosoever should offer injury to tribunes of the people,
ædiles, or judicial decemvirs, his person should be devoted to
Jupiter, and his property be sold at the Temple of Ceres, Liber, and
Libera. Expounders of the law deny that any person is by this law
inviolable, but assert that he, who may do an injury to any of them,
is deemed by law accursed: and that, accordingly, an ædile may be
arrested and carried to prison by superior magistrates, which, though
it be not expressly warranted by law (for an injury is done to a
person to whom it is not lawful to do an injury according to this
law), is yet a proof that an ædile is not considered as sacred and
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