their own authority, as to allow the existence of no public council; that the state would be free, and the laws equalized by these means only, if each order retained its own rights and its own dignity. After much had been said by the other senior patricians also to the same purpose, all the tribes approved the proposition. Then for the first time a triumph was celebrated by order of the people, without the authority of the senate. This victory of the tribunes and people was well-nigh terminating in an extravagance by no means salutary, a conspiracy being formed among the tribunes that the same tribunes might be re-elected, and, in order that their own ambition might be the less conspicuous, that the consuls also might have their office prolonged. They pleaded, in excuse, the combination of the patricians by which the privileges of the commons were attempted to be undermined by the affronts of the consuls. What would be the consequence, when the laws were as yet not firmly established, if they attacked the new tribunes through consuls of their own party? Men like Horatius and Valerius would not always be consuls, who would regard their own interests as secondary after the liberty of the people. By some concurrence of circumstances, useful in view of the situation, it fell by lot to Marcus Duillius before all others to preside at the elections, a man of prudence, and who perceived the storm of public odium that was hanging over them from the continuance of their office. And when he declared that he would take no account of any of the former tribunes, and his colleagues struggled to get him to allow the tribes to vote independently, or to give up the office of presiding at the elections, which he held by lot, to his colleagues, who would hold the elections according to law rather than according to the pleasure of the patricians; a contention being now excited, when Duillius had sent for the consuls to his seat and asked them what they contemplated doing with respect to the consular elections, and they answered that they would appoint new consuls; then, having secured popular supporters of a measure by no means popular, he proceeded with them into the assembly. There the consuls were brought forward before the people, and asked what they would do if the Roman people mindful of their liberty recovered at home through them, mindful also of their services in war, should again elect them consuls: and when they in no way changed their opinions, he held the election, after eulogizing the consuls, because they persevered to the last in being unlike the decemvirs; and five tribunes of the people having been elected, when, through the zealous exertions of the nine tribunes who openly pressed their canvass, the other candidates could not make up the required number of tribes, he dismissed the assembly; nor did he hold one afterward for the purpose of an election. He said that the law had been satisfied, which,