According to the chronology, often faulty, of tradition, the distress of the plebeians and their consequent dissatisfaction had already, in the year 495 B.C., reached a momentous pitch. In 494 the plebs consented to serve only under the dictator Manius Valerius, beloved of the people, who conducted the first enlistments and met later with success in the field. But when his proposals looking to a modification of the laws against debtors fell through in the senate, the patience of the plebeians was at an end. Valerius, who was rightfully incensed, resigned his office; and the consuls of that year wishing to continue the war, the plebeian portion of the army withdrew from the main body and the patrician city, and under the conduct of their officers retired to the so-called “Sacred Mount” on the peninsula formed three Roman miles from Rome by the junction of the Anio and the Tiber. This move was actuated by a desire on the part of the plebeians to cut themselves completely off from the rest of the people and establish themselves as an independent body at an entirely new point. The seriousness of the situation finally obliged the patricians and the senate to yield; and negotiations ensued, the effects of which were felt even as late as the imperial epoch. The new compact between the two branches of the Roman population, to which was given an international form, provided that the plebeians residing in the state should be organised into an independent body, having their own official representatives that were to rival in power those of the patricians. In opposition to the consuls were placed two plebeian tribunes (usually called “people’s tribunes”) who were later increased in number to four, and after 457 to ten; who were appointed, according to all probability, by the state assemblies of the plebeians. Guardians of the community in the true sense of the word, their ædiles being ever at the service of the plebeians as police and general administration agents, these chosen tribunes had the right and duty to protect their fellow plebeians against injustice and maladministration on the part of the consuls, to resolutely uphold the right of appeal--in a word, to interfere whenever the interests of the plebeians seemed to be endangered. They were powerless only against the dictator and the military jurisdiction or _imperium_ of the consuls outside the city. In Rome they had the right to prevent, by making prompt and personal protest, the execution of any patrician order whereat a citizen might take offence; and also to block or veto any patrician measure recommended to the citizen body, which was found to be unjust. This was called the right of intercession, or the veto of the plebeian tribunes.