It was long, however, before the tribunes gained for their tribal assembly the recognition of the state. It was as late as 482, that the commonalty was entirely bound to the choice of the consuls and senate in consular elections, and it was only in 473--when the uprising provoked by the murder of the tribune Genucius, brought an able and energetic plebeian, Volero Publilius, forward as leader of the plebs--that any important step was made in advance. In the year 471 this tribune, by securing the passage of a law providing that the election of the tribunes and ædiles should be ratified by the tribal assembly, raised this body to a position beside that of the national assembly as an organ of the state with a special function in state legislation. The right of the plebs to deliberate and render decisions in their separate assemblies was thus recognised, and their hope of one day taking “legislative initiative” made an actual fact. All measures proposed by them, drawn up in the form of petitions to the senate, must pass through the hands of the tribunes, and the senate had no longer the right to reject such proposals straightway, but must first take counsel upon them with the tribunes. In case of approval by the senate the rogations (where they did not relate exclusively to the affairs of the plebeians) were laid before the curiate assembly as the last step preliminary to their passage as laws.[24] THE INSTITUTION OF THE DECEMVIRATE According to the fragmentary accounts that have been handed down there was a long cessation of the civil strife in consequence of the heavy burden of wars and pestilence under which Rome at one time laboured: but the old struggle was finally renewed under conditions that made possible an entire change of tactics on the part of the plebeian leaders. In the year 462 the tribune Caius Terentilius Harsa proposed a measure--adopted the following year by the united college of tribunes--that empowered the commonalty to appoint a committee of five plebeians who should frame certain laws for the limiting and regulating of the arbitrary power of punishment exercised by the consuls in suits against plebeians; just so much judicial power as the plebeian allowed him should the consul wield, but he was not to rule according to his own whim and pleasure. The aim of this measure was to complete the organisation of the plebs as an independent organ of the state, and to restrict as far as possible the functions of patrician magistrates in the administration of justice. It naturally met with the most determined opposition on the part of the older citizens; and even the most liberal and clear sighted among the patrician statesmen were alarmed at this incursion of the plebeians into a new field, since the greatest sufferers from any increase in the rights and independence of the plebs that would inevitably widen the gulf already existing between governing power and people, would be themselves.