Bitter and prolonged were the party struggles that ensued, the same tribunes being appointed year after year by the people’s assemblies, while the senate and the older citizens, with equal obstinacy, rejected again and again the same old measures. The senate tried to conciliate the plebs by making other concessions, but in vain; finally in the year 457 it gave its consent to the number of the tribunes being increased to ten--a doubtful victory for the plebs, since among so many one or another could surely be found who could be induced by patrician influence to use his right of intercession against any plans of his colleagues that might be troublesome.[25] [Sidenote: [454-449 B.C.]] In one of the following years the consuls, A. Aternius and Sp. Tarpeius, passed a law limiting the hitherto unrestricted right of the consuls to impose property fines; according to its terms no man (except in cases of appeal) could be sentenced to a heavier fine than two sheep or thirty head of cattle in one day. In spite of all this the obstinacy of the people’s party remained unshaken until the senate finally succeeded in effecting a compromise, whereby the power of the consuls to inflict punishment was considerably lessened, while the dangerous power of initial rogation by the tribunes was completely done away with. Between 454-452 an agreement with the tribunes was reached that both divisions of the Roman people should have a common civil and criminal code, and the codification of the new statute book was intrusted to a commission of ten men appointed by the comitia centuriata. The choice was made in 452, and the commissioners--decemvirs, so-called, including none but patricians--entered upon their functions May 15th, 451. A complete reorganisation of the old system being the work in hand, the magistrates, particularly consuls and tribunes, were, according to an ancient custom, suspended from office under a proviso that safeguarded the sworn rights and liberties of the commonalty, while it bound the tribunes not to make appeal to the people, and their full power was given into the hands of the new governing body.