HKB
should be admitted among them: at length the point was conceded to the patricians, provided that the Icilian law regarding the Aventine and the other devoting laws were not repealed.
In the three hundred and second year after the foundation of Rome, the form of government was a second time changed, the supreme power being transferred from consuls to decemvirs as it had passed before from kings to consuls. The change was less remarkable, because not of long duration; for the joyous commencement of that government afterward ran riot through excess. On that account the sooner did the arrangement fall to the ground, and the practice was revived, that the name and authority of consuls should be committed to two persons. The decemvirs appointed were, Appius Claudius, Titus Genucius, Publius Sestius, Lucius Veturius, Gaius Julius, Aulus Manlius, Publius Sulpicius, Publius Curiatius, Titus Romilius, Spurius Postumius. On Claudius and Genucius, because they had been consuls elect for that year, the honour was conferred in compensation for the honour of the consulate; and on Sestius, one of the consuls of the former year, because he had proposed the plan itself to the senate against the will of his colleague. Next to these were considered the three ambassadors who had gone to Athens, so that the honour might serve at once as a recompense for so distant an embassy, while at the same time they considered that persons acquainted with the foreign laws would be of use in drawing up the new code of justice. The others made up the number. They say that also persons advanced in years were appointed by the last suffrages, in order that they might oppose with less warmth the opinions of others. The direction of the entire government rested with Appius through the favour of the commons, and he had assumed a demeanour so different that, from being a severe and harsh persecutor of the people, he became suddenly a courter of the commons, and strove to catch every breath of popular favour. They administered justice to the people individually every tenth day. On that day the twelve fasces attended the administrator of justice; one officer attended each of his nine colleagues, and in the midst of the singular unanimity that existed among themselves--a harmony that sometimes proves prejudicial to private persons--the strictest equity was shown to others. In proof of their moderation it will be enough to instance a single case as an example. Though they had been appointed to govern without appeal, yet, upon a dead body being found buried in the house of Publius Sestius,[41] a man of patrician rank, and produced in the assembly, Gaius Julius, a decemvir, appointed a day of trial for Sestius, in a matter at once clear and heinous, and appeared before the people as prosecutor of the man whose lawful judge he was if accused: and relinquished his right,[42] so that he might add what had been taken from the power of the office to the liberty of the people.