A regular treaty of peace was refused, but they were granted a two years' truce. The Dictator returned in triumphal procession to the City. Some of my authorities aver that Etruria was pacified without any important battle being fought simply through the settlement of the troubles in Arretium and the restoration of the Cilnii to popular favour. No sooner had M. Valerius laid down the Dictatorship than he was elected consul.
Some have thought that he was elected without having been a candidate and, therefore, in his absence, and that the election was conducted by an interrex. There is no question, however, that he held the consulship with Apuleius Pansa.
During
the Samnites, after their many years of defeat and disaster, were so far quite satisfied with their recent treaty with Rome. In the City itself the large number of colonists sent out made the plebs less restless and lightened their financial burdens.
But to prevent anything like universal tranquillity a conflict between the most prominent plebeians and the patricians was started by two of the tribunes of the plebs, Quintus and Cnaeus Olgunius.
These men had sought everywhere for an opportunity of traducing the patricians before the plebs, and after all other attempts had failed they adopted a policy which was calculated to inflame the minds, not of the dregs of the populace, but of the actual leaders of the plebs, men who
had been consuls and enjoyed triumphs, and to whose official distinctions nothing was lacking but the priesthood.
This was not yet open to both orders. The Ogulnii accordingly gave notice of a measure providing that as there were at that time four augurs and four pontiffs, and it had been decided that the number of
priests should be augmented, the four additional pontiffs and five augurs should all be co-opted from the plebs How the college of augurs could have been reduced to four, except by the death of two of their number, I am unable to discover.
For it was a settled rule amongst the augurs that their number was bound to consist of threes, so that the three ancient tribes of the Ramnes, Titienses, and Luceres might each have their own augur, or if more were needed, the same number should be added for each. This was the principle on which they proceeded when by adding five to four the number was made up to nine, so that three were assigned to each tribe.
But the co-optation of the additional priests from the plebs created almost as much indignation amongst the patricians as when they saw the consulship made open.
They pretended that the matter concerned the gods more than it concerned them; as for their own sacred functions they would see for themselves that these were not polluted; they only hoped and prayed that no disaster might befall the republic.