Now, however, a dispute arose through that family which seemed marked out by destiny to be the cause of quarrels with the plebs and its tribunes. Appius Claudius had now been censor eighteen months, the period fixed by the Aemilian Law for the duration of that office.
In spite of the fact that his colleague, C. Plautius, had resigned, he could under no circumstances whatever be induced to vacate his office. P. Sempronius was the tribune of the plebs who commenced an action for limiting his censorship to the legal period.
In taking this step he was acting in the interests of justice quite as much as in the interests of the people, and he carried the sympathies of the aristocracy no less than he had the support of the masses.
He recited the several provisions of the Aemilian Law and extolled its author, Mamercus Aemilius, the Dictator, for having shortened the censorship. Formerly, he reminded his hearers, it was held for five years, a time long enough to make it tyrannical and despotic, Aemilius limited it to eighteen months.
Then turning to Appius he asked him: “Pray tell me, Appius, what would you have done had you been censor at the time that C. Furius and M. Geganius were censors?” Appius Claudius replied that the tribune's question had not much bearing on his case.
He argued that though the law might be binding in the case of those censors during whose period of office it was passed, because it
was after they had been appointed that the people ordered the measure to
become law, and the last order of the people was law for the time being,
nevertheless, neither he nor any of the censors subsequently appointed
could be bound by it because all succeeding censors had been appointed
by the order of the people and the last order of the people was the law
for the time being.
This quibble on the part of Appius convinced no one. Sempronius then addressed the Assembly in the following language: “Quirites, here you have the progeny of that Appius who, after being appointed decemvir for one year, appointed himself for a second year, and then, without going through any form of appointment either at his own hands or at any one
else's, retained the fasces and the supreme authority for a third year, and persisted in retaining them until the power which he gained by foul means, exercised by foul means, and retained by foul means, proved his ruin.
This is the family, Quirites, by whose violence and lawlessness you were driven out of your City and compelled to occupy the Sacred Mount;
the family against which you won the protection of your tribunes; the family on whose account you took up your position, in two armies, on the Aventine.
It is this family which has always opposed the laws against usury and the agrarian laws; which interfered with the right of intermarriage between patricians and plebeians; which blocked the path of the plebs to curule offices.
This name is much more deadly to your liberties than the name of the Tarquins. Is it really the case, Appius Claudius, that though it is a hundred years since Mamercus Aemilius was Dictator, and there have been all those censors since, men of the highest rank and strength of character, not one of them ever read the Twelve Tables, not one of them knew that the last order of the people is the law for the time being?
Of course they all knew it, and because they knew it they preferred to obey the Aemilian Law rather than that older one by which the censors were originally appointed, simply because the former was
the last passed by order of the people and also because when two laws contradict each other the later one repeals the earlier.
Do you maintain, Appius, that the people are not bound by the Aemilian Law, or do you claim, if they are bound by it, that you alone are exempt from its provisions? That law availed to bind those arbitrary censors C. Furius and M. Geganius, who gave us a proof of the mischief which that office could work in the republic when, in revenge for the limitation of their power, they placed among
the