Ab urbe condita

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 Ogulnian Law.) their year of office foreign affairs were fairly peaceful; the ill-success the Etruscans had met with in war and the terms of the truce kept the Etruscans quiet;

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