Ab urbe condita

[*](Impeachment of Appius Claudius.)L. Valerius and T. Aemilius were consuls for the next year, which was a still stormier one, owing, m the first place, to the struggle between the two orders over the Agrarian Law, and secondly to the prosecution of Appius Claudius.

He was impeached by the tribunes, M. Duellius and Cn. Siccius, on the ground of his determined opposition to the Law, and also because

he defended the cause of the occupiers of the public land, as if he were a third consul.

Never before had any one been brought to trial before the people whom the plebs so thoroughly detested, both on his own and his father's account. For hardly any one had the patricians exerted themselves more than for him whom they regarded as the champion of the senate and the vindicator of its authority, the stout bulwark against disturbances of tribunes or plebs, and now saw exposed to the rage of the plebeians simply for having gone too far in the struggle.

Appius Claudius himself alone of all the patricians, looked upon the tribunes, the plebs, and his own trial as of no account. Neither the threats of the plebeians nor the entreaties of the senate could induce him —I will not say to change his attire and accost men as a suppliant, but —even to soften and subdue to some extent his wonted asperity of language when he had to make his defence before the people.