Ab urbe condita

He ordered those who had been elected to co-opt colleagues, and recited the formula which governed the case as follows: “If I require you to elect ten tribunes of the plebs; if on this day you have elected less than ten, then those whom they co-opt shall be lawful tribunes of the plebs by the same law, in like manner as those whom you have this day made tribunes of the plebs.”

Duillius persisted in asserting to the last that the commonwealth could not possibly have fifteen tribunes, and he resigned office, after having won the goodwill of patricians and plebeians alike by his frustration of the ambitious designs of his colleagues.

Fresh Internal Dissensions.The new tribunes of the plebs studied the wishes of the senate in coopting colleagues; they even admitted two patricians of consular rank, Sp. Tarpeius and A. Aeternius.

The new consuls were Spurius Herminius and T. Verginius Caelimontanus, who were not violent partisans of either the patricians or the plebeians. They maintained peace both at home and abroad.

L. Trebonius, a tribune of the plebs, was angry with the senate because, as he said, he had been hoodwinked by them in the cooptation of tribunes, and left in the lurch by his colleagues.

He brought in a measure providing that when tribunes of the plebs were to be elected, the presiding magistrate should continue to hold the election until ten tribunes were elected. He spent his year of office in worrying the patricians, which led to his receiving the nickname of “ Asper,” (i.e. “the Cantankerous”).