Ab urbe condita

Maluginensis. This year it was found necessary to appoint censors, mainly owing to the vague rumours which were afloat about the burden of debt. The plebeian tribunes, in order to stir up ill-feeling, exaggerated the amount, while it was underestimated by those whose interest it was to represent the difficuity as due to the unwillingness rather than the inability of the debtor to

pay. The censors appointed were C. Sulpicius Camerinius and Sp. Postumius Regillensis. [*](These appear to have been the first censors appointed since the Gaulish invasion.) They commenced a fresh assessment, but the work was interrupted by the death of Postumius, because it was doubtful whether the co-optation of a colleague, in the case of the censors,

was permissible. Sulpicius accordingiy resigned, and fresh magistrates were appointed, but owing to some flaw in their election did not act. Religious fears deterred them from proceding to a third election; it seemed as though the gods would not allow a censorship for

that year. The tribunes declared that such mockory was intolerable. “The senate,” according to them, “dreaded the publication of the assessment lists, which supplied information as to every man's property, because they do not wish the amount of the debtor to be brought to light for it would show how one half of the community was being ruined by the other balf, while the debt-burdened plebs were all the time being exposod to one enemy

after another. Excuses for war were being sought indiscriminately in every direction; the legions were marched from Antium to Satricum, from Satricum to Velitrae, from there to Tusculum. And now the Latins, the Hernici, and the Praenestines were being threatened with hostilities in order that the patricians might wreak their vongeance on their fellow-citizens more even than upon the enemy. They were wearing out the plebs by keeping them under arms and not allowing them any breathing time in the City or any leisure for thoughts of liberty, or any possibility for taking their place in the Assembly, where they might listen to the voice of a tribune urging the reduction of interest and the redress of