Ab urbe condita

He at once resigned his dictatorship in order to meet, as a private citizen, the charges brought against him. I am far from wishing to see such moderation in you, Appius . Do not show yourself a degenerate scion of your house; do not fall short of your ancestors in their craving for power, their love of tyranny; do not vacate your office a day or an hour sooner than you are obliged, only see that you do not exceed the fixed term.

Perhaps you will he satisfied with an additional day or an additional month?

“No,” he says, “I shall hold my censorship for three years and a half beyond the period fixed by the Aemilian Law and I shall hold it alone.”

This sounds very much like an absolute monarch. Or will you co-opt a colleague, a pro- ceeding forbidden by divine laws even where one has been lost by death?” “There is a sacred function going back to the very earliest times, the only one actually initiated by the deity in whose honour it is performed, which has always been discharged by men of the highest rank and most blameless character.

You, conscientious censor that you are, have transferred this ministry to servants, and a House older than this City, hallowed by the hospitality they showed to immortal gods, has become extinct in one short year owing to you and your censorship.

But this is not enough for you, you will not rest till you have involved the whole commonwealth in a sacrilege the consequences of which I dare not contemplate.