Ab urbe condita

the family against which you won the protection of your tribunes; the family on whose account you took up your position, in two armies, on the Aventine.

It is this family which has always opposed the laws against usury and the agrarian laws; which interfered with the right of intermarriage between patricians and plebeians; which blocked the path of the plebs to curule offices.

This name is much more deadly to your liberties than the name of the Tarquins. Is it really the case, Appius Claudius, that though it is a hundred years since Mamercus Aemilius was Dictator, and there have been all those censors since, men of the highest rank and strength of character, not one of them ever read the Twelve Tables, not one of them knew that the last order of the people is the law for the time being?

Of course they all knew it, and because they knew it they preferred to obey the Aemilian Law rather than that older one by which the censors were originally appointed, simply because the former was

the last passed by order of the people and also because when two laws contradict each other the later one repeals the earlier.

Do you maintain, Appius, that the people are not bound by the Aemilian Law, or do you claim, if they are bound by it, that you alone are exempt from its provisions? That law availed to bind those arbitrary censors C. Furius and M. Geganius, who gave us a proof of the mischief which that office could work in the republic when, in revenge for the limitation of their power, they placed among

the aerarii the foremost soldier and statesman of his time, Mamercus Aemilius. It bound all the succeeding censors for a hundred years, it binds your colleague C. Plautius, who was appointed under the same auspices, with the same powers as yourself.

Did not the people appoint him “with all the customary powers and privileges” that a censor can possess? Or are you the solitary exception in whom all these powers and privileges reside?

Whom then can you appoint as “king for sacrifices”? He will cling to the name of “king” and say that he was ap- pointed with all the powers that the Kings of Rome possessed. Who do you suppose would be contented with a six months' dictatorship or a five days' interregnum?

Whom would you venture to nominate as Dictator for the purpose of driving in the nail or presiding at the Games? How stupid and spiritless, Quirites, you must consider those men to have been who after their magnificent achievements resigned their dictatorship in twenty days, or vacated their office owing to some flaw in their appointment!

But why should I recall instances of old time? It is not ten years since C. Maenius as Dictator was conducting a criminal process with a rigour which some powerful people con- sidered dangerous to themselves, and in consequence his enemies charged him with being tainted with the very crime he was investigating.

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.