Ab urbe condita

After these came M. Titinius, M. Pomponius, C. Apronius, Appius Villius, and Caius Oppius, all of whom were elected rather in hope of their future usefulness than for any services actually rendered.

When he had entered on his tribuneship L. Icilius at once proposed a resolution which the plebs accepted, that no one should suffer for the secession.

Marcus Duillius immediately carried a measure for the election of consuls and the right to appeal from them to the people. All these measures were passed in a council of the plebs which was held in the Flaminian Meadows, now called the Circus Flaminius.

The[*](New Laws proposed by the Consuls.) election of consuls took place under the presidency of an “ interrex.” Those elected were L. Valerius and. M. Horatius, and they at once assumed office.

Their consulship was a popular one, and inflicted no injustice upon the patricians, though they regarded it with suspicion, for whatever was done to safeguard the liberties of the plebs they looked upon as an infringement of their own powers.

First of all, as it was a doubtful legal point whether the patricians were bound by the ordinances of the plebs, they carried a law in the Assembly of Centuries that what the plebs had passed in their Tribes should be binding on the whole people.[*](On the relation between the Assembly of Tribes and the Assembly of Centuries, see Mommsen, Vol. I. p. 272.)

By this law a very effective weapon was placed in the hands of the tribunes. Then another consular law, confirming the right of appeal, as the one defence of liberty, which had been annulled by the decemvirs, was not only restored but strengthened for the future by a fresh enactment.

This forbade the appointment of any magistrate from whom there was no right of appeal, and provided that any one who did so appoint might be rightly and lawfully put to death, nor should the man who put him to death be held guilty of murder.

When they had sufficiently strengthened the plebs by the right of appeal on the one hand and the protection afforded by the tribunes on the other, they proceeded to secure the personal inviolability of the tribunes themselves.

The memory of this had almost perished, so they renewed it with certain sacred rites revived from a distant past, and in addition to securing their inviolability by the sanctions of religion, they enacted a law that whoever offered violence to the magistrates of the plebs, whether tribunes, aediles, or decemviral judges, his person should

be devoted to Jupiter, his possessions sold and the proceeds assigned to the temple of Ceres, Liber, and Libera, Jurists say that by this law no one was actually “sacrosanct,” but that when injury was offered to any of those mentioned above the offender was “ sacer ”.