Ab urbe condita

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 ”.

If an aedile, therefore, were arrested and sent to prison by superior magistrates, though this could not be done by law —for by this law it would not be lawful for him to be injured —yet

it is a proof that an aedile is not held to be “sacrosanct” whereas the tribunes of the plebs were “sacrosanct” by the ancient oath taken by the plebeians when that office was first created.