ii. tables should be
submitted to rigid criticism, has been fulfilled by Dirksen, Uebersicht
der bisherigen Versuche Leipzig Kritik und Herstellung des Textes der
Zwolf-Tafel-Fragmente, Leipzug, 1824.--M.]

[Footnote 23: Finis aequi juris, (Tacit. Annal. iii. 27.) Fons omnis
publici et privati juris, (T. Liv. iii. 34.) * Note: From the context of
the phrase in Tacitus, "Nam secutae leges etsi alquando in maleficos
ex delicto; saepius tamen dissensione ordinum * * * latae sunt," it is
clear that Gibbon has rendered this sentence incorrectly. Hugo, Hist. p.
62.--M.]

[Footnote 24: De principiis juris, et quibus modis ad hanc multitudinem
infinitam ac varietatem legum perventum sit altius disseram, (Tacit.
Annal. iii. 25.) This deep disquisition fills only two pages, but they
are the pages of Tacitus. With equal sense, but with less energy, Livy
(iii. 34) had complained, in hoc immenso aliarum super alias acervatarum
legum cumulo, &c.]

[Footnote 25: Suetonius in Vespasiano, c. 8.]

[Footnote 26: Cicero ad Familiares, viii. 8.]

The Decemvirs had been named, and their tables were approved, by
an assembly of the centuries, in which riches preponderated against
numbers. To the first class of Romans, the proprietors of one hundred
thousand pounds of copper, [27] ninety-eight votes were assigned, and
only ninety-five were left for the six inferior classes, distributed
according to their substance by the artful policy of Servius. But the
tribunes soon established a more specious and popular maxim, that every
citizen has an equal right to enact the laws which he is bound to obey.
Instead of the centuries, they convened the tribes; and the patricians,
after an impotent struggle, submitted to the decrees of an assembly, in
which their votes were confounded with those of the meanest plebeians.
Yet as long as the tribes successively passed over narrow bridges [28]
and gave their voices aloud, the conduct of each citizen was exposed to
the eyes and ears of his friends and countrymen. The insolvent debtor
consulted the wishes of his creditor; the client would have blushed
to oppose the views of his patron; the general was followed by his
veterans, and the aspect of a grave magistrate was a living lesson to
the multitude. A new method of secret ballot abolished the influence
of fear and shame, of honor and interest, and the abuse of freedom
accelerated the progress of anarchy and despotism. [29] The Romans had
aspired to be equal