ch he was scorned by the patricians, and left Rome
in disgust, with his family, and all were afterward massacred by the
Veientines. But one of the tribunes accused the consuls for their
opposition of the tribunes for the execution of the agrarian law. He was
assassinated. This violation of the sacred person of a tribune created
great indignation among the commons, and Volero, a tribune, proposed the
celebrated "Publilian Law," that the tribunes henceforth, as well as the
plebeian aediles, should be elected by the plebeians themselves in the
Comitia Tributa. Great disorders followed, but the commons prevailed, and
the Senate adopted the plebiscitum, and proposed it to the Comitia
Curiata, and it became a law. This step raised the authority of the
tribunes, and added to Roman liberties.

(M802) The critical condition of Rome, from the renewed assaults of the
Acquians and Volscians, led to the appointment of another very remarkable
man to the dictatorship--L. Quintius Cincinnatus, a patrician, who
maintained the virtues of better days. He cultivated a little farm of four
jugera with his own hands, and lived with great simplicity. He summoned
every man of military age to meet him in the Campus Martius, and these
were provided with rations for five days. He then marched against the
triumphant enemy, surrounded them, and compelled them to surrender. He
made no use of his political power, and after sixteen days, laid down the
dictatorship, and retired to his farm, B.C. 458. All subsequent ages and
nations have embalmed the memory of this true patriot, who preferred the
quiet labors of his small farm of three and a half acres to the enjoyment
of absolute power.

But his victory was not decisive, and the Romans continued to be harassed
by the neighboring nations, and they, moreover, suffered all the evils of
pestilence. It was at this time, in the three hundredth year of the city,
that they sought to make improvements in their laws--at least, to embody
laws in a written form. Greece was then in the height of her glory, in the
interval between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, and thither a
commission was sent to examine her laws, especially those of Solon, at
Athens. On the return of the three commissioners, a new commission of ten
was appointed to draw up a new code, composed wholly of patricians, at the
head of which was Appius Claudius, consul elect, a man of commanding
influence and talents, but ill-regulated passions and