st important
political innovation was the abolition of the old free birth, freehold
basis of suffrage. He enrolled the freedmen and landless citizens both
in the centuries and in the tribes, and, instead of assigning them to
the four urban tribes, he distributed them through all the tribes and
thus gave them practical control of the elections. In 304, however, Q.
Fabius Rullianus limited the landless and poorer freedmen to the four
urban tribes, thus annulling the effect of Claudius's arrangement.
Appius Claudius transferred the charge of the public worship of Hercules
in the Forum Boarium from the Potitian gens to a number of public
slaves. He further invaded the exclusive rights of the patricians by
directing his secretary Gnaeus Flavius (whom, though a freedman, he made
a senator) to publish the _legis actiones_ (methods of legal practice)
and the list of _dies fasti_ (or days on which legal business could be
transacted). Lastly, he gained enduring fame by the construction of a
road and an aqueduct, which--a thing unheard of before--he called by his
own name (Livy ix. 29; Frontinus, _De Aquis_, 115; Diod. Sic. xx. 36).
In 307 he was elected consul for the first time. In 298 he was interrex;
in 296, as consul, he led the army in Samnium, and although, with his
colleague, he gained a victory over the Etruscans and Samnites, he does
not seem to have specially distinguished himself as a soldier (Livy x.
19). Next year he was praetor, and he was once dictator. His character,
like his namesake the decemvir's is not easy to define. In spite of his
political reforms, he opposed the admission of the plebeians to the
consulship and priestly offices; and, although these reforms might
appear to be democratic in character and calculated to give
preponderance to the lowest class of the people, his probable aim was to
strengthen the power of the magistrates (and lessen that of the senate)
by founding it on the popular will, which would find its expression in
the urban inhabitants and could be most easily influenced by the
magistrate. He was already blind and too feeble to walk, when Cineas,
the minister of Pyrrhus, visited him, but so vigorously did he oppose
every concession that all the eloquence of Cineas was in vain, and the
Romans forgot past misfortunes in the inspiration of Claudius's
patriotism (Livy x. 13; Justin xviii. 2; Plutarch, _Pyrrhus_, 19). The
story of his blindness, however, may be merely a method of accounting
fo