Lucius Valerius Politus and Marcus Horatius
Barbatus, men justly popular for promoting union and concord, enacted
that no magistrate should thenceforth be appointed with authority to
judge without appeal; and the Portian laws, the work of three citizens
of the name of Portius, as you are aware, added nothing new to this
edict but a penal sanction.

Therefore Publicola, having promulgated this law in favor of appeal to
the people, immediately ordered the axes to be removed from the fasces,
which the lictors carried before the consuls, and the next day
appointed Spurius Lucretius for his colleague. And as the new consul
was the oldest of the two, Publicola ordered his lictors to pass over
to him; and he was the first to establish the rule, that each of the
consuls should be preceded by the lictors in alternate months, that
there should be no greater appearance of imperial insignia among the
free people than they had witnessed in the days of their kings. Thus,
in my opinion, he proved himself no ordinary man, as, by so granting
the people a moderate degree of liberty, he more easily maintained the
authority of the nobles.

Nor is it without reason that I have related to you these ancient and
almost obsolete events; but I wished to adduce my instances of men and
circumstances from illustrious persons and times, as it is to such
events that the rest of my discourse will be directed.

XXXII. At that period, then, the senate preserved the Commonwealth in
such a condition that though the people were really free, yet few acts
were passed by the people, but almost all, on the contrary, by the
authority, customs, and traditions of the senate. And over all the
consuls exercised a power--in time, indeed, only annual, but in nature
and prerogative completely royal.

The consuls maintained, with the greatest energy, that rule which so
much conduces to the power of our nobles and great men, that the acts
of the commons of the people shall not be binding, unless the authority
of the patricians has approved them. About the same period, and
scarcely ten years after the first consuls, we find the appointment of
the dictator in the person of Titus Lartius. And this new kind of
power--namely, the dictatorship--appears exceedingly similar to the
monarchical royalty. All his power, however, was vested in the supreme
authority of the senate, to which the people deferred; and in these
times great exploits were performed in war by brave men