ed them to go to
Rome and beg the Senate to pardon them; and when they appeared, he
himself used his influence to procure their forgiveness, and the
admission of Tusculum to the Roman franchise. These were the most
remarkable events of his sixth tribuneship.

XXXIX. After this, Licinius Stolo put himself at the head of the
plebeians in their great quarrel with the Senate. They demanded that
consuls should be re-established, one of whom should always be a
plebeian, and that they should never both be patricians. Tribunes of the
people were appointed, but the people would not suffer any election of
consuls to be held. As this want of chief magistrates seemed likely to
lead to still greater disorders, the Senate, much against the will of
the people, appointed Camillus dictator for the fourth time. He himself
did not wish for the post, for he was loth to oppose men who had been
his comrades in many hard-fought campaigns, as indeed he had spent much
more of his life in the camp with his soldiers than with the patrician
party in political intrigues, by one of which he was now appointed, as
that party hoped that if successful he would crush the power of the
plebeians, while in case of failure he would be ruined. However, he made
an effort to deal with the present difficulty. Knowing the day on which
the tribunes intended to bring forward their law, he published a
muster-roll of men for military service, and charged the people to leave
the Forum and meet him on the Field of Mars, threatening those who
disobeyed with a heavy fine. But when the tribunes answered his threats
by vowing that they would fine him fifty thousand _drachmas_ unless he
ceased his interference with the people's right of voting, he retired to
his own house, and after a few days laid down his office on pretence of
sickness. This he did, either because he feared a second condemnation
and banishment, which would be a disgrace to an old man and one who had
done such great deeds, or else because he saw that the people were too
strong to be overpowered, and he did not wish to make the attempt.

The Senate appointed another dictator, but he made that very Licinius
Stolo, the leader of the popular party, his master of the horse, and
thus enabled him to pass a law which was especially distasteful to the
patricians, for it forbade any one to possess more than five hundred
_jugera_ of land. Stolo, after this success, became an important
personage; but, a short time af