fasces broken, they were driven from
the forum into the senate-house, uncertain how far Volero would follow
up his victory. After that, the disturbance subsiding, having ordered
the members to be summoned to the senate, they complained of the
insults offered to themselves, of the violence of the people, of
the daring conduct of Volero. After many violent measures had been
proposed, the older members prevailed, who did not approve of the
rash behaviour of the commons being met by the resentment of the
patricians.

The commons having warmly espoused the cause of Volero, at the next
meeting, secured his election as tribune of the people for that
year, in which Lucius Pinarius and Publics Furius were consuls: and,
contrary to the opinion of all, who thought that he would make free
use of his tribuneship to harass the consuls of the preceding year,
postponing private resentment to the public interest, without the
consuls being attacked even by a single word, he brought a bill before
the people that plebeian magistrates should be elected at the comitia
tributa.[73] A measure of no small importance was now proposed, under
an aspect at first sight by no means alarming; but one of such a
nature that it really deprived the patricians of all power of electing
whatever tribunes they pleased by the suffrage of their clients. The
patricians resisted to the utmost this proposal, which met with the
greatest approval of the commons: and though none of the college[74]
could be induced by the influence either of the consuls or of the
chief members of the senate to enter a protest against it, which was
the only means of effectual resistance, yet the matter, a weighty one
from its own importance, was spun out by party struggles for a
whole year. The commons re-elected Volero as tribune. The senators,
considering that the matter would end in a desperate struggle, elected
as Consul Appius Claudius, the son of Appius, who was both hated by
and had hated the commons, ever since the contests between them and
his father. Titus Quinctius was assigned to him as his colleague.
Immediately, at the beginning of the year,[75]no other question took
precedence of that regarding the law. But like Volero, the originator
of it, so his colleague, Laetorius, was both a more recent, as well as
a more energetic, supporter of it. His great renown in war made him
overbearing, because, in the age in which he lived, no one was more
prompt in action. He, while Vol