nucius, Publius Sestius,
Lucius Veturius, Gaius Julius, Aulus Manlius, Publius Sulpicius,
Publius Curiatius, Titus Romilius, Spurius Postumius. On Claudius
and Genucius, because they had been consuls elect for that year, the
honour was conferred in compensation for the honour of the consulate;
and on Sestius, one of the consuls of the former year, because he
had proposed the plan itself to the senate against the will of his
colleague. Next to these were considered the three ambassadors who had
gone to Athens, so that the honour might serve at once as a recompense
for so distant an embassy, while at the same time they considered that
persons acquainted with the foreign laws would be of use in drawing up
the new code of justice. The others made up the number. They say that
also persons advanced in years were appointed by the last suffrages,
in order that they might oppose with less warmth the opinions of
others. The direction of the entire government rested with Appius
through the favour of the commons, and he had assumed a demeanour
so different that, from being a severe and harsh persecutor of the
people, he became suddenly a courter of the commons, and strove to
catch every breath of popular favour. They administered justice to the
people individually every tenth day. On that day the twelve fasces
attended the administrator of justice; one officer attended each of
his nine colleagues, and in the midst of the singular unanimity that
existed among themselves--a harmony that sometimes proves prejudicial
to private persons--the strictest equity was shown to others. In proof
of their moderation it will be enough to instance a single case as an
example. Though they had been appointed to govern without appeal,
yet, upon a dead body being found buried in the house of Publius
Sestius,[41] a man of patrician rank, and produced in the assembly,
Gaius Julius, a decemvir, appointed a day of trial for Sestius, in a
matter at once clear and heinous, and appeared before the people
as prosecutor of the man whose lawful judge he was if accused: and
relinquished his right,[42] so that he might add what had been taken
from the power of the office to the liberty of the people.

While highest and lowest alike obtained from them this prompt
administration of justice, undefiled, as if from an oracle, at the
same time their attention was devoted to the framing of laws; and, the
ten tables being proposed amid the intense expectation of all, the