per bounds either of their anger or forbearance, nor
saw how the matter would end, Gaius Claudius, who was the uncle
of Appius the decemvir, delivered an address more in the style of
entreaty than reproach, beseeching him by the shade of his brother and
of his father, that he would hold in recollection the civil society
in which he had been born, rather than the confederacy nefariously
entered into with his colleagues, adding that he besought this much
more on Appius's own account, than for the sake of the commonwealth.
For the commonwealth would claim its rights in spite of them, if it
could not obtain them with their consent: that however, from a great
contest great animosities were generally aroused: it was the result of
the latter that he dreaded. Though the decemvirs forbade them to speak
on any subject save that which they had submitted to them, they felt
too much respect for Claudius to interrupt him He therefore concluded
the expression of his opinion by moving that it was their wish that no
decree of the senate should be passed. And all understood the matter
thus, that they were judged by Claudius to be private citizens;[49]
and many of those of consular standing expressed their assent in
words. Another measure, more severe in appearance, which ordered the
patricians to assemble to nominate an interrex, in reality had much
less force; for by this motion the mover gave expression to a decided
opinion that those persons were magistrates of some kind or other who
might hold a meeting of the senate, while he who recommended that
no decree of the senate should be passed, had thereby declared them
private citizens. When the cause of the decemvirs was now failing,
Lucius Cornelius Maluginensis, brother of Marcus Cornelius the
decemvir, having been purposely reserved from among those of consular
rank to close the debate, by affecting an anxiety about the war,
defended his brother and his colleagues by declaring that he wondered
by what fatality it had occurred, that those who had been candidates
for the decemvirate, either these or their friends, had above all
others attacked the decemvirs: or why, when no one had disputed for
so many months while the state was free from anxiety, whether legal
magistrates were at the head of affairs, they now at length sowed
the seeds of civil discord, when the enemy were nearly at the gates,
except it were that in a state of confusion they thought that their
object would be less clearl