far
Volero would push his victory. After that, the disturbance subsiding,
when they had ordered the senate to be convened, they complain of the
outrages committed on themselves, of the violence of the people, the
daring of Volero. Many violent measures having been proposed, the elder
members prevailed, who recommended that the unthinking rashness of the
commons should not be met by the passionate resentment of the
patricians.

56. The commons having espoused the interest of Volero, with great
warmth choose him, at the next election, tribune of the people for that
year, which had Lucius Pinarius and Publius Furius for consuls; and,
contrary to the opinion of all men, who thought that he would let loose
his tribuneship in harassing the consuls of the preceding year,
postponing private resentment to the public interest, without assailing
the consuls even by a single word, he proposed a law to the people that
plebeian magistrates should be elected at the comitia by tribes. A
matter of no trifling moment was now being brought forward, under an
aspect at first sight by no means alarming; but one which in reality
deprived the patricians of all power to elect whatever tribunes they
pleased by the suffrages of their clients. The patricians used all their
energies in resisting this proposition, which was most pleasing to the
commons; and though none of the college could be induced by the
influence either of the consuls or of the chief members of the senate to
enter a protest against it, the only means of resistance which now
existed; yet the matter, important as it was by its own weight, is spun
out by contention till the following year. The commons re-elect Volero
as tribune. The senators, considering that the question would be carried
to the very extreme of a struggle, elect to the consulate Appius
Claudius, the son of Appius, who was both hated by and hated the
commons, ever since the contests between them and his father. Titus
Quintius is assigned to him as his colleague. In the very commencement
of the year no other question took precedence of that regarding the law.
But though Volero was the inventor of it, his colleague, Laetorius, was
both a more recent abettor of it, as well as a more energetic one.
Whilst Volero confined himself to the subject of the law, avoiding all
abuse of the consuls, he commenced with accusing Appius and his family,
as having ever been most overbearing and cruel towards the Roman
commons, contend