persons be appointed to draw up laws regarding the consular
power. That the consul should use that right which the people may give
him over them; that they should not hold their own caprice and
licentiousness as law. This law being published, when the patricians
became afraid, lest, in the absence of the consuls, they should be
subjected to the yoke, the senate is convened by Quintus Fabius, praefect
of the city, who inveighed so vehemently against the bill and the author
of it, that nothing was omitted of threats and intimidation, even though
both the consuls in all their exasperation surrounded the tribune, "that
he had lain in wait, and, watching his opportunity, he made an attack on
the commonwealth. If the gods in their anger had given them any tribune
like him on the preceding year, during the pestilence and war, he could
not have been withstood. Both the consuls being dead, and the exhausted
state lying enfeebled in universal confusion, that he would have
proposed laws to abolish the consular government altogether from the
state; that he would have headed the Volscians and AEquans to attack the
city. What? if the consuls adopted any tyrannical or cruel proceedings
against any of the citizens, was it not competent to him to appoint a
day of trial for him; to arraign him before those very judges against
any one of whom severity may have been exercised? That it was not the
consular authority but the tribunitian power that he was rendering
hateful and insupportable: which having been peaceable and reconciled to
the patricians, was now about to be brought back anew to its former
mischievous habits. Nor would he entreat him not to go on as he
commenced. Of you, the other tribunes, says Fabius, we request, that
you will first of all consider that that power was provided for the aid
of individuals, not for the ruin of the community: that you were created
tribunes of the commons, not enemies of the patricians. To us it is
distressing, to you a source of odium, that the republic, now bereft of
its chief magistrates, should be attacked; you will diminish not your
rights, but the odium against you. Confer with your colleague, that he
may postpone this business till the arrival of the consuls; even the
AEquans and the Volscians, when our consuls were carried off by
pestilence last year, did not press on us with a cruel and tyrannical
war." The tribunes confer with Terentillus, and the bill being to all
appearance deferred, but