is wishes, they set about
baffling his ardour by humouring it. They by common consent confer on
him, as being the youngest, the office of presiding at the elections.
This was an artifice, that he might not appoint himself; which no one
ever did, except the tribunes of the people, and that too with the very
worst precedent. He, however, declaring that with the favour of fortune
he would preside at the elections, seized on the (intended)
obstacle[134] as a happy occasion; and having by a coalition foiled the
two Quintii, Capitolinus and Cincinnatus, and his own uncle, Caius
Claudius, a man most stedfast in the interest of the nobility, and other
citizens of the same eminence, he appoints as decemvirs men by no means
equal in rank of life: himself in the first instance, which proceeding
honourable men disapproved so much the more, as no one had imagined that
he would have the daring to act so. With him were elected Marcus
Cornelius-Maluginensis, Marcus Sergius, Lucius Minutius, Quintus Fabius
Vibulanus, Quintus Poetelius, Titus Antonius Merenda, Caeso Duilius,
Spurius Oppius Cornicen, Manius Rabuleius.[135]

[Footnote 134: _Impedimentum_. The fact of his presiding at the meeting
should have been a bar to his being elected a decemvir.]

[Footnote 135: Niebuhr will have it that five of these were of plebeian
rank.]

36. This was the end of Appius's assumption of a character not his own.
Henceforward he began to live according to his own natural disposition,
and to mould to his own temper his new colleagues before they should
enter on their office. They held daily meetings remote from witnesses:
then, furnished with their schemes of tyranny,[136] which they digested
apart from others, no longer dissembling their arrogance, difficult of
access, morose to all who addressed them, they carried out the matter to
the ides of May. The ides of May were at that time the usual period for
commencing office. At the commencement then of their magistracy, they
rendered the first day of their office remarkable by making an
exhibition of great terror. For when the preceding decemvirs had
observed the rule, that only one should have the fasces, and that this
emblem of royalty should pass through all in rotation, to each in his
turn, they all suddenly came forth with the twelve fasces. One hundred
and twenty lictors filled the forum, and carried before them the axes
tied up with the fasces: and they explained that it was of no
consequence t