w made by a consul concerning the right of appeal, a singular
security to liberty, and subverted by the decemviral power, they not
only restore, but guard it also for the time to come, by enacting a new
law, "that no one should appoint any magistrate without a right of
appeal; if any person should so elect, it would be lawful and right that
he be put to death; and that such killing should not be deemed a capital
offence." And when they had sufficiently secured the commons by the
right of appeal on the one hand, by tribunitian aid on the other, they
renewed for the tribunes themselves (the privilege) that they should be
held sacred and inviolable, the memory of which matter had now been
almost lost, reviving certain ceremonies which had been long disused;
and they rendered them inviolable both by the religious institution, as
well as by a law, enacting, that "whoever should offer injury to
tribunes of the people, aediles, judges, decemvirs, his person should be
devoted to Jupiter, and his property be sold at the temple of Ceres,
Liber and Libera." Commentators deny that any person is by this law
sacrosanct; but that he who may do an injury to any of them, is deemed
to be devoted; therefore that an aedile may be arrested and carried to
prison by superior magistrates, which, though it be not expressly
warranted by law, for an injury is done to a person to whom it is not
lawful to do an injury according to this law, yet it is a proof that an
aedile is not considered as sacred; that the tribunes were sacred and
inviolable by an ancient oath of the commons, when first they created
that office. There have been persons who supposed that by this same
Horatian law provision was made for the consuls also and the praetors,
because they were elected under the same auspices as the consuls; for
that a consul was called a judge. Which interpretation is refuted,
because at this time it was not yet the custom for the consul to be
styled judge, but the praetor. These were the laws proposed by the
consuls. It was also regulated by the same consuls, that decrees of the
senate should be deposited with the aediles of the commons in the temple
of Ceres; which before that used to be suppressed and altered at the
pleasure of the consuls. Marcus Duilius then, tribune of the commons,
proposed to the people, and the people ordered, that "whoever left the
people without tribunes, and whoever caused a magistrate to be elected
without the right of appea