of this magistracy
there would be an end to the war. Wherefore when the magistracy of
"the Ten" should have been renewed, the people did not renew it, but,
suffering it to lapse, entrusted their affairs to the "Signory." This
course was most pernicious, since not only did it fail to put an end to
the war, as the people expected it would, but by setting aside men who
had conducted it with prudence, led to such mishaps that not Pisa only,
but Arezzo also, and many other towns besides were lost to Florence.
Whereupon, the people recognizing their mistake, and that the evil was
in the disease and not in the physician, reinstated the magistracy of
the Ten.

Similar dissatisfaction grew up in Rome against the consular authority.
For the people seeing one war follow another, and that they were never
allowed to rest, when they should have ascribed this to the ambition of
neighbouring nations who desired their overthrow, ascribed it to the
ambition of the nobles, who, as they believed, being unable to wreak
their hatred against them within the city, where they were protected by
the power of the tribunes, sought to lead them outside the city, where
they were under the authority of the consuls, that they might crush them
where they were without help. In which belief they thought it necessary
either to get rid of the consuls altogether, or so to restrict their
powers as to leave them no authority over the people, either in the city
or out of it.

The first who attempted to pass a law to this effect was the tribune
Terentillus, who proposed that a committee of five should be named to
consider and regulate the power of the consuls. This roused the anger of
the nobles, to whom it seemed that the greatness of their authority
was about to set for ever, and that no part would be left them in the
administration of the republic. Such, however, was the obstinacy of the
tribunes, that they succeeded in abolishing the consular title, nor were
satisfied until, after other changes, it was resolved that, in room of
consuls, tribunes should be appointed with consular powers; so much
greater was their hatred of the name than of the thing. For a long
time matters remained on this footing; till eventually, the commons,
discovering their mistake, resumed the appointment of consuls in the
same way as the Florentines reverted to "the Ten of the War."

CHAPTER XL.--_Of the creation of the Decemvirate in Rome, and what
therein is to be noted. Wher