History of Rome

​Between the abdication of the former dictatorship and the entry upon the new one by Manlius, an assembly of the plebs was held by the tribunes, as if during an interregnum; and it became clear which of the promulgated measures were more pleasing to the plebs, and which to the proposers.

​For they were voting for the proposals concerning interest and land, but rejecting the one about the plebeian consul; and both matters would have been carried through, had not the tribunes declared that they were putting the question to the plebs on all the measures together.

​Then Publius Manlius, as dictator, inclined the matter in favor of the plebs’ cause by naming Gaius Licinius, who had been a military tribune, as master of the horse from the plebs.

​I understand that the patricians bore this with difficulty; and that the dictator was accustomed to excuse himself to the patricians on the ground of his close relationship with Licinius, while at the same time denying that the command of a master of the horse was greater than that of a consular tribune.

​Licinius and Sextius, when the elections for creating tribunes of the plebs had been announced, behaved in such a way that, by denying that they now wished their office to be continued, they most fiercely inflamed the plebs toward that which they were seeking by dissembling:

​they argued that they had now been standing for nine years, as if in a battle line against the aristocrats, at the greatest private risk and with no public reward; and that both the promulgated bills and the whole power of the tribunician authority had now grown old along with them.

​At first, their laws had been fought against by the veto of their colleagues, then by the sending away of the youth to the Velitrian war, and finally the dictatorial thunderbolt had been aimed against them.

​Now, neither colleagues, nor war, nor a dictator stood in the way, since he had even given an omen for a plebeian consul by naming a master of the horse from the plebs; the plebs itself was delaying its own advantages.

​They could immediately have a city and forum free from creditors, and lands free from unjust possessors, ​if they wished. At what time, pray, would they estimate these gifts with a sufficiently grateful mind, if, while accepting the bills concerning their own advantages, they cut off the hope of honor from their proposers? It was not in keeping with the modesty of the Roman people to demand this: that they themselves should be relieved of debt and introduced into land unjustly possessed by the powerful, while they left those through whom they had obtained these things, now old in the tribuneship, not only without honor but even without hope of honor.

​Therefore, let them first determine in their own minds what they wanted, and then let them declare their will at the tribunician elections. If they wanted the bills they promulgated to be passed together, there was reason why they should re-elect the same tribunes of the plebs; for they would carry through what they had promulgated;

​but if they wished only that to be accepted which was necessary for each one privately, there was no need for an invidious continuation of office; and neither would they have the tribuneship, nor would those have the things which had been promulgated.