History of Rome

​The attempt made at home by the dictator, that both consuls should be created from the patricians, brought the matter to an interregnum.

​Two interreges who intervened, Gaius Sulpicius and Marcus Fabius, achieved what the dictator had striven for in vain—since the plebs were now milder on account of the recent benefit of the alleviated debt—namely, that both consuls should be created from the patricians.

​There were created Gaius Sulpicius Peticus himself, who had first resigned from the interregnum, and Titus Quinctius Poenus; some add the name of Kaeso, others of Gaius, to Quinctius. Both set out for war, ​Quinctius conducted the war against the Faliscans, Sulpicius against the Tarquinienses, without ever meeting the enemy in battle, but by burning and plundering the fields rather than by fighting against men.

​Overcome by the weariness of this slow, as it were, wasting disease, the obstinacy of both peoples was broken, so that they sought a truce first from the consuls, and then, with their permission, from the senate. They obtained it for forty years.

​Thus the anxiety of the two wars that threatened having been laid aside, while there was some rest from arms, because the payment of the debt had changed the owners of many properties, it was decided that a census should be held.

​But when the comitia had been proclaimed for creating censors, Gaius Marcius Rutilus, who had been the first dictator from the plebs, disturbed the harmony of the orders by declaring that he was seeking the censorship. He indeed seemed to have done this at an unfavorable time, ​because both consuls then happened to be patricians, who declared they would not take account of his candidacy;

​but he himself also by perseverance secured his undertaking, and the tribunes, resolved to recover the right lost at the consular elections, assisted with all their might; and not only did the dignity of the man himself equal the height of any honor, but the plebs also wished that, through the very same man who had opened the way to the dictatorship, the censorship also should be brought into their share.

​Nor was there any hesitation in the comitia but that Marcius was created censor along with Gnaeus Manlius. This year also had Marcus Fabius as dictator, not from any fear of war, but so that the Licinian law should not be observed at the consular elections. Quintus Servilius was added as master of the horse to the dictator.

​Nevertheless, the dictatorship did not make that agreement of the patricians more powerful in the consular elections than it had been in the censorial ones.