History of Rome

​These things Appius quibbling without the assent of anyone, he said: “Behold, Quirites, the offspring of that Appius, who, having been created decemvir for a year, in the second year created himself; ​in the third, created neither by himself nor by anyone, as a private citizen held the fasces and command, nor did he cease from continuing his magistracy before his ill-gotten, ill-conducted, and ill-retained powers overwhelmed him.

​This is the same family, Quirites, compelled by whose violence and injustices, banished from your country, you occupied the Sacred Mount;

​this, against which you prepared for yourselves the tribunician aid; this, on account of which as two armies you occupied the Aventine; this, which has always attacked the usury laws, this, the agrarian laws.

​This interrupted the marriages of the patricians and the plebs; this blocked the path of the plebs to the curule offices. This is a name far more hostile to your liberty than that of the Tarquins.

​Is it really so, Appius Claudius? Since it is now the hundredth year from the dictator Mamercus Aemilius, and there have been so many censors, most noble and brave men, did none of them read the Twelve Tables? Did no one know that that was the law which the people had last ordered?

​Nay, indeed, they all knew it, and therefore they obeyed the Aemilian law rather than that ancient one under which censors were first created, because the people had ordered this last, and because, where there are two contrary laws, a new one always abrogates the old.

​Or do you say this, Appius, that the people are not bound by the Aemilian law? Or that the people are bound, but you alone are above the law?

​The Aemilian law bound those violent censors Gaius Furius and Marcus Geganius, who showed what evil that office could do in the state, when, from anger at their power being limited, they made Mamercus Aemilius, the foremost man of his age in war and peace, an aerarius;

​it bound in turn all the censors within the space of a hundred years;

​it binds Gaius Plautius, your colleague, created under the same auspices, with the same right. Did the people not elect him as one who had been created censor with the highest right? Are you alone exceptional, in whom this special and singular privilege should prevail?

​Whom would you elect as King of the Sacrifices? Having embraced the name of kingship, he will say that he was elected, as one who has been created king of Rome with the highest right. Whom would you think would be content with a six-month dictatorship, whom with a five-day interregnum? Whom would you boldly elect as dictator for the sake of driving the nail or for the games?

​How stupid and sluggish do you think those men appear in his eyes—those who, having performed great deeds, abdicated the dictatorship within the twentieth day, or who, being elected with some defect, departed from their magistracy?

​Why should I recall ancient things? Recently, within ten years, Gaius Maenius the dictator—because, when he was conducting investigations more severely than was safe for certain powerful men, the contagion of that very crime which he himself was investigating was cast upon him by his enemies—in order that as a private citizen he might face the charge, abdicated the dictatorship.

​I do not wish that modesty in you; do not degenerate from your most commanding and proud family; do not depart from your office a day or an hour sooner than is necessary, provided only you do not exceed the limited time.

​Is it enough to add a day or a month to the censorship? “I will hold the censorship,” he says, “for three years and six months beyond what is allowed by the Aemilian law, and I will hold it alone.”

​This indeed is already like a kingdom. Or will you substitute a colleague, whom it is not lawful to substitute even in the place of one deceased ?

​For are you sorry that, as a religious censor, you have degraded the most ancient solemn rite—the only one instituted by the very god to whom it is made—from the most noble priests of that sacred rite to the service of slaves, ​so that a family older than the origins of this city, hallowed by the hospitality of the immortal gods, has been utterly destroyed within a year on account of you and your censorship, unless you have bound the whole state by that crime, which the mind even dreads to presage.

​The city was captured in that lustrum in which, the censor Gaius Julius having died, Lucius Papirius Cursor, lest he should depart from office, substituted Marcus Cornelius Maluginensis as his colleague.

​And when was his desire more moderate than yours, Appius? Lucius Papirius did not hold the censorship alone, nor beyond the time limited by law; yet he found no one who would follow him as an exemplar afterwards; all censors in succession abdicated their office after the death of a colleague.

​As for you, neither the fact that the days of your censorship have expired, nor that your colleague has departed from office, nor law, nor shame restrains you; you place virtue in pride, in audacity, in contempt of gods and men.

​I indeed, Appius Claudius, for the majesty and respectability of that office which you held, could have wished you not only not to be violated by hand, but not even to be addressed by me with any harsher word;

​but both these things, which I have spoken up to now, your obstancy and pride have compelled me to say, and, unless you obey the Aemilian law, I will order you to be led to prison, nor, ​since it was so established by our ancestors that at the censorial comitia, unless two have completed the lawful votes, without one being declared elected the assembly is postponed, will I suffer you, who could not be created censor alone, to hold the censorship alone.”

​When he had said these and such things, he ordered the censor to be seized and led to prison. While six tribunes approved the action of their colleague, three brought aid to Appius when he appealed; and with the greatest unpopularity of all classes, he held the censorship alone.