History of Rome

​In the same year, Cn. Flavius, a scribe, born of a freedman father and of humble fortune, but otherwise a shrewd and eloquent man, was curule aedile.

​I find in certain annals that, when he was in service to the aediles and saw that he was being elected aedile by his tribe, but that his name was not being accepted because he was practicing the profession of a scribe, he laid down his tablet and swore that he would no longer act as a scribe;

​Licinius Macer argues that he had ceased to act as a scribe some time before, by reason of his having previously held the tribuneship and two triumvirs, one of the night-watch, the other for leading out a colony.

​But, what is not disputed, he contended with unyielding spirit against the nobles who despised his humble origin;

​he published the civil law, which had been hidden away in the sanctuaries of the pontiffs, and posted the calendar on white boards around the forum, so that it might be known when it was lawful to transact legal business;

​he dedicated the temple of Concord in the area of Vulcan to the great jealousy of the nobles; and Cornelius Barbatus, the pontifex maximus, was forced by the consensus of the people to dictate the solemn words, although he asserted, in accordance with ancestral custom, that no one except a consul or a commander could dedicate a temple.

​Therefore, on the authority of the senate, a proposal was brought before the people that no one should dedicate a temple or an altar without the order of the senate or of a majority of the plebeian tribunes.

​I shall relate an incident not very memorable in itself, except that it may serve as an example of plebeian liberty against the pride of the nobles.

​When Flavius had come to visit a sick colleague, and none of the noble youths who were sitting there rose to him by common consent, he ordered his curule chair to be brought to that place, and from the seat of his honor he looked upon his enemies, who were anxious with envy.

​But it was the forensic faction, which had gained strength through the censorship of Ap. Claudius, that had declared Flavius aedile; Claudius had been the first to defile the senate by selecting the sons of freedmen, and, ​after no one held that selection valid and he had not obtained in the senate-house the power he had sought, he corrupted the forum and the Campus Martius by distributing the humble urban population through all the tribes.

​And the election of Flavius carried so much indignity that most of the nobles laid aside their gold rings and phalerae. From that time the state was divided into two factions;

​the sound part of the people, supporters and cultivators of good men, strove for one object, the forensic faction for another, until Q. Fabius and P. Decius were made censors, ​and Fabius, both for the sake of concord and that the elections might not be in the hands of the lowest class, sifted out the whole forensic crowd, threw them into four tribes, and called them the urban tribes.

​And they say this measure was received with such grateful hearts that the cognomen of Maximus, which he had not acquired by so many victories, was produced for him by this regulation of the classes. By the same man, it is said, the custom was instituted that the knights should ride in procession on the Ides of Quinctilis.