ch. 313.31M. Valerius and Sp. Vergilius were the new
consuls. There was quiet at home and abroad. Owing to
excessive rain there was a scarcity of provisions. A law was
carried making the Aventine a part of the State domain. The
tribunes of the plebs were reelected.
These men in the following year, when T. Romilius and
C. Veturius were the consuls, were continually making
the Law the staple of all their harangues, and said that
they should be ashamed of their number being increased to no
purpose, if that matter made as little progress during their
two years of office as it had made during the five preceding
years.
Whilst the agitation was at its height, a hurried message
came from Tusculum to the effect that the Aequi were in the
Tusculan territory. The good services which that
nation had so lately rendered made the people ashamed to
delay sending assistance. Both consuls were sent against the
enemy, and found him in his usual position on Algidus. An
action was fought there; above 7000 of the enemy were
killed, the rest were put to flight; immense booty was taken.
This, owing to the low state of the public treasury, the
consuls sold. Their action, however, created ill-feeling in
the army, and afforded the tribunes material on
which to base an accusation against them. When,
therefore, they went out of office, in which they were
succeeded by Spurius Tarpeius and A. Aeternius, they were
both impeached—Romilius by C. Calvius Cicero, plebeian
tribune, and Veturius by L. Alienus, plebeian aedile. To the
intense indignation of the
senatorial party, both were condemned and fined Romilius had
to pay 10,000 ases, and Veturius 15,000. The fate of their
predecessors did not shake the resolution of the new
consuls; they said that while it was quite possible that
they might also be condemned, it was not possible for the
plebs and its tribunes to carry the Law. Through long
discussion it had become stale, the tribunes now threw it
over and approached the patricians in a less aggressive
spirit They urged that an
end should be put to their disputes and if they objected to
the measures adopted by the plebeians they should consent to
the appointment of a body of legislators, chosen in equal
numbers from plebeians and patricians to enact what would be
useful to both orders and secure equal liberty for each. The
patricians thought the proposal worth consideration, they
said, however, that no one should legislate unless he were a
patrician since they were agreed as to the laws and only
differed as to who should enact them. Commissioners were
sent to Athens with instructions to make a copy of the famous
laws of Solon, and to investigate the institutions, customs,
and laws of other Greek States. Their names were Spurius
Postumius Albus, A. Manlius, P. Sulpicius Camerinus.
