as if for battle:  and it was clear that a general crisis was at hand, that no one would have respect for anything, either public or private right.  When the consuls had faced this violent storm, they soon found out that authority unsupported by strength had but little security; the lictors being maltreated, and the fasces broken, they were driven from the forum into the senate-house, uncertain how far Volero would follow up his victory.  After that, the disturbance subsiding, having ordered the members to be summoned to the senate, they complained of the insults offered to themselves, of the violence of the people, of the daring conduct of Volero.  After many violent measures had been proposed, the older members prevailed, who did not approve of the rash behaviour of the commons being met by the resentment of the patricians.

The commons having warmly espoused the cause of Volero, at the next meeting, secured his election as tribune of the people for that year, in which Lucius Pinarius and Publics Furius were consuls:  and, contrary to the opinion of all, who thought that he would make free use of his tribuneship to harass the consuls of the preceding year, postponing private resentment to the public interest, without the consuls being attacked even by a single word, he brought a bill before the people that plebeian magistrates should be elected at the comitia tributa.[73] A measure of no small importance was now proposed, under an aspect at first sight by no means alarming; but one of such a nature that it really deprived the patricians of all power of electing whatever tribunes they pleased by the suffrage of their clients.  The patricians resisted to the utmost this proposal, which met with the greatest approval of the commons:  and though none of the college[74] could be induced by the influence either of the consuls or of the chief members of the senate to enter a protest against it, which was the only means of effectual resistance, yet the matter, a weighty one from its own importance, was spun out by party struggles for a whole year.  The commons re-elected Volero as tribune.  The senators, considering that the matter would end in a desperate struggle, elected as Consul Appius Claudius, the son of Appius, who was both hated by and had hated the commons, ever since the contests between them and his father.  Titus Quinctius was assigned to him as his colleague.  Immediately, at the beginning of the year,[75]no other question took precedence of that regarding the law.  But like Volero, the originator of it, so his colleague, Laetorius, was both a more recent, as well as a more energetic, supporter of it.  His great renown in war made him overbearing, because, in the age in which he lived, no one was more prompt in action.  He, while Volero confined himself to the discussion of the law, avoiding all abuse of the consuls, broke out into accusations against Appius and his family, as having ever been most overbearing and cruel toward the Roman commons, contending that he had been elected