his consent that the consular dignity should be merely so great as it could be in a state if it was to be united:  it was declared that, as long as the tribunes and consuls claimed all power, each for his own side, no strength was left between:  that the commonwealth was distracted and torn asunder:  that the object aimed at was rather to whom it should belong, than that it should be safe.  Appius, on the contrary, called gods and men to witness that the commonwealth was being betrayed and abandoned through cowardice; that it was not the consul who had failed to support the senate, but the senate the consul:  that more oppressive conditions were now being submitted to than had been submitted to on the Sacred Mount.  Overcome, however, by the unanimous feeling of the senators, he desisted:  the law was carried without opposition.

Then for the first time the tribunes were elected in the comita tributa.  Piso is the authority for the statement that three were added to the number, as if there had been only two before.  He also gives the names of the tribunes, Gnaeus Siccius, Lucius Numitorius, Marcus Duellius, Spurius Icilius, Lucius Mecilius.  During the disturbance at Rome, a war broke out with the Volscians and AEquans, who had laid waste the country, so that, if any secession of the people took place, they might find a refuge with them.  Afterward, when matters were settled, they moved back their camp.  Appius Claudius was sent against the Volscians; the AEquans fell to Quinctius as his province.  Appius exhibited the same severity in war as at home, only more unrestrained, because it was free from the control of the tribunes.  He hated the commons with a hatred greater than that inherited from his father:  he had been defeated by them:  when he had been chosen consul as the only man able to oppose the influence of the tribunes, a law had been passed, which former consuls had obstructed with less effect, amid hopes of the senators by no means so great as those now placed in him.  His resentment and indignation at this stirred his imperious temper to harass the army by the severity of his command; it could not, however, be subdued by any exercise of authority, with such a spirit of opposition were the soldiers filled.  They carried out all orders slowly, indolently, carelessly, and stubbornly:  neither shame nor fear restrained them.  If he wished the march to be accelerated, they designedly went more slowly:  if he came up to them to encourage them in their work, they all relaxed the energy which they had before exerted of their own accord:  they cast down their eyes in his presence, they silently cursed him as he passed by; so that that spirit, unconquered by plebeian hatred, was sometimes moved.  Every kind of severity having been tried without effect, he no longer held any intercourse with the soldiers; he said the army was corrupted by the centurions; he sometimes gibingly called them tribunes of the people and Voleros.