consular power, by which the consul should use that right which the people should have given him over them, not considering their own caprice and license as law.  Notice having been given of this law, as the patricians were afraid, lest, in the absence of the consuls, they should be subjected to the yoke; the senate was convened by Quintus Fabius, prefect of the city, who inveighed so vehemently against the bill and its proposer that no kind of threats or intimidation was omitted by him, which both the consuls could supply, even though they surrounded the tribune in all their exasperation:  That he had lain in wait, and, having seized a favourable opportunity, had made an attack on the commonwealth.  If the gods in their anger had given them any tribune like him in the preceding year, during the pestilence and war, it could not have been endured:  that, when both the consuls were dead, and the state prostrate and enfeebled, in the midst of the general confusion he would have proposed laws to abolish the consular government altogether from the state; that he would have headed the Volscians and AEquans in an attack on the city.  What, if the consuls behaved in a tyrannical or cruel manner against any of the citizens, was it not open to him to appoint a day of trial for them, to arraign them before those very judges against any one of whom severity might have been exercised?  That he by his conduct was rendering, not the consular authority, but the tribunician power hateful and insupportable; which, after having been in a state of peace, and on good terms with the patricians, was now being brought back anew to its former mischievous practices; nor did he beg of him not to proceed as he had begun.  “Of you, the other tribunes,” said Fabius, “we beg that you will first of all consider that that power was appointed for the aid of individuals, not for the ruin of the community; that you were created tribunes of the commons, not enemies of the patricians.  To us it is distressing, to you a source of odium, that the republic, now bereft of its chief magistrates, should be attacked; you will diminish not your rights, but the odium against you.  Confer with your colleague that he may postpone this business till the arrival of the consuls, to be then discussed afresh; even the AEquans and the Volscians, when our consuls were carried off by pestilence last year, did not harass us with a cruel and tyrannical war.”  The tribunes conferred with Terentilius, and the bill being to all appearance deferred, but in reality abandoned, the consuls were immediately sent for.

Lucretius returned with immense spoil, and much greater glory; and this glory he increased on his arrival, by exposing all the booty in the Campus Martius, so that each person might, for the space of three days, recognise what belonged to him and carry it away; the remainder, for which no owners were forthcoming, was sold.  A triumph was by universal consent due to the consul; but the matter was deferred, as the