the fasces and regal dominion.  That after the expulsion of the kings, patrician magistrates had been appointed, and subsequently, after the secession of the people, plebeian magistrates.  What party was it, he asked, to which they belonged?  To the popular party?  What had they ever done with the concurrence of the people?  To the party of the nobles?  Who for now nearly an entire year had not held a meeting of the senate, and then held one in such a manner that they prevented the expression of sentiments regarding the commonwealth?  Let them not place too much hope in the fears of others; the grievances which they were now suffering appeared to men more oppressive than any they might apprehend.

While Horatius was exclaiming thus and the decemvirs could not discover the proper bounds either of their anger or forbearance, nor saw how the matter would end, Gaius Claudius, who was the uncle of Appius the decemvir, delivered an address more in the style of entreaty than reproach, beseeching him by the shade of his brother and of his father, that he would hold in recollection the civil society in which he had been born, rather than the confederacy nefariously entered into with his colleagues, adding that he besought this much more on Appius’s own account, than for the sake of the commonwealth.  For the commonwealth would claim its rights in spite of them, if it could not obtain them with their consent:  that however, from a great contest great animosities were generally aroused:  it was the result of the latter that he dreaded.  Though the decemvirs forbade them to speak on any subject save that which they had submitted to them, they felt too much respect for Claudius to interrupt him He therefore concluded the expression of his opinion by moving that it was their wish that no decree of the senate should be passed.  And all understood the matter thus, that they were judged by Claudius to be private citizens;[49] and many of those of consular standing expressed their assent in words.  Another measure, more severe in appearance, which ordered the patricians to assemble to nominate an interrex, in reality had much less force; for by this motion the mover gave expression to a decided opinion that those persons were magistrates of some kind or other who might hold a meeting of the senate, while he who recommended that no decree of the senate should be passed, had thereby declared them private citizens.  When the cause of the decemvirs was now failing, Lucius Cornelius Maluginensis, brother of Marcus Cornelius the decemvir, having been purposely reserved from among those of consular rank to close the debate, by affecting an anxiety about the war, defended his brother and his colleagues by declaring that he wondered by what fatality it had occurred, that those who had been candidates for the decemvirate, either these or their friends, had above all others attacked the decemvirs:  or why, when no one had disputed for so many months while the state was free