Thus the hundred senators divide the government among them, ten decuries being formed, and one selected from each decury, who was to have the chief direction of affairs.

Ten governed; one only was attended with the insignia of authority and the lictors: their power was limited to the space of five days, and it passed through all in rotation, and the interval between a kingly government lasted a year.

From the circumstance it was called an Interregnum, a term which holds good even now.

But the people began to murmur, that their slavery was multiplied, and that they had got a hundred sovereigns instead of one, and they seemed determined to bear no authority but that of a king, and that one of their own choosing.

When the fathers perceived that such schemes were in agitation, thinking it advisable to offer them, of their own accord, what they were sure to lose; they thus conciliate the favour of the people by yielding to them the supreme power, yet in such a manner as to grant them no greater privilege than they reserved to themselves.