No proceeding of the consul was urged with more warmth during the entire year.

"Can I be surprised," says he, "if your authority is of little weight, conscript fathers?
yourselves are disparaging it.
Forsooth, because the commons have violated a decree of the senate, by re-appointing their magistrates, you yourselves also wish it to be violated, lest ye should yield to the populace in rashness; as if to possess greater power in the state consisted in having more of inconstancy and irregularity; for it is certainly more inconstant and greater folly, to do away with one's own decrees and resolutions, than those of others.

Imitate, conscript fathers, the inconsiderate multitude; and ye, who should be an example to others, transgress by the example of others, rather than others should act correctly by yours, provided I imitate not the tribunes, nor suffer myself to be re-elected consul, contrary to a decree of the senate.

But I advise you, Caius Claudius, that both you on your part restrain the Roman people from this licentiousness, and that you be persuaded of this on my part, that I shall so take it, as not to consider that my honour has been obstructed by you, but that the glory of declining the honour has been augmented, and the odium, which would hang over me from its being continued, has been lessened." Upon this they issue this order jointly: "That no one should attempt to make Lucius Quintius consul: if any one should do so, that they would not allow that vote." 22.

The consuls elected were Quintus Fabius Vibulanus, a third time, and Lucius Cornelius Maluginensis.