These seized and drove about the commons, and the effects of the commons; when success attended the more powerful individual, as far as obtaining any thing he might covet.[139] And now they spared not even their backs.

Some were beaten with rods; others had to submit to the axe; and lest such cruelty might go for nothing, a grant of his effects followed the punishment of the owner.
Corrupted by such bribes, the young nobility not only made no opposition to oppression, but openly avowed their preference of their own gratification to the general liberty.
[Footnote 139: _Quum fortuna, qua quicquid cupitum foret, potentioris esset_.

Stroth considers this passage to be corrupt: he proposes to read _cum fortuna_, so that _portentioris esset_ may refer to _quicquid cupitum foret_, i.e.with such favourable success, that every thing which the more powerful person might covet, became his.] 38.

The ides of May came.

No new election of magistrates having taken place, private persons came forth as decemvirs, without any abatement either in their determination to enforce their authority,[140] or any diminution in the emblems employed to make a parade of their station.
This indeed seemed to be regal tyranny.