In several years of this period there appear symptoms of the patricians not having yet renounced the foolish dream, of winning back by stubbornness the privileges irrecoverably lost: their attempts, though tormenting and vexatious, did not endanger the peace, because, though they were inflexible enough to renew the contest continually, they were still not so rash as to venture upon extremes, when they encountered the resistance which they dreamt had ceast. Many were still alive in the vigour and maturity of their age, who retained the ineffaceable recollection of their old exclusive dominion and indignation at being conquered: it was necessary for another generation to step into their place, which knew of the olden time only as a matter of tradition, before there could be peace; and few of their grandchildren would have been so blind as to wish, even if it had been possible, to recover then what had been lost, and to take it in exchange for that which had arisen for them and for all: but the undertaking could not have succeeded, and the wiser descendants of both parties must have regarded it as the greatest good fortune, that irrational strife did not annihilate the equipoise in the republic by injuring the aristocracy.

The same feeling is manifested by a dictator being appointed for some time almost every year to hold the comitia for elections; but a plebeian raised to this dignity was compelled by absurd pretexts to lay it down; and after this fourteen interrexes followed, as on a former occasion five, before the election of the consuls was completed.