Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 6
Benjamin Oliver Foster, Ph.D., Ed.

37. The shame and pity of these conditions awoke more indignation in their hearers, who feared for their own safety, than the speakers had themselves felt in denouncing them. [2] And yet the patricians —as they proceeded to assert —would never check their greed for land, nor cease murdering the plebs with usury, until the commons should elect one of the two consuls from their own number, to guard their liberties. [3] Contempt, they argued, was now become the portion of the plebeian tribunes, for they used the veto to break down their own power. [4] There could be no question of equal rights, where the other side commanded and they themselves could do nothing but protest. Until they shared in the authority,¹ the plebs would never have an equal footing in the state. And let no one think that it would be sufficient if plebeians were accepted as candidates at the consular elections: unless it were required that at least one consul must be chosen from the commons, none ever would be. [5] Had they already forgotten, that although the election of tribunes of the soldiers rather than [p. 325]consuls had been resolved upon, expressly in order² that the highest honour might be open even to plebeians, yet for four and forty years no commoner had been chosen to that office? [6] How could they suppose, that with two places only now available, the patricians would of their own volition bestow the office on the plebs, when they had habitually claimed eight places in electing military tribunes? Would those men allow the consulship to be approached, who had blocked so long the road to the tribuneship? [7] The law must make good for them what they could not gain by favour at the elections; one of the two consulships must be set apart for the undisputed use of the plebs, for if left in dispute it would always fall a prize to the more powerful. [8] Neither could it any longer be maintained —as the nobles had been wont to assert — that among the plebeians were none who were suitable for curule magistracies. Had the public administration been a jot more indifferent or slipshod since the tribuneship of Publius Licinius Calvus, who was the first man elected from the plebs,³ than it had been during those years in which none but patricians had been military tribunes? [9] Nay, on the contrary, several patricians had been impeached after holding the tribuneship, but not one plebeian. Quaestors, too, like military tribunes, had begun a few years before to be elected from the commons, nor had the Roman People regretted it in a single case. [10] The consulship remained for the commons to achieve; this was the citadel of liberty, this its pillar. If they attained to this, then would the Roman People hold that the kings had been really driven from the City, and their freedom [p. 327]firmly based; [11] for the commons would thenceforward⁴ be partakers in all that made the patricians now surpass them, —authority and honour, martial renown, birth and nobility,⁵ —great things for themselves to enjoy, but even greater to bequeath to their children.

[12] Perceiving that speeches of this sort were well received, they introduced a new measure, providing that in place of two men vested with superintendence of the sacred rites, a board of ten should be elected, with a proviso that half the number should be of the plebs, and half patricians; the voting on all these bills they deferred until the return of the army which was besieging Velitrae.