previous next

When with the day the hatred of the soldiers toward the evil which had been done became known, the ten lawmakers, rallying to the aid of their fellow magistrate,1 collected a body of young men, with the intention of settling the issue by a test of arms. Since a great spirit of contention now threatened the state, the most respectable citizens, foreseeing the greatness of the danger, acted as ambassadors between both parties to reach an agreement and begged them with great earnestness to cease from the civil discord and not plunge their fatherland into such serious distress. [2] In the end all were won over and a mutual agreement was reached as follows: that ten tribunes should be elected who should wield the highest authority among the magistrates of the state and should act as guardians of the freedom of the citizens2; and that of the annual consuls one should be chosen from the patricians and one, without exception, should be taken from the plebeians, the people having the power to choose even both consuls from the plebeians. [3] This they did in their desire to weaken the supremacy of the patricians; for the patricians, by reason both of their noble birth and of the great fame that came down to them from their ancestors, were lords, one might say, of the state. It was furthermore stipulated in the agreement that when tribunes had served their year of office they should see that an equal number of tribunes were appointed in their place, and that if they failed to do this they should be burned alive3; also, in case the tribunes could not agree among themselves, the will of the interceding tribune must not be prevented.4 Such then, we find, was the conclusion of the civil discord in Rome.

1 This is probably a defective translation of decemviri collegae auxilium ferentes (see Klimke, Diodor und die röm. Annalistik, p. 7).

2 Diodorus had forgotten that he had already acknowledged the existence of tribunes under the year 466 (Book. 11.68.8). It may be, however, that in this year the patricians first recognized in law the tribunate or some of its powers.

3 Diodorus is the only authority for this law, which probably derives from the story of the burning to death of nine tribunes (Valerius Maximus 6.3.2; Dio Cassius fr. 22).

4 Some such a provision as this may be hidden in τὸν ἀνὰ μέσον κείμενον. See Eduard Meyer, "Untersuchungen über Diodors römische Geschichte," Rhein. Museum, 37 (1882), 610-627, especially pp. 618 ff., where he discusses the defective tradition which Diodorus has followed in the legislation described above.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1989)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Rome (Italy) (1)
Rhine (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1882 AD (1)
hide References (2 total)
  • Cross-references in notes from this page (1):
    • Valerius Maximus, Facta et Dicta Memorabilia, 6.3.2
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (1):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: