Ab urbe condita

usury. What with the levy and the war-tax and the preoccupation of men's minds with still graver anxieties, it was found impossible to get the full number of plebeian tribunes elected. Then a struggle began to secure the co-optation of patricians into the vacant

places. This proved to be impossible, but in order to weaken the authority of the Trebonian Law, it was arranged, doubtless through the influence of the patricians, that C. Lucerius and M. Acutius should be co-opted as tribunes of the plebs.

As chance would have it, Cnaeus Trebonius was tribune of the plebs that year, and he came forward as a champion of the Trebonian Law, as a duty apparently to his family and the name he bore.

He declared in excited tones that the position which the senate had assailed, though they had been repulsed in their first attack, had been at last carried by the consular tribunes. The Trebonian Law had been set aside and the tribunes of the plebs had not been elected by the vote of the people, but co-opted at the command of the patricians, matters had now come to

this pass, that they must have either patricians or the hangers-on to patricians as tribunes of the plebs.