Ab urbe condita

colony. However this may be, there is no question that he maintained a defiant attitude towards the nobles, who regarded his lowly origin with

contempt. He made public the legal forms and processes which had been hidden away in the closets of the pontiffs; he exhibited a calendar written on whitened boards in the Forum, on which were marked the days on which legal proceedings were allowed; to the intense disgust of the nobility he dedicated the temple of Concord on the

Vulcanal. At this function the Pontifex Maximus, Cornelius Barbatus, was compelled by the unanimous voice of the people to recite the usual form of devotion in spite of his insistence that in accordance with ancestral usage none but a consul or a commander-in-chief could dedicate a

temple. It was in consequence of this that the senate authorised a measure to be submitted to the people providing that no one should presume to dedicate a

temple or an altar without being ordered to do so by the senate or by a majority of the tribunes of the plebs. I will relate an incident, trivial enough in itself, but affording a striking proof of the way in which the liberties of the plebs were asserted against the insolent presumption of the

nobility. Flavius went to visit his colleague, who was ill. Several young nobles who were sitting in the room had agreed not to rise when he entered, on which he ordered his curule chair to be brought, and from that seat of dignity calmly surveyed his enemies, who were filled with unutterable

disgust. The elevation of Flavius to the aedileship was, however, the work of a party in the Forum who had gained their power during the censorship of Appius

Claudius. For Appius had been the first to pollute the senate by electing into it the sons of freedmen, and when no one recognised the validity of these elections and he failed to secure in the Senate-house the influence which he had sought to gain in the City, he corrupted both the Assembly of Tribes and the Assembly of Centuries by distributing the dregs of the populace amongst all the

tribes. Such deep indignation was aroused by the election of Flavius that most of the nobles laid aside their gold rings and military decorations as a sign of