ARISTOCRACY. 27
pointed, among whom, besides a part of the old ones, some
new men from the plebeian order appear. Within the board
a plan of securing oligarchical power seems to have been
cherished, and the leading decemvir allowed himself, accord-
ing to the story, to commit great atrocities, which led the plebs
to make another secession. By a combination of patriotic
men of both parties, the dccemviral power was overthrown,
the old magistrates, including the consuls and tribunes, were
restored, and the law proposed by the consuls Valerius and
Horatius (the lex Valeria lloratia) not only repeated the old
Valerian law, allowing appeal from a judicial sentence to
death or stripes, but enacted also that quod trihutim populus
jussissct popnlum tcncrct (Livy, Hi., 55), that laws passed in
the comitia tributa should be binding on the patricians as
well as on the other order. To these another law, repeating
in substance the old Valerian law against tyrants, was added,
that no magistrate from whose sentences there could be no
appeal should be created; that any person who had procured
the creation of such a magistrate might be killed without
breach of law or of religious obligation ; and that such kill-
ing should not be held to be a capital crime. (Livy, u, s.)
The law of the twelve tables contained very little of apolit-
ical nature which had not been regarded as law before, and
thus did not essentially change the relations of the orders,
The contests, therefore, necessarily wore renewed, In 309,
U, C,, the tribune Cunulcius struck at one of the main causes
of separation between the orders, by a law which made mar-
riage legitimate between a patrician and a plebeian. In the
same year a proposition \vas made that one of the consuls
might be selected from a plebeian family. The first of these
was aided, no doubt, by social good feeling between patricians
and wealthy citizens of the other order* It is likely, also,
that marriages had taken place between the orders, although
the child of a plebeian mother followed her in her rank,
Both propositions were opposed on religious pretexts. If
the blood was mixed, the auspices would be impure. If, on
the other hand, marriage were to be free without affecting