1The consul's speech had moved the plebs; 1the senators, heartened, believed the state restored. 1The other consul, a more spirited companion than leader, having readily allowed his colleague to take the lead in measures so serious, claimed for himself a share of the consular duty in carrying them out. 2Then the tribunes, mocking these as empty words, pressed on by asking how ever the consuls were going to lead out an army, when nobody would allow them to hold a levy? 3'We have no need of a levy at all,' said Quinctius, 'since at the time when Publius Valerius gave arms to the plebs to recover the Capitol, all swore the oath that they would assemble at the consul's order and not depart without his order.
4We therefore give notice that all of you who have sworn the oath are to be present under arms tomorrow at Lake Regillus.' 4Then the tribunes began to quibble and wanted to release the people from their religious obligation: Quinctius had been a private citizen at the time when they were bound by the oath. 5But that disregard for the gods which possesses the present age had not yet come, nor did each man make oaths and laws suit himself by interpreting them, but rather he adapted his own conduct to them. 6So the tribunes, since there was no hope of blocking the matter, set about delaying the army's departure, all the more because a rumour had got out that the augurs too had been ordered to attend at Lake Regillus and that a place was to be inaugurated where business could be transacted with the people under the auspices, so that whatever had been passed at Rome by tribunician force might be repealed by an assembly there: all, it was said, would vote for what the consuls wished; 7for there was no right of appeal more than a mile from the city, and the tribunes, if they came there, would be subject to the consul's authority like the rest of the crowd of Quirites.
8This was alarming; 8but the greatest terror troubling their minds was that Quinctius kept saying he would not hold an election of consuls: the state was not so sick that it could be checked by the usual remedies; 8the state needed a dictator, so that whoever stirred himself to unsettle the condition of the state might feel that a dictatorship was without appeal.