1This victory of the tribunes and plebs almost turned into an unwholesome excess, a conspiracy being formed among the tribunes to have the same tribunes re-elected and, so that their own ambition might be less conspicuous, to have the consuls too continue in office. 2They alleged as a pretext the united front of the senators, by which, through insult to the consuls, the rights of the tribunes of the plebs had been undermined. 3What would happen, with the laws not yet firmly established, if the senators attacked the new tribunes through consuls of their own faction? 3For they would not always have Valerii and Horatii as consuls, men who would put their own interests after the liberty of the plebs.
4By a chance useful for the occasion, it fell by lot to Marcus Duillius, of all men, to preside over the elections, a prudent man who saw the odium that threatened from continuing in office. 5When he declared that he would accept no candidacy from among the old tribunes, and his colleagues insisted that he either let the tribes vote freely or yield the presidency of the elections to his colleagues, who would hold the elections according to law rather than at the senators' pleasure, a dispute arose; Duillius summoned the consuls to the tribunes' benches and asked them what they had in mind about the consular elections, and when they replied that they would elect new consuls, having found popular backers for an unpopular view, he went with them before an assembly.
7When there the consuls, brought before the people and asked what they would do if the Roman people, remembering the liberty recovered at home through them and remembering their achievements in war, made them consuls again, had changed nothing of their opinion, he praised the consuls for persevering to the last in being unlike the decemvirs, and held the elections; 8and when five tribunes of the plebs had been elected and, because of the partisanship shown for the nine tribunes openly canvassing, the other candidates did not obtain the required number of tribes, he dismissed the assembly and did not hold it again for the elections. 9He said that the law had been satisfied, which, fixing no number anywhere, provided only that tribunes should be left, and ordered that colleagues should be co-opted by those who had been elected; 10and he read out the formula of the bill, which runs: 'I shall put to you ten tribunes of the plebs; 10if today you elect fewer than ten tribunes of the plebs, then those whom these co-opt as their colleagues shall be lawful tribunes of the plebs under the same law as those whom you have made tribunes of the plebs today.' 11Duillius, having persisted to the end in denying that the commonwealth could have fifteen tribunes of the plebs, defeated the ambition of his colleagues and left office equally popular with senators and plebs.