1Thus the Roman state returned to its former condition, and success in war at once stirred up disturbances in the city. 1Gaius Terentilius Harsa was tribune of the plebs that year. 2Thinking that with the consuls absent an opportunity had been given for tribunician agitation, he spent several days denouncing the arrogance of the patricians before the plebs, and above all inveighed against the consular power as excessive and intolerable for a free state. 2In name, he said, it was merely less odious, but in reality almost harsher than that of the kings; 4for they had taken two masters instead of one, with unrestrained, unlimited power, who, being themselves free and unbridled, turned all the terrors of the laws and all punishments against the plebs.
5So that this licence should not be theirs for ever, he would propose a law that five men should be appointed to draw up laws on the consular power: whatever right the people had granted the consul over them, that the consul should use; 5they should not treat their own caprice and licence as law. 6When this law had been proposed, since the senators feared that they would accept the yoke while the consuls were away, the senate was summoned by the prefect of the city, Quintus Fabius, who inveighed so fiercely against the bill and its proposer himself that, even if both consuls had stood round the tribune in hostility, nothing in the way of threats and intimidation would have been left out: he had lain in wait, he said, and, seizing his moment, attacked the state.
8If the angry gods had given them any tribune like him the year before, amid the disease and the war, he could not have been stopped. 8With both consuls dead and the state lying sick, in the confusion of everything he would have proposed laws to abolish the consular power from the state, and would have become the leader of the Volscians and Aequi in attacking the city. 9What then? 9Was he not permitted, if the consuls had done anything arrogantly or cruelly against any citizen, to bring them to trial, to accuse them before those very judges against one of whom the cruelty had been committed? 10It was not the consular power, but the tribunician power that he was making hateful and intolerable, which, after being appeased and reconciled with the patricians, was now being brought back afresh to its old evils.
10Nor would he beg him to refrain from going on as he had begun; 10'You,' said Fabius, 'the other tribunes, we beg first of all to reflect that this power of yours was established for the help of individuals, not for the ruin of all: you were created tribunes of the plebs, not enemies of the patricians. 12For us it is wretched, for you it brings odium, that the state should be attacked when it is defenceless. 12You will lessen not your rights but the odium against you. 12Prevail on your colleague to postpone the matter, untouched, until the consuls arrive. 12Not even the Aequi and Volscians, when our consuls had been carried off by disease the year before, pressed upon us with cruel and arrogant war.' 13The tribunes prevailed on Terentilius, and with the proceedings postponed in appearance but in reality dropped, the consuls were at once summoned.