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The decemvirs had fallen, and the state was without any executive
government.
It has been supposed, as we have said above, that the government of the
decemvirs was intended to be perpetual. The patricians gave up their
consuls, and the plebeians their tribunes, on condition that each order
was to be admitted to an equal share in the new decemviral college. But
the tribunes were now restored in augmented number, and it was but
natural that the patricians should insist on again occupying all places
in the supreme magistracy. By common consent, as it would seem, the
Comitia of the Centuries met and elected to the consulate the two
patricians who had shown themselves the friends of both orders: L.
Valerius Potitus and M. Horatius Barbatus. Thus ended the government of
the decemvirate.


PERICLES RULES IN ATHENS
B.C. 444
PLUTARCH

(Under the sway of Pericles many changes occurred in the civil affairs
of Athens affecting the constitution of the state and the character and
administration of its laws.


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