It is a phenomenon to which the fasti of the republic afford no parallel, except at their very beginning in the honours enjoyed by the Valerii, that for seven consecutive years, from 269 to 275, one of the seats in the consulship was always filled by members of the same house: and that this cannot have been matter of chance is the more certain, inasmuch as the effect, so long as the lesser houses formed a separate body, must have been that either they or the greater houses, as an estate, were excluded. One cannot but see that this must have been connected with some revolution by which the oligarchy designed permanently to secure the superiority they had gained, and from which, though this hope was not fulfilled, they long derived an unjust advantage, but which ended in only laying a deeper foundation for the liberties of the plebeians.

The sentence against Cassius may perhaps have been carried into effect according to the forms of law by Q. Fabius and Ser. Cornelius, both of them members of the older houses, without any attempt being made to save him, although it was an injury at once to the larger half of the ruling estate, and to the whole of the commonalty.