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Everything was granted; the decemviri were forced by the Senate to an unwilling abdication; the tribunate was re-established, and, as no plebeian magistrate existed, the unusual step was taken of having the election conducted by the pontifex maximus.[415] A resolution was then elicited from the Plebs by the tribune Duilius that consuls should be created subject to the right of appeal. It was accepted by the Senate,[416] who appointed an interrex. The comitia of the centuries returned Valerius and Horatius. Under the guidance of the consuls the assembly proceeded to pass a series of laws (the leges Valeriae Horatiae) which more than satisfied the demands of the Plebs. One guaranteed the perpetuity of the provocatio by the enactment that “no one should in future create a magistrate from whom there was no appeal; any one who created such a magistrate should be protected by no law sacred or profane and might be slain with impunity.”[417] The law was evidently called out by the unlimited power of the decemvirate which had just been abolished; it did more than merely affirm the first lex Valeria,[418] for it rendered the creation of an absolute judicial power by the rogatio of a magistrate a capital offence, even when this proposal had been accepted by the people. But the scope of the appeal was not extended; the “creation” of a magistrate referred to election sanctioned by the people, and did not, therefore, affect the right of the consul to nominate a dictator from whom there was no appeal; nor did it extend the limits of the appeal beyond the original boundaries—the pomerium or, at the utmost, the first milestone from the city.[419]

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