they now, for the first time, elected ten tribunes--first Virginius,
Numitorius, and Icilius, then Duillius and six others: so full were
their minds of the wrong done to the daughter of Virginius; so entirely
was it the blood of young Virginia that overthrew the decemvirs, even as
that of Lucretia had driven out the Tarquins.

The plebeians had now returned to the city, headed by their ten
tribunes, a number which was never again altered so long as the
tribunate continued in existence. It remained for the patricians to
redeem the pledges given by their agents Valerius and Horatius on the
other demands of the plebeian leaders.

The first thing to settle was the election of the supreme magistrates.
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.