war or the administration of the interior until the adoption and execution
of his measures. Again the senate avoided the difficulty and escaped, by
a trick, the execution of the law. Appius Claudius, according to
Dionysius,[8] advised the senate to search within the tribunate for a
remedy against itself, and to bribe a number of the colleagues of Icilius
to oppose his measure. This political perfidy was adopted by the senate
with the desired effect. Icilius persisted in his proposition and declared
he would rather see the Etruscans masters of Rome than to suffer for
a longer time the usurpation of the domain lands on the part of the
possessors.[9]

This somewhat circumstantial account has revealed to us that at this time
it took a majority of the tribunes to veto an act of their colleague. At
the time of the Gracchi the veto of a single tribune was sufficient to
hinder the passage of a law, and Tiberius was for a long time thus checked
by his colleague, Octavius. Then the tribunician college consisted of ten
members, and it would be no very difficult thing to detach one of the
number either by corruption or jealousy. But it is evident that, at the
time we are considering, it took a majority of the tribunes to veto an
act of a colleague; moreover, the college consisted of five members. This
latter fact is seen in the statement of Livy,[10] when he mentions
the opposition which four of the tribunes offered to their colleague,
Pontificius, in 480. In this same case he attributes to Appius Claudius
the conduct which Dionysius attributed to him in the previous year. But he
causes Appius to state, in his speech favoring the corruption of certain
tribunes, "that the veto of one tribune would be sufficient to defeat all
the others."[11] This is contrary to the statement of Dionysius[12]
and would seem improbable, for, if the opposition of one tribune was
sufficient, the patricians would not have deemed it necessary to purchase
four. That would be contrary to political methods.