They will be able for five years to sit in judgment on the consuls, or even
 on the tribunes of the people themselves; but all that time no one will be able to sit in
 judgment on them. They will be allowed to fill magisterial offices; but they will not be
 allowed to be prosecuted. They will have power to purchase lands, from whomsoever they choose,
 whatever they choose, and at whatever price they choose. They are allowed to establish new
 colonies, to recruit old ones, to fill all Italy with
 their colonists; they have absolute authority for visiting every province, for depriving free
 people of their lands, for giving or taking away kingdoms, whenever they please. They may be at
 Rome when it is convenient to them; but they have a
 right also to wander about wherever they like with supreme command, and with a power of sitting
 in judgment on everything. They are allowed to put an end to all criminal trials; to remove
 from the tribunals whoever they think fit; to decide by themselves on the most important
 matters; to delegate their power to a quaestor; to send about surveyors; and to ratify whatever
 the surveyor has reported to that single decemvir by whom he has been sent. It is a defect in my language, O Romans, when I call this power a kingly power. For in truth,
 it is something much more considerable; for there never was any kingly power that, if it was
 not defined by some express law, was not at least understood to be subject to certain
 limitations. But this power is absolutely unbounded; it is one within which all kingly powers,
 and your own imperial authority, which is of such wide extent, and all other powers, whether
 freely exercised by your permission, or existing only by your tacit countenance, are, by
 express permission of the law, comprehended. 
 The first thing which is given to them is, a liberty of selling everything concerning the
 sale of which resolutions of the senate were passed in the consulship of Marcus Tullius and
 Cnaeus Cornelius or afterwards.