The consuls, Marcus Genucius Augurinus and Gaius Curtius Philo, vehemently opposed Canuleius, arguing that the tribune was proposing nothing less than the breakdown of Rome's social and moral fabric, at a time when the city was faced with external threats.
[i] Undeterred, Canuleius reminded the people of the many contributions of Romans of lowly birth, including several of the kings, and pointed out that the Senate had willingly given Roman citizenship to defeated enemies, even while maintaining that the marriage of patricians and plebeians would be detrimental to the state.
He then proposed that, in addition to restoring the right of conubium, the law should be changed to allow plebeians to hold the consulship; all but one of the other tribunes supported this measure.
[8] An ill-chosen remark by the consul Curtius, to the effect that the children of mixed marriages might incur the displeasure of the gods, thereby preventing the proper taking of auspices, inflamed the people to the extent at which the consuls yielded to their demands, allowing a vote on Canuleius' original rogatio.
[10][12] In the novel, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, set in an English boarding school in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the schoolmaster Mr. Chipping describes the law to his Roman history class, suggesting a pun that could be used as a mnemonic device: "So that, you see, if Miss Plebs wanted Mr. Patrician to marry her, and he said he couldn't, she probably replied: 'Oh yes, you can, you liar!'