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451-449 B.C.

districts, which gave the plebeian farmers far more weight than they possessed in the comitia centuriata; the tribunes were allowed to sit on a bench at the door of the senate-house, and thus have a share in the proceedings of that body. And from this important concession gradually arose the principle, that the tribune could by his veto stop any resolution of the senate or of the public assembly. No attempt to abolish this magistracy was ever from this time forward made in Rome.

Chapter VII

STRIFE OF PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS

Tyet

445-265 B.C.

HE contest between the patricians and plebeians was not yet ended. For two hundred years the bitter strife continued; each successive struggle wrested from the old aristocracy one or more of their dearly loved privileges, until at last not one remained, save that which birth alone gives and naught can take away, the exclusive pride of caste. To present a continuous history of the internal strife of parties, it will be necessary to confine this chapter to a narrative of the inner life of Rome, and to summarize as briefly as possible the events of each blow to the patrician power, and the results of the conflict as a whole. The history of Rome's foreign relations, although they exercised no slight influence on her internal discord, must be reserved for another place.

Social discontent, rather than political, had given rise to the tribunician movement, a movement viewed with suspicion by wealthy plebeians as well as by patricians. Doubtless some of the leading plebeians had supported their less powerful brethren in the struggle, whether from motives of justice or self-interest. But, now that the office of tribune was firmly established, the whole plebeian body, comprising both those wealthier families and the general mass of the citizens, became firmly united together, and used the tribunate as a lever to remove the political disabilities of their order. The first blow was dealt by the Canuleian law in 445 B.C. This law legalized the validity of marriage between a patrician and plebeian, giving the children of such a marriage the rank of their father. It further yielded to the demand of the plebeians to be admitted to the consulship by a compromise which sought to retain many of the privileges of the office for the patricians. Each year the people were to vote whether there should be the usual consuls or whether their place should be taken by six military tribunes. In the latter case the plebeians were eligible to the office, but the military tribunes

444-409 B. C.

were not to enjoy all the honors of the consuls. They could not celebrate triumphs or have their ancestors' images set up in the family hall and exhibited on public occasions, nor could they speak or vote in the senate-rights which the regular consuls enjoyed. During the period of nearly eighty years, from 444 B.C. to the throwing open of the consulship to the plebeians by the Licinian law in 367 B.C., we find that the military tribunes were elected fifty times, and the patrician consuls twenty-three times. The miserable shifts by which the patricians thus sought to baffle their opponents found further expression in the creation of the censorship in 435 B.C. The two officers, or "valuers" (censores), thus created, were chosen from the patricians, and held office for a period of not more than eighteen months. They had charge of the registration of the whole body of citizens for the purposes of taxation, and the duty of ascertaining the age and property of each man, and of assigning him his proper position on the burgess-roll. This task had hitherto been managed by the consuls every fourth year. The censorship, although at this period lacking its subsequent importance and moral supremacy, from its influence in filling up the vacancies in the senate and the equites, and from its power to remove persons from the lists of senators, equites, and burgesses, came to be regarded as the palladium of the aristocracy. The second great victory over the patricians was gained in 421 B.C., when the questorship was thrown open to the plebeians. Hitherto the consuls had nominated the two city questors, who had charge of the public money; their election was now transferred to the same body which elected their two colleagues who had charge of the military chest. Thus the plebeians became eligible for the first time to one of the ordinary magistracies, although we do not find that they were able to avail themselves of this privilege until 409 B.C., when they secured three places out of the four. In their bitter resistance to the plebs the aristocracy had resort to every artifice which could influence elections; the aristocratic colleges of priests, under the guise of religion, seconded the bribery and intimidation freely practiced on the electorate. Laws could be arrested, elections made null and void, by the convenient discovery of portentous omens, whether from the flight of birds or other phenomena. The blood of Rome's best and bravest citizens was shed in the vain hope of stemming the tide of plebeian victory.

At last a solution of the troubles arising from political dis

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377-337 B.C.

content and social wretchedness sprang out of the combination of the chief plebeians with the farmers. This solution was found in the famous proposals brought forward in 377 B.C. by the tribunes Gaius Licinius and Lucius Sextius. Their proposals were that the military tribunes should be abolished, and that at least one of the consuls should be a plebeian; that plebeians should be admitted to one of the three great priest-colleges, viz., that of the custodians of the oracles; that no one should keep on the common pasture-land more than a hundred oxen and five hundred sheep, or hold more than five hundred jugera (about three hundred acres) of the state lands. left free for occupation; that every landlord should be obliged to employ in land cultivation a certain number of free laborers, in proportion to that of his rural slaves; that debtors should be relieved by the deduction of the interest already paid from the capital, and by arranging set terms for the payment of arrears.

The three watch-words of this great movement were clearly social reform, civil equality, the abolition of privilege. The hereditary distinctions associated with the curule magistracy, the right to speak in the senate-house, the possession of spiritual dignities, were no longer to be the exclusive property of the nobles. Social distress was to be relieved, and the poorest burgess was to have his rightful share in those lands from which the selfishness of the rich had so long excluded him. That the patricians struggled hard to prevent these proposals becoming law is not surprising; but that they were passed, after a struggle of eleven years, in 367 B.C., proves the strength of the united forces of the farmers and rich plebeians. The passing of these laws was marked by founding the Temple of Concord at the foot of the Capitol-the last act of the aged warrior and statesman Marcus Furius Camillus, who perhaps trusted that the struggle, too long continued, was now at an end. But the patrician spirit still showed itself in the creation of a third consul, or, as he was usually called, a pretor. However, this office among others was thrown open to the plebeians in 337 B.C., having remained in the hands of the aristocracy only twenty-nine years. The last blows which destroyed aristocratic exclusiveness were that by which the dictatorship was thrown open to the plebeians in 356 B.C.; that which gave the plebeians access to the censorship in 351 B.C.: that dealt by the Publilian law in 339 B.C., which ordained that at least one of the censors must be a plebeian; and that which rendered it impossible for the senate to reject a decree of the

300-287 B.C.

community by compelling that body to give their consent beforehand to any measures which might be passed by the comitia tributa. The next blow, aimed at the religious privileges of the patricians, fell later. In 300 B.C. the Ogulnian law increased the number of pontifices from five to eight, and that of the augurs from six to nine, and distributed the stalls in the two colleges between the patricians and plebeians. Lastly, owing to another secession of the plebs, the final blow was given by the law of the dictator Quintus Hortensius, in 287 B.C. This law declared that the decrees of the plebs, passed in their tribal assembly, should have equal force with the decrees of the whole populus, or community. Thus it was brought about that those very burgesses who had once exclusively possessed the right of voting, no longer had even a vote in that assembly whose resolutions were binding on the whole state.

The end had at last come to a strife of two hundred years. The clan nobility, as such, was no longer a political factor in the Roman Republic; but, although its power and privileges were gone, its exclusive patrician spirit was ever a disturbing element of discontent in the public and private life of Rome. To understand rightly the history of Rome in the third and second centuries B.C., we must never overlook this sulking patricianism; it could, indeed, do little more than irritate itself and others, but this it did to the best of its ability.

It remains for us to estimate the result of these changes, as to whether they checked social distress and established political equality. It cannot be said that any lasting benefit was enjoyed by the poorer classes from the new laws. No legislation could really check the system of large estates, or the employment of slave-labor, without at the same time shaking the foundations of the civil organization of that time, in a way that would entail far-reaching consequences. The true advantages of the reform legislation obtained by the alliance of the poor farmers and the rich plebeians accrued to the latter alone. Relief for the former came not from legislation, but from the successes of Rome, and the necessity of sending out large colonies to consolidate the Roman rule in Italy. Added to this, the general increase of prosperity from successful war and commerce, and the flourishing condition of the state finances, must have lightened the burdens of the farmers, and diffused material well-being among the whole community.

As to political equality, it was now practically attained. In

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