Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/89

 THE RISE OF ROME 77 Some time earlier, soon after the second secession, inter- marriage between Plebeians and Patricians had been legalised. The nobles thus ceased to be a legally separate caste. As a consequence of the whole period of struggle which a New was concluded with the passing of the Licinian Aristocracy, law, the contest for privilege and for political power ceased to be one between the old Patricians and Plebeians. Politically and socially the wealthy Plebeian families began to stand on an equality with the Patricians, and a new aristocracy arose of the families which by custom and wealth succeeded in acquiring a sort of monopoly in the tenure of public offices. The Licinian Law was passed just before the death of Camillus, the old warrior who had overthrown Veii — whether he had or had not also dealt destruction to the Gauls. He appears to have held among the Patricians a position very much like that of the Duke of Wellington among the English Tories between 1830 and 1850. The first Plebeian consul was Lucius Sextius, the colleague of Licinius in the Tribunate. A few years earlier Rome had begun to put in practice the method to which, perhaps more than to any thing else, she owed the consolidation of her empire. The Latin city of Tusculum, a member of the League, ceased to be Admission to an independent state; but her citizens received Citizenship, the full rights of Roman citizenship, that is of the 381 BC ' Commons of Rome. They held the right of voting in the Roman Assemblies, like the inhabitants of Rome itself; with the natural result that they very soon learnt to think of them- selves as Romans, almost as a dweller in Kensington might think of himself as a Londoner. Soon afterwards, in the middle of the fourth century, began the practice of conceding to other cities the ordinary rights of Roman citizens without the' political vote, the cities at the same time surrendering their independence; the first example being the Etruscan city of Caere. Almost to the same date probably belongs the first Treaty of Rome with Carthage, which had long recovered its maritime power; a treaty in which Carthage recognised Rome as the sovereign power in Latium.