Page:A history and description of Roman political institutions (IA historyanddescri00abbo).pdf/48

36 '''36. The Leges Liciniae Sextiae.''' This was the political and economic condition of the plebs which the two tribunes of the year 377, C. Licinius Stolo and L. Sextius, endeavored to relieve. They accomplished their object in 367, after ten years of agitation, by securing the passage of a, or law covering the various matters in dispute. The contents of the law are somewhat in doubt, but, if we may follow Livy and Appian, it included the following points: (1) restoration of the consulship, with the provision that one of the two consuls should always be plebeian; (2) a provision forbidding an individual to occupy more than five hundred acres of arable belonging to the state, and to pasture more than one hundred head of cattle and five hundred sheep on the common pasture land; (3) an article fixing the proportional number of free laborers and slaves to be employed on any estate; (4) a clause providing that interest already paid on debts should be deducted from the principal, and that three years should be allowed for the payment of the rest; (5) a provision that the number of priests in charge of the Sibylline books should be increased to ten, and that five of these should be plebeians.

37. Results of the Struggle. The first point in these laws marks the beginning of the end of the patricio-plebeian struggle. The other important magistracies to which plebeians had been eligible, viz., the decemvirate and the consular tribunate, were of a temporary character, and, as we have seen, the patricians had easily thwarted their efforts to attain them. From this time on, one of the incumbents of a regular magistracy must be a plebeian, and admission to the consulship foreshadowed admission to the other offices also. The law was observed in the following year by the election of L. Sextius to the consulship.