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REPUBLIC] plebeian organization was materially advanced by the Publilian

law of 471, which appears to have formally recognized as lawful the plebeian concilia, and established also the tribune's right cum plebe agere, i.e. to propose and carry resolutions in them. These assemblies were tributa, or, in other words, the voting in them took place not by curies or centuries but by tribes. In them, lastly, after the Publilian law, if not before, the tribunes were annually elected. By this law the foundations were laid both of the powerful concilia plebis of later days and also of the legislative and judicial prerogatives of the tribunes. The patricians maintained indeed that resolutions (plebiscita) carried by tribunes in the concilia plebis were not binding on their order, but the moral weight of such resolutions, whether they affirmed a general principle or pronounced sentence of condemnation on some single patrician, was no doubt considerable.

The next stage in the struggle is marked by the attempt to substitute a public written law for unwritten usage.

The proposal of C. Terentilius Arsa (462 ) to appoint a plebeian commission to draw up laws restricting the powers of the consuls was resolutely opposed by the patricians. but after ten years of bitter party strife a compromise was effected. A commission of ten patricians was appointed, who should frame and publish a code of law binding equally

on both the orders. These decemviri were to be the sole and supreme magistrates for the year, and the law of appeal was suspended in their favour. The code which they promulgated, the famous XII. Tables, owed little of its importance to any novelties or improvements contained in its provisions. For the most part it seems merely to have reaffirmed existing usages and laws (see ). But it imposed, as it was intended to do, a check on the arbitrary administration of justice by the magistrates. With the publication of the code the proper work of the decemvirs was finished; nevertheless, for the next year a fresh decemvirate was elected, and it is conceivable that the intention was permanently to substitute government by an irresponsible patrician “council of ten” for the old constitution. However this may have been, the tyranny of the decemvirs themselves was fatal to the continuance of their power. We are told of a second secession of the plebs, this time to the Janiculum, and of negotiations with the senate, the result of which was the enforced abdication of the decemvirs. The plebs joyfully chose for themselves tribunes, and in the comitia centuriata two consuls were created. But this restoration of the old régime was accompanied by legislation which

made it an important crisis in the history of the struggle between the orders. With the fall of the decemvirate this struggle enters upon a new phase. The tribunes appear as at once more powerful and more strictly constitutional magistrates; the plebeian concilia take their place by the side of the older assemblies; and finally this improved machinery is used not simply in self-defence against patrician oppression but to obtain complete political equality. This change was no doubt due in part to circumstances outside legislation, above all to the expansion of the Roman state, which swelled the numbers and added to the social importance of the plebs as compared with the dwindling forces of the close corporation of patrician gentes. Still the legislation of 449 clearly involved more than a restoration of the old form of government. The Valerio-Horatian laws, besides reaffirming the right of appeal and the inviolability of the tribunes, improved the position of the plebeian assemblies by enacting that plebiscita passed in them, and, as seems probable, approved by the patres, should be binding on patricians as well as plebeians.

By this law the tribunes obtained a recognized initiative in legislation. Henceforth the desired reforms were introduced and carried by tribunes in what were now styled comitia tributa, and, if sanctioned by the patres, became laws of the state. From this period, too, must be dated the legalization at any rate of the tribune's right to impeach any citizen before the assembly of the tribes. Henceforward there is no question of the tribune's right to propose to the plebs to impose a fine, or of the validity of the sentence when passed. The efficiency of these new weapons of attack was amply proved by the subsequent course of the struggle. Only a few years after the Valerio-Horatian legislation came the lex Canuleia, itself a plebiscitum

(445 ), by which mixed marriages between patricians and plebeians were declared lawful, and the social Canuleia. exclusiveness of the patriciate broken down. In the same year with this measure, and like it in the interests primarily of the wealthier plebeians, a vigorous attack commenced on the

patrician monopoly of the consulate, and round this stronghold of patrician ascendancy the conflict raged until the passing of the Licinian laws in 367. The original proposal of the tribune Gaius Canuleius, in 445, that the people should be allowed to elect a plebeian consul was evaded by a compromise. The senate resolved that for the next year, in the stead of consuls, six military tribunes with consular-powers should be elected, and that the new office should be open to patricians and plebeians alike. The consulship was thus for the time saved from pollution, as the patricians phrased it, but the growing strength of the plebs is shown by the fact that in fifty years out of the seventy-eight

between 444 and 366 they succeeded in obtaining the election of consular tribunes rather than of consuls. Despite, however, these discouragernents, the patricians fought on. Each year they strove to secure the creation of consuls rather than consular tribunes, and failing this strained every nerve to secure for their own order at least a majority among the latter.

Even the institution of the censorship (435), though rendered desirable by the increasing importance and complexity of the census, was, it is probable, due in part to their desire to discount beforehand the threatened loss of the consulship by diminishing its powers. Other causes, too, helped to protract the struggle. Between the wealthier plebeians, who were ambitious of high office, and the poorer, whose minds were set rather on allotments of land, there was a division of interest of which the patricians were not slow to take advantage, and to this must be added the pressure of war. The death struggle with Veii and the sack of Rome by the Gauls absorbed for the

time all the energies of the community. In 377, however, two of the tribunes, C. Licinius Stolo (see ) and L. Sextius, came forward with proposals which united all sections of the plebs in their support. Their proposals were as follows: (1) that consuls and not consular tribunes be elected; (2) that one consul at least should be a plebeian; (3) that the priestly college, which had the charge of the Sibylline books, should consist of ten members instead of two, and that of these half should be plebeians; (4) that no single citizen should hold in occupation more than 500 acres of the common lands, or pasture upon them more than 100 head of cattle and 500 sheep; (5) that all landowners should employ a certain amount of free as well as slave labour on their estates; (6) that interest already paid on debts should be deducted from the principal, and the remainder paid off in three years. The three last proposals were obviously intended to meet the