Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/90

76 in effect provided that in the meantime every one who had been curule aedile, praetor, or consul was to have a seat and vote in the senate, and should at the next revision be placed on the senatorial list, or at any rate be omitted only for such a cause as would suffice for the expulsion of a senator. Below the rank of curule aedile, former plebeian tribunes and aediles and ex-quaestors were naturally considered, and had a better chance of appointment than those who had never held any office.

Consequences of the Law. — Under these circumstances the plebeians not only became the peers of the patricians in official prestige, but after a time gained a majority in the senate. They had the requisite political training and the connections, as well as the wealth, and prepared the way for the entrance of their sons into office and into the senate. Thus they founded an official nobility which, together with the patrician nobility, constituted a governing class, and whose family names appear in the lists of magistrates to the end of the republic.

Besides contributing to the development of a plebeian nobility, the Ovinian law greatly diminished the power and influence of the consuls, helped to make the censorship in some respects the supreme office in the state, and formed one of the chief steps in the advancement of the senate to a position independent of, and above, the magistrates.

The Poetelian Law. — When the plebeian aristocracy had been so successful politically, it was eminently just that their allies, the ordinary and poor people, should be granted some permanent relief. In 326 the ancient form of contract (nexum, p. 41) was changed by the Poetelian law. No citizen could henceforward be led away to bondage by virtue of such a contract, but only upon the sentence of jurymen; and every one who on oath declared himself solvent was to