Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/391

 :nAP. VII. THE PLEBS ENTER THE CITY. 385 Tarquin. The defeat of royalty was the defeat of the plebs. The patricians attempted to take away from them all the conquests which they had made under the kings. One of the first acts was to take from them the lands that Servius had given them ; and we must remark, the only reason given for despoiling them thus, was that they were plebeians.' The patricians, therefore, re- stored the old principle, which required that hereditary religion alone should establish the right of property, and which did not permit a man without religion and without ancestors to exercise any right over the soil. The lams that Servius had made for the plebs were also withdrawn. If the system of classes and the comi- tia centuriata were not abolished by the patricians, it was because the state of war did not allow them to dis- organize the army, and also because they understood how to surround the comitia with formalities such that they could always control the elections. They dared not take from the plebs the title of citizens, and allowed them to figure in the census. But it is clear that, while allowing the plebs to form a part of the city, they shared with them neither political rights nor religion, nor the laws. In name, the plebs remained in the oity ; in fiict, they were excluded. Let us not unreasonably accuse the patricians, or suppose that they coldly conceived the design of op- pressing and crushing the plebs. The patrician who "was descended from u sacred family, and felt himself the heir to a worship, understood no other social system than that whose rules had been traced by the ancient religion. In his eyes the constituent element of every ' Cassius Heinina, in Nonius, Book II. v. Plevitas. 25