Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/393

 CHAP. Vn. TIIJ PLEBS EXTEB THE CITY. 387 fcUowed that the whole plebeian class were placed b(*- yond the reach of social laws. The patricians then established a government con- formable to their own principles; but they had not dreamed of establishing one for the plebs. The patri- cians had not the courage to drive the plebeians from Rome, but they no longer found the means of organizing them into a regular society. We thus see, in the midst of Rome, thousands of f^imilies for which there ex- isted no fixed laws, no social order, no magistrates. The city, the popuhis, — that is to say, the patrician society, with the client that had remained to it, — arose powerful, organized, majestic. About it lived a plebeian multi- tude, which was not a people, and did not form a body. The consuls, the chiefs of the patrician city, maintained order in this confused population ; the plebeians obeyed: feeble, generally poor, they bent under the power of the patrician body. The problem that was to decide the future of Rome was this : How can the plebs become a regular society ? Now, the patricians, governed by the rigorous prin- ples of their religion, saw only one means of resolving this problem ; this was to adopt the plebs, as clientsj, into the sacred organization of tiie gentes. It .ippeara that one attempt was made in this direction. The question of debts, which agitated Rome at this period, can only be explained, if we see in it the more grave question of clientship and slavery. The Roman plebs. robbed of their lands, were no longer able to support themselves. The patricians calculated that, by the sacrifice of a little money, they could bring this poor class into their hands. The plebeian begin to borrow. In borrowing, he gave himself up to the creditor — sold himself. It was so much a sale that it was a transao-