Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/397

 CHAP. VII, THE PLEBS ENTER THE CITY. 391 ments of a city. The plebs saw clearly that by being more independent they were not happier; that they did not form a more regular society than at Rome ; and .that the problem, whose solution was so important to them, was not solved. They had gained nothing by leaving Rome ; it was not in the isolation of the Sacred Mount that they could find the laws and the riglits to which they aspired. It was found, therefore, that the plebs and patricians, though they had almost nothing in common, could not live without each other. They came together and concluded a treaty of alliance. This treaty ap- pears to have been made on the same terms as those which terminate a war between two diflferent peoples. Plebeians and patricians were indeed neither the same people nor the same city. By this treaty the patrician did not agree that the plebeian should make a part of the religious and political city ; it does not appear that the plebs demanded i(. They agreed merely that in the future the plebs, having been organized into some- thing like a regular society, should have chiefs taken from their own number. This is the origin of the tribuneship of the plebs — an entirely new institution, which resembled nothing that the city had known before. The power of the tribunes was not of the same na- ture as the authority of the magistrates ; it was not derived from the city worship. The tribune performed no religious ceremony. He was elected without the auspices, and the consent of the gods was not neces- sary to create him.' He had neither curule chair, nor purple I'obe, nor cro^vn of leaves, nor any of those
 * Dionysius, X. Plutarch, Rom. Quest., 8i.