Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/403

 CHAP. VII. THE PLEBS ENTER THE CITY, 397 each other, not Iiaving — so to speak — common ideas. If the patrician spoke in the name of religion and the laws, the plebeian replied that he did not know this hereditary i-eligion, or the laws that flowed from it. If the patrician alleged a sacred custom, the plebeian replied in the name of the law of nature. They re- proached each other with injustice ; each was just ac- cording to his own principles, and unjust according to the principles and beliefs of the other. The assembly of the curies and the reunion of the patres seemed to the plebeian odious privileges. In the assembly of the tribes the patrician sa*v a meeting condemned by re- ligion. The consulship was for the plebs an arbitrary and tyrannical authority ; the tribuneship, in the eyes of the patrician, was something impious, abnormal, con- trary to all principles; he could not understand this sort of chief, who was not a priest, and who was elected without auspices. The tribuneship deranged the sa- cred order of the city ; it was what a heresy is in re- ligion — the public worship was destroyed. "The gods will be against us," said a patrician, " so long as we have among us this ulcer, which is eating us up, and which extends its corruption to the whole social body." The history of Rome, during a century, was tilled with similar discords between these two peoples, who did not seem to speak the same language. The patricians persisted in keeping the plebs without the body poli- tic, and the plebs established institutions of their own. The duality of the Roman poi^ulation became from day to day more manifest. And yet there was something which formed a tie between these two peoples: this was war. The patri- cians were careful not to deprive themselves of sol- diers. They had left to the plebeians the title of citi