CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



made to the plebeians in the constitution and 

 powers of the Ctnnitia Centuriata being partially 

 counterbalanced by the new powers conferred on 

 .Id burgess body, the Comitia Curiata viz. 

 the rinht of confirming or rejecting the measures 



d in the Lower Assembly. Towards the new 



ibly, therefore, it stood somewhat in the 

 relation in which the House of Lords stands to 

 the House of Commons, but the analogy must 

 not be pushed too far ; it is only general. The 

 character of the senate altered under the action 

 of the same influences. Although it never had 

 been formally a patrician body although ad- 

 mission to it under the kings was obtainable 

 simply by the exercise of the royal prerogative, 



>r.i< tii ally, 299 out of the 300 senators had 

 always been patricians ; but after the institution 

 of the republic, we are told that the blanks in the 

 senate were filled up en masse from the ranks of 

 the plebeians, so that of the 300 members less than 

 half were fxitrfs ('full burgesses'), while 164 were 



>////'(* added to the rollO, hence the official 

 designation of the senators, patres et conscripti 

 (' full burgesses and enrolled')- 



As yet, however, it is to be observed the 

 plebeians were rigorously excluded from the 

 magistracies. They could vote i.e. they could 



ise legislative powers but they had no share 

 in the administration. None but patricians were 

 eligible for the consulship, for the office of 

 qujestor, or for any other executive function, 

 while the priestly colleges rigidly closed their 

 doors against the new burgesses. The struggle, 

 therefore, between the two orders went on 

 with ever-increasing violence. The abuse of 

 the Agfr PuMicusihzt is, such portion of 

 the land of a conquered people as had been 

 taken from them, annexed to the Roman state, 

 and let out originally to the patricians at a 

 fixed rent, together with the frightful severity of 

 the law of debtor and creditor, the effect of which 

 was all but to ruin the small plebeian ' farmers,' 

 who constituted, perhaps, the most numerous sec- 

 tion of the burgesses finally led to a great revolt 

 of the plebs, known as the 'Secession to the 

 Sacred Hill,' the date assigned to which is 494 

 RC. On that occasion the plebeian farmer- 

 soldiers, who had just returned from a campaign 

 against the Volscians, marched in military order 

 out of Rome, under their plebeian officers, to a 

 mount near the confluence of the Anio with the 

 Tiber, and threatened to found there a new city, 

 if the patricians did not grant them magistrates 

 from their own order ; the result was, the institu- 

 tion of the famous plebeian tribunate a sort of 

 rival power to the patrician consulate, by means 

 of which the plebeians, at least, hoped to be 

 shielded from the high-handed oppressions of the 

 wealthy. To the same period belongs the institu- 

 tion of the adiles. A little later, the Comitia 

 Tributa emerged into political prominence. This 

 was really the same body of burgesses as formed 

 the Comitia Centuriata, but with the important 

 difference, that the number of votes was not in 

 proportion to a property classification. The poor 

 plebeian was on a footing of equality with the 

 rich patrician ; each gave his vote, and nothing 

 more. Hence the Comitia Tributa virtually 

 became a plebeian assembly, and when the 

 plebiscite (' resolutions of the plebs ' carried at 

 these comitid) acquired (as they did by the 

 102 



Valerian Laws passed after the abolition of the 

 Decemvirate) a legally binding character, the 

 victory of the 'multitude' in the sphere of legisla- 

 tion was complete. The semi-historical traditions of 

 this period for we are now (fifth century B.C.) be- 

 ginning to emerge out of the mythical era unmis- 

 takably shew that the institution of the tribunate 

 led to something very like a civil war between the 

 two orders. Such is the real significance of the 

 legends of Caius Marcus, surnamed Coriolanus, the 

 surprise of the Capitol by the Sabine marauder, 

 Appius Herdonius, at the head of a motley 

 force of political outlaws, refugees, and slaves ; 

 the migrations of numerous Roman burgesses 

 with their families to more peaceful communities ; 

 the street- fights ; the assassinations of plebeian 

 magistrates ; the annihilation by the Etruscans of 

 the Fabian gens, who had left Rome to escape 

 the vengeance of their order for having passed 

 over to the side of the plebeians ; and the atro- 

 cious judicial murder of Spurius Cassius, an 

 eminent patrician, who had also incurred the 

 deadly hatred of his order, by proposing an 

 agrarian law that would have checked the per- 

 nicious prosperity of the capitalists and over- 

 grown landholders. Finally, 462 B.C. a measure 

 was brought forward by the tribune C. Terentil- 

 lius Ursa, to appoint a commission of ten men to 

 draw up a code of laws for the purpose of protect- 

 ing the plebeians against the arbitrary decisions 

 of the patrician magistrates. The result was 

 the famous code known as the Twelve Tables 

 at first Ten, to which two were afterwards 

 added the appointment of the Decemviri, and 

 the abolition of all the ordinary magistrates, 

 both patrician and plebeian. The govern- 

 ment by decemvirs, however, lasted only two 

 years ; according to tradition, the occasion of its 

 overthrow was the attempt of the principal decem- 

 vir, Appius Claudius, to possess himself by vio- 

 lence of the beautiful daughter of Virginius, a 

 Roman centurion ; but the real cause was doubt- 

 less political, though the cruel lust of a Claudius 

 may have afforded the occasion ; the result of 

 which was the restoration of the pre-decemviral 

 state of things the patrician consulate and the 

 plebeian tribunate. 



2. External History. The external history of 

 Rome, from the establishment of the republic to 

 the abolition of the decemvirate, is, it need 

 hardly be said, purely military. The Romans 

 fought incessantly with their neighbours. Long 

 before the close of the regal period they had 

 acquired, as we have seen, the leadership of 

 Latium, and in all the early wars of the republic 

 they were assisted by their allies and kinsmen ; 

 sometimes also by other nations as, for example, 

 the Hernicans, between whom and the Romans 

 and Latins a league was formed by Spurius 

 Cassius in the beginning of the fifth century B.C. 

 The most important of these wars were those with 

 the southern Etruscans, especially the Veientines, 

 in which, however, the Romans made no way, 

 and even suffered terrible disasters, of which the 

 legend concerning the destruction of the Fabian 

 gens on the Cremera (477 B.C.) may be taken as a 

 distorted representation; the contemporaneous 

 wars with the Volscians, in which Coriolanus is 

 the most distinguished figure ; and those with the 

 ^Equi (458 B.C.), to which belongs the fine legend 

 of Cincinnatus. 



