assigns to the period immediately after the expulsion of the kings.

Class preju- .

The king had held his position for life. dice, therefore, would not count for much in his case. His interests also lay in conciliating the plebeians. The consul, who was chosen from the ranks of the patricians, held office for a year only, and then returned to their number. Consequently his action must have been largely influenced by prejudice in favor of the patricians. We are not surprised, therefore, that the plebeians found their position intolerable under the new chief magistrates. The condition of foreign affairs, however, helped them to wrest from the aristocracy some protection against the patrician consuls. In 494, when Rome was engaged in a fierce struggle with the Aequi and Volsci, the plebeian soldiers refused to march against the enemy, and took up their position on a hill a few miles from the city. The patricians proposed a compromise at once, and the plebeians returned to their duties on condition that they should be allowed to elect annual officials, perhaps five in number, with sufficient power to protect them against the autocratic action of the consuls. The new officials took their title of tribuni plebis from the plebeian tribuni militum whom the people had chosen as their leaders in the secession. We do not know how the tribunes were chosen at the outset, but probably the plebeians were divided into curiae, and the new officials were elected in a loosely organized plebeian curiate assembly. They were to be assisted in the performance of their duties by two aediles plebei. From this time forth the plebeians had political leaders of their own, and the great struggle between the orders begins with their appearance, although important political results cannot be seen for a generation or two.

28. Improvement in the Organization of the Plebeians. For a period of fifty years this struggle centers successively about three points. These three points were the improvement of the plebeian organization, the more equitable division of the ager publicus, and the codification and publication of the customary law. At the outset, as has been stated above, the tribunes were apparently elected in a plebeian curiate assembly roughly modeled after the patrician comitia curiata. To this body all those outside of the old gentes who were not slaves were probably admitted. In this organization the patricians may well have exerted a strong influence through their clientes. To eliminate this influence, in 471, in accordance with a law incorrectly attributed by tradition to Volero Publilius, the plebeians were organized on the tribal basis, and the election of tribunes was turned over to the newly constituted plebeian tribal assembly, and to this organization probably plebeian landowners only were admitted.

29. Agrarian Agitation. Under the monarchy the disposal of land gained in war was left to the king (p. 15). His fairly impartial attitude towards all classes would lead him to make arrangements at least tolerable for the plebeians. But the patrician senate and consul inherited the king's power in this matter, and the plebeians gained little from the new territory which their own valor had helped to secure. They suffered not only financially, but also politically, from this state of things. Membership in the classes, on which the centuriate organization was based, depended on the ownership of land. Now, if no new land was thrown open to the plebeians, as they increased in number from generation to generation, the average holdings of each one of them would decrease, and plebeians would drop into lower classes, or become landless. This

was the state of things which led Spurius Cassius, himself a patrician, to advocate the assignment of certain conquered territory to the plebeians. His proposition, which tradition assigns to the year 486, brought no immediate results, but, as Livy notices (II. 41.3), it marks the beginning of an agrarian agitation which went on to the close of the republican period, the first milestone of which was the lex Icilia, so called (Liv. III. 31. 1), of 456, which provided for the division among the plebeians of the ager publicus on the Aventine.

30. The Decemvirate. The third great achievement of the plebs during the period under consideration, the publication of the laws of the twelve tables, was the result of a long and bitter struggle. The first proposition looking to this end is said (Liv. III. 9. 5) to have been made by the tribune C. Terentilius Harsa in 462, and in 451 a compromise between the two parties was arranged, to the effect that the consuls and tribunes should alike give place to a commission of ten men (decemviri legibus scribundis), who should not only exercise the functions of chief magistrates, but should be empowered to publish a code of laws binding on the whole community. The commission of the first year drew up ten tables, but left their task unfinished at the end of their term of office. The commission of the second year, so the story goes, took up the work where its predecessor had left off, but its conduct was so overbearing that the plebeians withdrew to the Aventine, and the decemvirs were forced out of office. The real course of events cannot be determined with certainty, but the appearance of plebeian names in the list of decemvirs for the second year makes it probable that a part of the second commission was plebeian, that certain changes were proposed which the patricians would not accept, and that

they drove the commission out of office. The withdrawal of the plebeians may be accounted for by their anger at the course which the patricians took, or by the fact that after the overthrow of the decemvirs they were left without any adequate protection, since the tribunate had been suspended or abolished. It is worth noticing incidentally that if this explanation of the matter is correct, the decemvirate was the first important magistracy to which plebeians were admitted. Whatever the truth of the whole matter may have been, we know that the plebs demanded and secured, as the price of their return, the restoration of the tribunate, and the concession of certain rights which the conservative leaders Valerius and Horatius secured for them. Livy characterizes the body of laws which the decemvirs prepared as fons omnis publici privatique iuris. In point of fact, however, the primary importance of the whole incident lay in the publication of the method of procedure to be adopted, especially in civil cases. The only laws of constitutional importance which the code seems to have contained were those forbidding privilegia, granting the right of appeal in case of a heavy fine (probably a reaffirmation of the lex Aternia Tarpeia and the lex Menenia Sestia of 454 and 452 respectively), giving to the comitia centuriata the sole right of passing sentence in capital cases, and providing that a measure adopted by the populus nullified all earlier constitutional or legal provisions in conflict with it.

31. The Leges Valeriae Horatiae. The patricians carried out faithfully the promises which had been made in their behalf. In 449 the consuls Valerius and Horatius secured the passage of a law guaranteeing to citizens the right of appeal in cases of life and death. This enactment was in a way a repetition of the lex Valeria and of one of the

provisions of the twelve tables, but the suspension of the right of appeal during the existence of the decemvirate justified the repetition. The dictatorship must have been exempted from the action of this law. Another law of the same year established the tribunate on a surer basis than ever. A still more important piece of legislation, whose passage Valerius and Horatius secured, was an enactment with reference to the validity of plebiscita. Livy summarizes (III. 55. 3) its contents in this wise: quod tributim plebes iussisset populum teneret. It is impossible, however, that the unsupported action of the plebeian tribal assembly should have been binding on the whole people. The fact that it was necessary to secure the approval of the senate in the case of the Licinian laws in 367 (Liv. VI. 42. 9) points to the probability that, after the passage of the leges Valeriae Horatiae, the action of the plebeian tribal assembly acquired the force of law, in case the auctoritas patrum was secured. The constitutional importance of this ValerioHoratian measure lies in the fact that it gave to the tribune, the plebeian leader, the right to initiate legislation, and to plebeian political aspirations the strength which came to them through their formulation by a legally recognized legislative assembly. It will be seen that this action involves a complete change in the nature of the tribunate. It gives a positive character to it for the first time. The importance of the negative functions of that office also was augmented shortly before the establishment of the decemvirate by the increase of the number of tribunes to ten. This increase made it possible for them to extend their protective power over a greater number of plebeians. The great constitutional gains which the plebeians made during the period under consideration, from the first to the second secession, bear a close relation to the fact that Rome was