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since in the case of all three of the laws under consideration distinct mention is made of the assembly of the plebs, we seem to be safe in applying the principle to the plebeian tribal assembly. In fact, the patricio-plebeian tribal assembly seems to have been largely an electoral and judicial and not a legislative body until the close of the fourth century, since the first legislative enactment of the comitia tributa, of which we have any record, belongs to the year 332. If the action of this body required the preliminary approval of the patrician senators, that restriction must have been removed in 287. In other words, the Hortensian law applied the same principle to both tribal assemblies, as, on general grounds, we should have expected it to do.

One must not assume that the passage of these three laws gave the popular assemblies practical control of legislation and robbed the senate of all its powers in this field of activity, or, to put it in another way, one must not infer that the passage of the lex Hortensia marked the final triumph of democracy over aristocracy. In point of fact, no one but a magistrate could bring a bill before one of the popular assemblies for action, and since, as we shall see later, the senate found means of maintaining its control over the magistrates, very few bills came before the popular assemblies of which the senate did not approve, and a way was generally found to secure the passage of bills which the senate favored. It was the patrician element in the senate, not the senate itself, which lost power and prestige at this time. In other words, the Hortensian law robbed the patricians of the last exclusive political power of any importance which they possessed, but the mantle of the old patriciate fell, not on the shoulders of the democracy, but on those of the new nobilitas.

51. The Policy of Appius Claudius Caecus. Attention has already been called to the fact (p. 48) that the causes of the distress among the lower classes were partly economical, partly political, and we have considered some of the efforts which were made in this period to remove their financial difficulties. These reforms were intended to help poor debtors, and especially, we may suppose, farmers with small holdings. The political movement toward the close of the fourth century B.C., of which Appius Claudius Caecus is the central figure, removed in part the political disabilities of another element in the community, that is, of the freedmen and of freemen with less than two acres of land. Probably neither of these classes was enrolled in the tribes at this time, while the proletarii, that is, the citizens who owned no land or had less than two acres, were massed in the centuriate assembly in a single century, which exercised practically no influence in a body containing one hundred and ninety-three centuries.

Appius Claudius, as censor in 312, made a great change, therefore, in the composition of the popular assemblies, when he admitted landless freemen and freedmen to the tribes, and in fact to any tribe which an individual might choose, and when he also enrolled men belonging to these two categories in such "classes" as their property, in whatever form it might be, entitled them to enter. By this procedure wealth in any form was substituted for landed property as the basis of admission to a tribe and of classification in the centuriate assembly. By this change artisans and tradesmen were to be enrolled in the popular assemblies, and those bodies were likely to lose the stability which an organization composed solely of farmers or landowners is likely to have. The admission of freedmen further increased the danger. Appius violated tradition in

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a still more striking way by putting the names of freedmen's sons in the list of senators, which, under the Ovinian law, it was his duty as censor to draw up. An equally revolutionary proceeding was his conduct in securing the election of Cn. Flavius, the son of a freedman, as curule aedile in 304. We have not space to consider at length the motives of Appius in making these changes. The question is one of high dispute. He was certainly far-sighted, and saw that Rome was soon to be mistress of Italy. He may well have felt that by strengthening the hands of the magistrate he would secure for her that firmness and promptness of action, and that consistency in policy, which would be essential to her in her new rôle. By lowering the prestige of the nobilitas in the senate, and of the petty landed aristocracy in the assemblies, as his changes certainly did, he increased the importance of the magistracies, and indirectly accomplished his purpose by essentially the same method as that which Caesar adopted two centuries and a half later. The independent course which he took during his censorship was in harmony with the view which he held with reference to the magistracies. In fact, his policy was reactionary. It involved a return to the magistrate of many of the powers of which two hundred years had robbed him. This is not to say that his motives were purely patriotic, or that he had a single purpose in mind. A fine patrician contempt for the plebeian nobility in the senate and for the bourgeois landholders of the assemblies, who had first pushed their way into a position of equality with their betters, and were now themselves following the policy of exclusion toward their less fortunate fellow-townsmen, seems to have played some part in his mind. But the Romans were not yet ready for such revolutionary changes.

A conservative reaction came in 304.

Some regard,

however, was paid to the changes made by Appius. Q. Fabius Rullianus, one of the censors of that year, allowed landless freemen and freedmen to remain in the tribal organization, but assigned them to the four city tribes, which were so large that individual votes were of comparatively little avail. The sons of freedmen were again treated as ineligible to the senate or to a magistracy, but in other respects they enjoyed the political rights of citizens. As a result of the whole incident the position of the senate and of the nobilitas was strengthened. It had proved itself more powerful than its enemies. Two achievements of Appius of a permanent character should be mentioned, before we leave the discussion of his career, viz., the part which he played in securing the publication of the calendar and of the legis actiones in 304, and the construction of the via Appia in 312. Exactly what happened in 304 is not clear from the words of Livy,- civile ius repositum in penetralibus pontificum (Cn. Flavius) evulgavit fastosque circa forum in albo proposuit (IX. 46. 5). The general method of procedure in civil cases and the calendar had both been given in the laws of the twelve tables. The service which Flavius rendered to the people consisted perhaps, as some writers maintain, in the publication of the pertinent contents of the laws of the twelve tables in book form, or he may have set down for general use a list of court days and a complete set of the forms which were to be employed in civil cases. Whatever the exact truth of the case may have been, information essential to everyday life, which had formerly been confined to a few, became the common property of all. To Appius, Rome was also indebted for the first of those great military roads which proved such a powerful factor in extending Roman commerce and Roman ideas, and in facilitating the transfer of troops to all parts

of the world.

None of his achievements shows more clearly the correctness with which he foresaw the future of Rome and her needs as a world-power.

52. The Conquest of Central Italy. The period which is under discussion in this chapter is one of rapid external development. Rome waged war with all the peoples of central Italy. Of them all the Samnites resisted her claim to supremacy with the greatest valor and stubbornness. When the Romans and Samnites were first brought into close relations in the middle of the fourth century, they apparently agreed to a peaceful division among themselves of certain territory belonging to their weaker neighbors. This seems to be the correct explanation of the course of events of the years 343-1, which one tradition exalts into a war. The ambitious spirit of expansion which Rome showed in dealing with smaller states, supported as she was now by Samnium, suggests also a sufficient explanation of the desperate struggle which the Latin communities at once made to break her power. The result of the war, which followed, and lasted from 340 to 338, was most disastrous to the Latins. Although they were assisted by the Campanians and Volscians, they were defeated and lost many of the rights which they had enjoyed since the adoption of the foedus Cassianum in 493. Rome made a separate treaty with each one of the Latin communities, with the express purpose of preventing future confederations between them. The terms adopted varied from state to state, but all the members of the old league were apparently deprived of the right to trade with one another and the right to intermarry. Both Rome and Samnium were eagerly seeking to extend their influence in Campanian and Volscian territory. A contest between the two powers was inevitable. The immediate cause of the war between them