Ab urbe condita

they took into their counsels L. Sextius, a pushing young man who regarded nothing as beyond his ambition except patrician blood.

A favourable opportunity for making innovations presented itself in the terrible pressure of debt, a burden from which the plebs did not hope for any alleviation until they had raised men of their own order to the highest authority in the State . This, they thought, was

the aim which they must devote their utmost efforts to reach, and they believed that they had already, by dint of effort, secured a foothold from which, if they pushed forward, they could secure the

highest positions, and so become the equals of the patricians in dignity as they now were in courage.

For the time being, C. Licinius and L. Sextius decided to become tribunes of the plebs; once in this office they could clear for themselves the way to all the other distinctions. All the measures which they brought forward after they were elected were directed against the power and influence of the patricians and calculated to promote the interests of the plebs One dealt with the debts, and provided that the amount paid in interest should be deducted from the

principal and the balance repaid in three equal yearly instalments, The second restricted the occupation of land and prohibited any one from holding more than five hundred jugera. The third provided that there should be no more consular tribunes elected, and that one consul should be elected from each order.

They were all questions of immense importance, which could not be settled without a tremendous struggle. The prospect of a fight over those things which excite the keenest desires of men —land, money, honours —produced consternation among the patricians. After excited discussions in the senate and in private houses, they found no better remedy than the one they had adopted in previous contests, name]y, the tribunitian veto, So they won over some of the tribunes to interpose their veto against these proposals.