Ab urbe condita

Sextius and Licinius, experts after so many years' practice in the art of handling the plebs, in conjunction with some of their

colleagues and the consular tribune, Fabius Ambustus, brought forward the leaders of the patrician party and worried them with questions on each of the measures they were referring to the people.

“Have you,” they asked, “the audacity to demand that whilst two jugera are allotted to each plebeian, you yourselves should each occupy more than five hundred jugera, so that while a singe patrician can occupy the land of nearly three hundred citizens, the holding of a plebeian is hardly extensive enough for the roof he needs to shelter him, or the place where he is to be buried?

Is it your pleasure that the plebeians, crushed by debt, should surrender their persons to fetters and punishments sooner than that they should discharge their debts by repaying the principal? That, they should be led off in crowds from the Forum as the property of their creditors? That the houses of the nobility should be filled with prisoners, and wherever a patrician lives there should be a private dungeon?”

They were denouncing these indignities in the ears of men, apprehensive for their own safety, who listened to them with stronger indignation than the men who were speaking felt.

They went on to assert that after all there would be no limit to the seizure of land by the patricians or the murder of the plebs by the deadly usury until the plebs

elected one of the consuls from their own ranks as a guardian of their liberties.