Ab urbe condita

“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.

The tribunes of the plebs were now objects of contempt since their power was shattering itself by their own veto. There could be no fair or just administration as long as the executive power was in the hands of the other party, while they had only the right of protesting by their veto; nor would the plebs ever have an equal share in the government till the executive authority was thrown open to them; nor would it be enough, as some people might suppose, to allow plebeians to be voted for at the election of consuls.

Unless it was made obligatory for one consul at least to be chosen from the plebs, no plebeian would ever become consul. Had they forgotten that after they had decided that consular tribunes should be elected in preference to consuls in order that the highest office might be open to plebeians, not a single plebeian was elected consular tribune for four-andforty years?

What did they suppose? Did they imagine that the men who had been accustomed to fill all the eight places when consular tribunes were elected would of their own free will consent to share two places with the plebs, or that they would allow the path to the consulship to be opened when they had so long blocked the one to the consular tribuneship?

The people would have to secure by law what they could not gain by favour, and one of the two consulships would have to be placed beyond dispute as open to the plebs alone, for if it were open to a contest it would always be the prey of the stronger party.

The old, oft-repeated taunt could no longer be made now that there were no men amongst the plebs suitable for curule magistracies. Was the government carried on with less spirit and energy after the consulship of P. Licinius Calvus., who was the first plebeian to be elected to that post, than during the years when only patricians held the office?