T. Lartius, and M.

§ 9. But wiser sentiments prevailed. Valerius, both of whom had been Dictators, with Menenius Agrippa, an old Patrician of popular character, were empowered to treat with the people. Still their leaders were unwilling to listen, till old Menenius addressed them in the famous fable of the Belly and the Members :

"In times of old," said he, "when every Member of the body could think for itself, and each had a separate will of its own, they all, with one consent, resolved to revolt against the Belly. They knew no reason, they said, why they should toil from morning till night in its service, while the Belly lay at its ease in the midst of all, and indolently grew fat upon their labours. Accordingly, they agreed to support it no more. The feet vowed they would carry it no longer; the hands that they would do no more work; the teeth that they would not chew a morsel of meat, even were it placed between them. Thus resolved, the Members for a time showed their spirit and kept their resolution; but soon they found, that instead of mortifying the Belly, they only undid themselves; they languished for awhile, and perceived too late that it was owing to the Belly that they had strength to work and courage to mutiny."

§ 10. The moral of this fable was plain. The people readily applied it to the Patricians and themselves; and their leaders proposed terms of agreement to the Patrician messengers. They required that the debtors who could not pay should have their debts cancelled; and that those who had been given up into slavery (addicti) should be restored to freedom. This for the past. And as a security for the future, they demanded that two of themselves should be appointed, for the sole purpose of protecting the Plebeians against the Patrician magistrates, if they acted cruelly or unjustly towards the debtors. The two officers thus to be appointed were called Tribunes of the Plebs. Their persons were to be sacred and inviolable during their year of office, whence their office is called "sacrosancta Potestas." They were never to leave the city during that time; and their houses were to be open day and night, that all who needed their aid might demand it without delay.

§ 11. This concession, apparently great, was much modified

by the fact that the Patricians insisted on the election of the Tribunes being made at the Comitia of the Centuries, in which they themselves and their wealthy clients could usually command a majority. In later times the number of the Tribunes was increased to five, and afterwards to ten. They were elected at the Comitia of the Tribes, as we shall have to notice presently. They had the privilege of attending all sittings of the Senate, though they were not considered members of that famous body. Above all, they acquired the great and perilous power of the Veto, by which any one of their number might stop any law, or annul any decree of the Senate, without cause or reason assigned. This right of Veto was called the right of Intercession.

On the spot where this treaty was made, an altar was built to Jupiter, the Causer and Banisher of Fear; for the Plebeians had gone thither in fear and returned from it in safety. The place was called Mons Sacer, or the Sacred Hill, for ever after, and the laws by which the sanctity of the tribunitian office was secured were called the Leges Sacratæ.

§ 12. The Tribunes were not properly magistrates or officers, for they had no express functions or official duties to discharge. They were simply Representatives and Protectors of the Plebs. At the same time, however, with the institution of these protective officers, the Plebeians were allowed the right of having two Ediles chosen from their own body, whose business it was to preserve order and decency in the streets, to provide for the repair of all buildings and roads there, with other functions partly belonging to police-officers, and partly to commissioners of public works.

That the election must have been so conducted is manifest from Liv. ii. 56, where he says that the object of the Publilian Law was to take away from the Patricians the power of "per Clientium suffragia creandi quos vellent Tribunos." When, therefore, Asconius (in Cornelianam, p. 76, ed. Orelli) says, “Tribuni Plebis Comitiis Curiatis creati,” and when Dionysius (vi. 89, ix. 41) follows the same account, there must be some mistake.

CHAPTER VIII.

AGRARIAN LAW. THE ELECTION OF THE TRIBUNES TRANSFERRED TO THE TRIBES.

§ 1. Sp. Cassius, Patrician, patron of the Plebeians: proposes an Agrarian Law. § 2. Nature of Agrarian Laws. § 3. The Patricians allow Law to pass. § 4. Sp. Cassius condemned for aiming at kingly power. § 5. His fall increases power of Patricians: seven Consulships of Fabii. § 6. But boldness of Tribunes also increases: a Consul impeached by Tribune Genucius, who is murdered. § 7. Volero Publilius refuses to enlist. § 8. Chosen Tribune: Publilian Law, enacting that Tribunes should be chosen by Tribes. § 9. Second Appius Claudius elected Consul to oppose Law: in vain. Five Tribunes henceforth elected at Comitia Tributa.

§ 1. THE small beginning of political independence which the Plebeians had gained by the institution of the Tribunate, seemed likely to be much furthered by the unexpected appearance of a patron of their order in the ranks of the Patricians themselves. This was Spurius Cassius, a notable man. He was three times Consul. In his second Consulship he concluded a league with the Latins, and in his third Consulship a similar league with the Hernicans, by which the united people of Rome, Latium, and the Hernicans bound themselves to check the alarming advance lately made by the Volscians. But of this we will speak in the next chapter. At present we have to treat of another remarkable act of the third Consulship of Sp. Cassius, which was the proposal of the first AGRARIAN LAW.

§ 2. Great mistakes formerly prevailed on the nature of the Roman laws familiarly termed Agrarian. It was supposed that by these laws all land was declared common property, and that at certain intervals of time the State resumed possession, and made a fresh distribution to all citizens, rich and poor. It is needless to make any remarks on the nature and consequences of such a law; sufficient it will be to say, what is now known to all, that at Rome such laws never existed, never were thought of. The lands which were to be distributed by Agrarian

laws were not private property, but the property of the State. They were, originally, those Public Lands which had been the Domain of the Kings; and which were increased whenever any city or people was conquered by the Romans, because it was an Italian practice to confiscate the lands of the conquered, in whole or in part, to the use and benefit of the conquering people.

Now at this time, as has been shown, the Patrician Burgesses in effect constituted the Populus, and they had occupied the greater part, if not all, of this Public Land. This land, as has also been said, chiefly consisted of pasturage; and it was manifest that if the Plebeians could add to their small farms, which were mostly in tillage, the right of feeding cattle upon these lands, their means would be much increased, and they were likely to become much less dependent upon the rich Patrician Burgesses.

§ 3. It is said in the Annals that Servius Tullius was author of the first Agrarian regulations. He divided, we are told, part of the domain land among the poorer Plebeians, probably at the rate of seven jugera (about 4 acres) a man; for this is the rule that we find adopted at the expulsion of the Kings." Whether these ancient assignments of land took effect, and whether the proposal of Spurius Cassius was merely intended to carry them into execution, or was a further law of the same character, we have no means of judging. On either supposition, the relief to the Plebeians would be of the same kind. And as the Patricians enjoyed the use and profit of all Public Lands that had not already been divided, it is not unnatural that they should have resisted any such law with the utmost vehemence and pertinacity.

Such indeed was the case. But Sp. Cassius, the proposer of the law, was Consul for the third time (486 B.C.). His services to the State had been great; his official power was great. The remembrance of the Secession to the Sacred Mount was yet fresh; and the law, after passing the Centuriate Comitia, was not rejected by the Patrician Burgesses in their Curiæ. They calculated that it would be more easy to thwart the execution of

"Plin. Hist. Nat. xviii. 4.

the law, than to prevent its being passed. And they calculated rightly.

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§ 4. But though the Patricians had yielded thus far, they only waited for an opportunity of seeking vengeance. When Sp. Cassius laid down his Consulship, that opportunity arrived. It was said, that in the Leagues formed with the Latins and Hernicans he had granted terms too favourable to these people, and was seeking to make himself despotic lord of Rome by means of foreigners, as Tarquin had done. It appears that there was some colour for this last accusation. Indeed, it is not unlikely, that a man such as Spurius Cassius may have contemplated overthrowing the patrician Oligarchy, and making himself a King like Servius Tullius. But whether his views were simply ambitious, or whether they were directed to the true interests of the community, the very name of KING had become hateful to Roman ears. Sp. Cassius was accused by Kæso Fabius, then head of one of the most powerful patrician Gentes. He was tried, no doubt before a patrician court, found guilty, and condemned to die the death of a traitor. He was scourged and beheaded, and his house rased to the ground.

Such was the end of Spurius Cassius, a man little mentioned in the Annals of Rome, and who would have been utterly forgotten, were it not that the bare record of his acts at home and abroad, the Agrarian law and the treaties concluded by him with the Latins and Hernicans, have worthily preserved his name. His enterprise and his end have been aptly compared with those of Agis at Sparta, or of Marino Faliero at Venice, who like him endeavoured to overthrow the power of the close and selfish oligarchies to which they respectively belonged.

§ 5. It is remarkable that for seven successive years after this event, a Fabius appears as one of the two Consuls; and we constantly find one Consul in the interest of the high patrician party, while the other indicates more popular sentiments. These signs, together with some indistinct notices in two of our ancient authorities, led Niebuhr to conclude that at this time the Patricians obtained the power of electing one of the Consuls at their own Curiate Assembly, while in some years they even ap

See Chapt. ix. § 6.

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Arnold, Hist. of Rome, i. p. 163.