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The young Greeks born in Saguntum flocked about her to learn the manners and customs of Athens, which was their perpetual dream. The evil tongues in the city called her Sónnica the Cyprian, but the plebs who were the recipients of her charity, and the small merchants who never appealed to her without result, entitled her Sónnica the rich, and they were ready to fight those who spoke ill of her.
After the subjection of Alba, the head of the Latin Confederacy, great numbers were transferred to Rome, and received settlements on the Caelian Hill, and were kept under submission to the patricians. As the Roman conquests extended, their numbers increased, until they formed the larger part of the population. They were called plebs, or commonalty, and had no political privileges whatever.
But the senate refused to sanction this proposal, and ten years elapsed ere it was carried into effect years of vehement strife between the orders, and variously agitated moreover by wars and internal troubles. With equal obstinacy the party of the nobles hindered the concession of the law in the senate, and the plebs nominated again and again the same men as tribunes.
Throwing Open of Marriage and of Magistracies Military Tribunes with Consular Powers Nothing shows so clearly the defencelessness of the clan-nobility when opposed to the united plebs, as the fact that the fundamental principle of the exclusive party the invalidity of marriage between patricians and plebeians fell at the first blow scarcely four years after the decemviral revolution.
Then there would be the chariot races and gladiatorial combats; heavy betting on these events had been in progress for some time all over the city among the wealthy patricians as well as among the impoverished plebs; the respective merits of the blues, the greens, the reds, and the yellows were the subject of heated discussions, and Caius Nepos was glad to note that more than a suspicion of antagonism was aroused between his guests in the defence of their respective choice.
Hortensius Martius, the perfumed exquisite, was now like an angry cockbird on the defence, whilst Escanes, taller and stronger than he, was clenching his fists, trying to keep up that outward semblance of patrician decorum which the dignity of his caste demanded in the presence of the plebs.
But that faith in an ideal, which is the foundation of all the power and of all the impotence of democracy, had come to be closely associated in the minds of the Romans with the tribunate of the plebs; and we do not need to recall the case of Cola Rienzi in order to perceive that, however unsubstantial might be the advantage thence arising to the multitude, it could not be abolished without a formidable convulsion of the state.
Moreover, it lay in the power of the tribunate of the people through a single word of a single tribune to restrain the adoption of a resolution by the community, which otherwise by virtue of its sovereign right might have without ceremony recalled the privileges conferred by it on the plebs.
But it was conferred upon them, in a marked way, by legally securing that the autonomous right of the plebs to assemble and pass resolutions should not be interfered with on the part of the magistrates of the community or, in fact, of the community itself.
He would by no means curtail the wealth of Dives or better the condition of Lazarus; but thinks it good policy for the former to refrain from piling his plate so high in the presence of the hungry plebs, lest the latter cease crying for crumbs and swipe the tablecloth! Dr. Rainsford is a paid servant of Dives, his duly ordained Pandarus.
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