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Updated: June 28, 2025


In like manner the aristocracy simply injured itself by the attempt which it made, on the passing of the Licinian laws, to save at least some remnant of its ancient privileges by means of a system of political clipping and paring. But the curule aedileship became immediately so far accessible to the plebeians, that it was held by patricians and plebeians alternately.

The result of the Licinian laws in reality therefore amounted nearly to what we should now call the creation of a batch of peers.

In like manner the aristocracy simply injured itself by the attempt which it made, on the passing of the Licinian laws, to save at least some remnant of its ancient privileges by means of a system of political clipping and paring. But the curule aedileship became immediately so far accessible to the plebeians, that it was held by patricians and plebeians alternately.

Moreover the dictatorship was thrown open to plebeians in 398, as the mastership of the horse had already been in the year before the Licinian laws ; both the censorships were thrown open in 403, and the praetorship in 417; and about the same time the nobility were by law excluded from one of the censorships, as they had previously been from one of the consulships.

This was the time when the famous Licinian rogations, by the adoption of which a civil revolution was effected in Rome, were brought forward. They provided for the passage of an Agrarian law, for an equitable settlement of debts, and that thereafter one of the two Consuls should always be a Plebeian. Such were the main provisions of the law, which did not touch private property of any kind.

However, let him attack. Charmingly, believe me, and with less noise than I had thought, has the wheel of the Republic revolved: more rapidly, anyhow, than it should have done owing to Cato's error, but still more owing to the unconstitutional conduct of those who have neglected the auspices, the Ælian law, the Iunian, the Licinian, the Cæcilian and Didian, who have squandered all the safeguards of the constitution, who have handed over kingdoms as though they were private estates to tetrachs, and immense sums of money to a small coterie.

But these political changes did not much ameliorate the social condition of the poorer classes. The strictness of the Licinian laws, the oppression of the rich, the high rate of interest, and the existence of slavery, made the poor poorer, and the rich richer, and prevented the expansion of industry. The plebeians had gained political privileges, but not till great plebeian families had arisen.

We do not mean, however, to express any doubt that the regulations of the Licinian laws, such as they were, might and did substantially benefit the small farmer and the day-labourer.

After these had urged nearly the same topics, respecting the privileges of patricians and plebeians, which had been formerly employed for and against the Licinian law, when the proposition was brought forward of opening the consulship to plebeians, Decius is said to have drawn a lively description of his own father, such as many then present in the assembly had seen him, girt in the Gabine dress, standing on a spear, in the attitude in which he had devoted himself for the people and the legions, and to have added, that the consul Publius Decius was then deemed by the immortal gods an offering equally pure and pious, as if his colleague, Titus Manlius, had been devoted.

These were called the Licinian Rogations. But a new curule magistracy was created, as a sort of compensation to the patricians, that of prætors, to be held by them, exclusively. These political changes were made peaceably, and with them the old gentile aristocracy ceased to be a political institution. The remaining patrician offices were not long withheld from the plebeians.

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