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Updated: June 17, 2025
If an appeal was lodged against the decision of tribune or aedile, it was addressed not to the whole body of the burgesses, with which the officials of the plebs were not entitled at all to transact business, but to the whole body of the plebeians, which in this case met by curies and finally decided by majority of votes.
It also appears, that had not agrarian laws been introduced, the great body of the plebeians would have become the clients of the patricians, and the form of government would have been a complete oligarchy.
Nations do not often have to wait long for a cause for fighting, if they want to find one. A war broke out with the Sabines and the Æquians at the same time, and armies were sent against them both, commanded by friends of the plebeians.
The men thus chosen, constituted what was called the senate. They formed the great legislative council of the nation. They and the families descending from them became, in subsequent times, an aristocratic and privileged class, called the Patricians. The remaining portion of the population were called Plebeians.
By admission of aliens and absorption of other communities, swelling the number of dependents, was gradually created a great body of plebeians, non-citizens, who began to demand political rights; and whom it was necessary to organise for military purposes which was done by the "Servian Constitution."
Paltry craft won command to Themistocles; to escape his duns, the profligate Caesar heads an army, and achieves his laurels; Brutus, the aristocrat, stabs his patron, that patricians might again trample on plebeians, and that posterity might talk of him.
In later times brains and intelligence tell in and on the world, and the peers, having no longer pit and gallows for the punishment of presumptuous plebeians who dare to get between them and the regal sunshine, must be content to see those plebeians basking in the royal rays, if they are not capable of outdoing them in those arts that ever have been found most useful in the advancement of the interest of courtiers.
The question here suggests itself whether such a citizen, once having accepted his humble lot, would be in a different position from the plebeians in an aristocracy. The same subordination would be imposed upon him, only the ground assigned for his submission would be no longer self-interest and necessity, but patriotic duty. This patriotism would have to be of an exalted type.
A large force had been sent into the country to subdue the insurgent peasants; and the knights and nobles despatched for that purpose, failed not to avenge to the utter- most, upon the wretched plebeians, the noble blood which they had spilled during their temporary triumph. The followers of the unfortunate Wenlock were infected with the same persuasion.
Below, the broad expanse of Forum and Comitia was thronged with a surging crowd patricians and plebeians, elbowing and pushing one another in mad efforts to get closer to the Rostra and to a small group of magistrates, who, with grave faces, were clustered at the foot of its steps.
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