When the army was ordered out in 494 BC, the plebeians went on strike. Led by Lucius 01Sicinius Vellutus (tribune 493 BC) they withdrew to the Mons Sacer (=Sacred Mount), northeast of Rome, and refused to move until the patricians gave them some representation. Agrippa 01Menenius Lanatus (fl.503-493 BC) persuaded them to return. The patricians, being dependent on the plebeians to defend Rome in time of war, passed a lex Sacrata (‘sacred law’) giving the plebeians the right to meet in their own assembly, the concilium plebis, pass their own laws (plebiscita) and elect two plebeian tribunes with two plebeian aediles to assist them. This was the first step of the plebeians towards their ‘state within the state’.
The tribunes’ power was not legal because they were elected by plebeians only and not by all the people, but the plebeians declared the tribunes to be sacrosanct, meaning that anyone who did violence to a tribune could be immediately killed.
In 471 BC the patricians passed the lex Publilia Voleronis, proposed by 01Publilius Volero (tribune: 472, 471 BC), giving the plebeians the right to elect their officers in a new assembly called the comitia populi tributa of all the people in their thirty-five ‘tribes’ (actually generic divisions, four rural tribes within Rome itself and thirty-one urban tribes beyond). However, only the Centuriate Assembly could elect consuls, praetors and censors, and declare war. The number of tribunes increased to perhaps four at this time and to ten probably before 449 BC. Most important was their right to assist a plebeian against the arbitrary exercise of a magistrate’s imperium.
Having gained protection against the magistrates, the plebeians began to agitate for a codification of the laws. There were as yet no written laws and the plebeians wanted the law written down to prevent the patricians interpreting unwritten customs as they chose. In 462 BC the tribune Gaius 01Terentilius Harsa proposed a commission of five to frame laws on the powers of the consuls. The next year, the tribune Aulus Virginius proposed a commission of ten to legislate all the public and private laws, and these proposals continued in later years.
In 454 BC tradition says that the patricians sent three commissioners to study the legal systems of the Greek states, in particular Athens and the laws of Solon (archon 594/3 BC). In 452 BC they returned, and the next year the Senate appointed ten patricians (decemviri) to draft the laws. These officials produced a ‘code’ of ten tables which after revision were successfully presented by the Senate to the Centuriate Assembly.
In 450 BC it was determined that the ‘code’ was incomplete and a second commission was appointed. All its members were different from those of the first commission except its leader 02Claudius Crassus (c.61; fl.c.451-c.449 BC) and included some plebeians. Two more tables were added to the existing ten and the leges Duodecim Tabulae (‘Law of Twelve Tables’) became the centrepiece of the constitution and the core of the mos maiorum (‘custom of the ancestors’). Tradition says that when appointed the second year the decemvirs and Claudius in particular, began to rule oppressively.
A tribune, Lucius 02Sicinius Dentatus (c.64; fl.454-c.450 BC) was murdered because of his opposition to the decemvirs. The plebeian Lucius 01Verginius murdered his unmarried daughter Verginia to save her from Claudius who had used the power of his office to force her to have sex with him. In 449 BC the plebs seceded; the decemvirs abdicated and were replaced by two consuls, 03Valerius Potitus and 02Horatius Barbatus.
The lex Valeria Horatia (debated) put an official seal on the plebeians’ gains: the inviolability of the tribunes was confirmed, Plebeian Assembly rulings assumed the force of law; and consuls renounced the right to name new magistracies without first seeking the approval of the people. The patricians continued to govern but were subject to plebeian approval.
The unreliable historian Lucius Annaeus Florus (c.74-c.130) mentions a third secession in 445 BC. In that year, the lex Canuleia, proposed by the tribune Gaius Canuleius, repealed a provision of the Twelve Tables that prohibited intermarriage between the two classes, and allowed their children to inherit the father’s social status.
Canuleius’ colleagues then proposed that the consulship should be open to the plebeians. The Senate responded in 444 BC with a senatus consultum (‘decree of the Senate’) that ‘military tribunes with consular power’ should be appointed in place of consuls and these officials, who at first numbered three, might be patricians or plebeians. In 443 BC two censors were installed (previously the responsibility of consuls).
In 421 BC four quaestors (previously, two quaestors were appointed by the consuls from the patricians) were elected from both classes by the Tribal Assembly. Two quaestors remained in Rome as public treasurers, while the other two accompanied the consuls on military campaigns in charge of supplies, payment of troops, etc.
In 376 BC the tribunes 01Licinius Stolo (fl.376-361 BC) and 01Sextius Lateranus (fl.376-367 BC) made rogationes (proposals that could become law) about debt, public land and that one of the two consuls to be plebeian. The lex Licinia Sextia was passed in 367 BC abolishing the consular tribunate and re-establishing the consular constitution for 366 BC; limiting ownership of public land conquered by the Roman army to less 320 acres for a single person; and stipulating that interest already paid should be deducted from the original loan and the balance, if any, be repaid within three years.
In 357 BC two tribunes, Marcus 01Duilius and Lucius Menenius (2), fixed the rate of interest at one-twelfth (8⅓ %). In 352 BC a commission was set up to extend public credit to reduce private debt (state bank). Livy notes a fourth secession in 342 BC, but this seems to have been an obscure revolt.
In 339 BC the consul 02Publilius Philo (fl.354-315 BC) sponsored the leges Publiliae, which said that plebiscita should have the force of law, that one of the censors must be a plebeian and the sanction of the patrician senators must be given before rather than after the vote of comitia centuriata.
In 326 BC the consuls Poetelius Libo (fl.360-326 BC) and 03Papirius Cursor (fl.326-309 BC) passed the lex Poetelia Papiria ending the contractual form of nexum (debt bondage); 06Terentius Varro (89; fl.59-27 BC) dates the law to 313 BC, i.e. during the year of Poetelius’ dictatorship. In 312 BC with the lex Ovinia, the enrolment of senators became a duty of the censors and conducted by a public reading of the list.
In 304 BC Gnaeus 01Flavius, a magistrate’s clerk, published the ius Civile Flavianum which revealed the details of the procedures that took place during litigation, and the dies fasti, which stipulated the days on which legal actions were permitted. This had hitherto been known only to the pontiffs, and Flavius’ actions ended their monopoly on legal knowledge.
In 300 BC the tribune Quintus 02Ogulnius Gallus (along with his brother Gnaeus 01Ogulnius passed the lex Ogulnia, against strong opposition, that ended the patrician monopoly of the two priestly colleges by increasing the number of pontiffs from four to eight and the number of augurs from four to nine, and entitled the plebeians to hold the higher priesthoods.
In 287 BC Quintus Hortensius was appointed dictator. When the people, pressed by their patrician creditors, seceded to the Janiculum, he was commissioned to put an end to the strife. He passed the lex Hortensia making the resolutions of the Tribal Assembly binding on all the citizens and not requiring the approval of the Senate – a right first claimed by Valerius and Horatius more than a hundred and fifty years earlier.
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