moreover, a certain proportion of free laborers (not slaves alone) should be employed in agriculture; in the third place, sums paid in interest were to be deducted from the principal of debts then due, and the balance was to be paid in three years in three equal installments.
Struggle for the Passage of the Bill. — As was to be expected, the senate did not sanction the bill. Both parties then exerted all the means at their disposal to gain the victory. According to the story, the leading tribunes carried on agitations among the plebeians, interceded against all the official acts of the magistrates, and caused anarchy for several years — probably a fiction. They were reëlected and continued the campaign for ten years. But the ordinary plebeians were not always enthusiastic in their support, and would gladly have accepted the economic reforms and sacrificed plebeian eligibility to the consulship. Licinius and Sextius insisted, however, on the combination of all the demands in one bill.
The patricians induced other tribunes to intercede against the leaders of the measure, made use of the dictatorship, and levied troops in order to prevent the citizens from voting. Being still unsuccessful, they made concessions. In 368 they allowed the commission in charge of the Sibylline books (duoviri sacris faciundis) to be increased to ten members, five of whom must be plebeians. Though inferior to the pontifical and augural colleges, this commission was important and useful as a means of hindering political action.
Finally, in 367, an agreement was reached. The bill became a law, consuls were elected, and Lucius Sextius obtained in the consulship a reward for his efforts. The price paid the patricians was the creation of one and perhaps of two patrician offices — the praetorship and the curule aedileship.
