henceforward one consul must necessarily be a plebeian.[1]
The work of these two tribunes may be looked on as the second of the three most conspicuous landmarks in the political development of Rome. The first was the reform attributed to Servius Tullius; the third was to wait for nearly three centuries. The ordinances of Servius first organised the plebs, and by giving it duties to perform for the State made it and its services indispensable. After an interval of at least a century and a half the Licinio-Sextian laws, passed by the plebs itself as a sovereign legislative body, secured for it a permanent share in the executive government of the whole State. The outward political form of Rome as a City-State was now complete, and no further striking change took place, until once more a new population claimed admission to the State and its government, and in enforcing their claim initiated a vital change in the very nature of the Roman polity.
It is worth noting that these leading events in the history of Rome, as well as the more subordinate ones we have also mentioned, are not connected with the names of any individuals whose personality has struck root in human memory. The laws bore the names of their authors, but these are names and little more. In Athenian history it is just the
- ↑ This law was not at first faithfully adhered to by the patricians. But the Licinian law was re-enacted in B.C. 342, and in the same year it was further enacted that both consuls might henceforward be plebeians.
