Historical sources on the Conflict of the Orders

Extract A

"From that time the mischief became more serious every day, not only through open clamour but, what was far more dangerous, through secession and secret meetings. At length the consuls, detested as they were by the plebs, went out of office — Servilius equally hated by both orders, Appius in wonderful favour with the patricians. … There was a great panic in the City, and mutual apprehension caused the suspension of all activities. The plebeians, having been abandoned by their friends, feared violence at the hands of the senators; the senators feared the plebeians who were left behind in Rome, being uncertain whether they had rather they stayed or went. … They therefore decided to send as an ambassador to the commons Agrippa Menenius, an eloquent man and dear to the plebeians as being one of themselves by birth." 

Extract B

"Negotiations were then entered upon for a reconciliation. An agreement was arrived at, the terms being that the plebs should have its own magistrates, whose persons were to be inviolable, and who should have the right of affording protection against the consuls. And further, no patrician should be allowed to hold that office. Two 'tribunes of the plebs' were elected, C. Licinius and L. Albinus. These chose three colleagues. It is generally agreed that Sicinius, the instigator of the secession was amongst them, but who the other two were is not settled. Some say that only two tribunes were created on the Sacred Hill and that it was there that the lex sacrata was passed." 

Extract C

"Before they marched out of the city, they engraved on brass, and fixed up in public view, the decemviral laws, which have received the name of 'the twelve tables.' There are some who state that the aediles discharged that office by order of the tribunes." 

Extract D

"When he had entered on his tribuneship L. Icilius at once proposed a resolution which the plebs accepted, that no one should suffer for the secession. Marcus Duillius immediately carried a measure for the election of consuls and the right to appeal from them to the people. All these measures were passed in a council of the plebs which was held in the Flaminian Meadows, now called the Circus Flaminius." 

"These were the laws enacted by the consuls [Valerius and Horatius]. They ordered that the decrees of the senate, which used formerly to be suppressed and tampered with at the pleasure of the consuls should henceforth be taken to the aediles at the temple of Ceres. Marcus Duillius, the tribune, then proposed a resolution which the plebs adopted, that any one who should leave the plebs without tribunes, or who should create a magistrate from whom there was no appeal; should be scourged and beheaded." 

Extract E

"For the time being, C. Licinius and L. Sextius decided to become tribunes of the plebs; once in this office they could clear for themselves the way to all the other distinctions. All the measures which they brought forward after they were elected were directed against the power and influence of the patricians and calculated to promote the interests of the plebs. One dealt with the debts, and provided that the amount paid in interest should be deducted from the principal and the balance repaid in three equal yearly instalments. The second restricted the occupation of land and prohibited any one from holding more than five hundred jugera. The third provided that there should be no more consular tribunes elected, and that one consul should be elected from each order." 

Extract F

"After tremendous conflicts, the Dictator and the senate were worsted; consequently the proposals of the tribunes were carried, and in spite of the opposition of the nobility the elections were held for consuls. L. Sextius was the first consul to be elected out of the plebs. Even that was not the end of the conflict. The patricians refused to confirm the appointment, and matters were approaching a secession of the plebs and other threatening signs of appalling civic struggles. The Dictator, however, quieted the disturbances by arranging a compromise; the nobility made a concession in the matter of a plebeian consul, the plebs gave way to the nobility on the appointment of a praetor to administer justice in the City who was to be a patrician. Thus after their long estrangement the two orders of the State were at length brought into harmony." 

Contextual information:

Titus Livius (Livy, 59 BC – AD 17) composed Ab Urbe Condita during the reign of Augustus, writing several hundred years after the events of the Conflict of the Orders. He drew on earlier Roman annalistic sources and priestly records to reconstruct the history of the early Republic. His account is the fullest surviving Latin account of the Struggle of the Orders and is the primary source behind virtually every standard treatment of the subject. 

Bibliographical reference:

Livy. The history of Rome (Rev. Canon Roberts, Trans., 1912, Vols. 1–2, Book 2, chs. 32–33; Book 3, chs. 34, 54–55, 57; Book 6, chs. 35, 42). E. P. Dutton & Co. (Original work published ca. 27 BC – AD 9). 

Copyright: Public domain. 

Extract A

"(Liv. VIII.12), [The lex Hortensia of 287 BC] was passed to the effect that Plebiscita should bind all the populus (universus populus) as Gaius (I.3) expresses it; or, 'ut eo jure, quod plebes statuisset, omnes Quirites tenerentur,' according to Laelius Felix, as quoted by Gellius; and this latter is also the expression of Pliny (Hist. Nat. XVI.10). The Lex Hortensia is referred to as the Lex which put Plebiscita as to their binding force exactly on the same footing as Leges." 

Extract B

"A plebeian who first attained a curule office was the founder of his family's Nobilitas (princeps nobilitatis — auctor generis). … Such a person was not nobilis in the full sense of the term, nor yet was he ignobilis. He was called by the Romans a novus homo or a new man, and his condition was known as Novitas. … The first novus homo of Rome was the first plebeian Consul, L. Sextius, and the two most distinguished novi homines were C. Marius and M. Tullius Cicero, both natives of an Italian municipium. The patricians would of course be jealous of the new nobility, which however, when once formed, would easily unite with the old aristocracy to monopolise political power, and to prevent more novi homines from polluting this exclusive class." 

Contextual information:

A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities was a major Victorian scholarly reference work, first published in 1842 and revised through several editions. The third edition of 1875, edited by William Smith, William Wayte, and G. E. Marindin, drew together the leading classical scholars of the day to produce definitive summaries of ancient institutions. Each entry incorporated direct citations from primary sources, making it a reliable guide to the ancient testimonies on Roman public law. 

Bibliographical reference:

Smith, W., Wayte, W., & Marindin, G. E. (Eds.). (1875). A dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities (3rd ed., articles "Plebiscitum," pp. 927–928; "Nobiles," pp. 798–799). John Murray.  

Copyright: Public domain.

Extract A

"This view that the senate was the ultimate source of authority was the aristocratic theory of the constitution down to the end of the republican period, and was the cause of violent and protracted struggles, first between patricians and plebeians, and later between the nobilitas and the democracy." 

Extract B

"In 494, when Rome was engaged in a fierce struggle with the Aequi and Volsci, the plebeian soldiers refused to march against the enemy, and took up their position on a hill a few miles from the city. The patricians proposed a compromise at once, and the plebeians returned to their duties on condition that they should be allowed to elect annual officials, perhaps five in number, with sufficient power to protect them against the autocratic action of the consuls. The new officials took their title of tribuni plebis from the plebeian tribuni militum whom the people had chosen as their leaders in the secession. … From this time forth the plebeians had political leaders of their own, and the great struggle between the orders begins with their appearance." 

Extract C

"This was the political and economic condition of the plebs which the two tribunes of the year 377, C. Licinius Stolo and L. Sextius, endeavored to relieve. They accomplished their object in 367, after ten years of agitation, by securing the passage of a lex satura, or law covering the various matters in dispute. The contents of the law are somewhat in doubt, but, if we may follow Livy and Appian, it included the following points: (1) restoration of the consulship, with the provision that one of the two consuls should always be a plebeian … (5) a provision that the number of priests in charge of the Sibylline books should be increased to ten, and that five of these should be plebeians." 

Extract D

"In the last chapter we traced the course of events from the founding of the republic down to the passage of the Licinio-Sextian laws in 367. … The passage of the Licinian laws marks their first great success. Their victory was made complete, and the struggle came to an end when the Hortensian law was passed in the year 287, making the assemblies independent legislative bodies. The last-mentioned year, therefore, marks a new dividing line in the development of Roman political institutions." 

"After the legislation of 339 and 287, which made the action of the concilium plebis, over which the tribune presided, unconditionally binding on all citizens, the tribune may with practical, though not with technical, correctness be called a magistratus plebeius." 

Extract E

"A secondary motive for the establishment of the praetorship may be found in the desire of the patricians to keep in their own hands some of the powers of the chief magistracy, for at the outset patricians only were eligible to the office of praetor. The establishment in 366 of the curule aedileship, to which plebeians were not eligible, was also perhaps a part of the bargain on the basis of which the patricians allowed the passage of the Licinian laws of the year before." 

Contextual information:

Frank Frost Abbott (1860–1924) was Professor of Latin at the University of Chicago and later at Princeton University. He published A History and Description of Roman Political Institutions in 1901 as a university-level survey of Roman constitutional development from the regal period through Diocletian. The work drew heavily on Mommsen and the German constitutional historians, and is one of the most authoritative pre-1928 English-language treatments of the Conflict of the Orders. 

Bibliographical reference:

Abbott, F. F. (1901). A history and description of Roman political institutions (pp. 14, 27–28, 36–38, 41–42). Ginn & Co. 

Copyright: Public domain.