city.

6. There had been no provision in the Roman law for any redress for a wrong done by the king, but the consul, upon the termination of his year of office, stepped down at once into the mass of the citizens and could at any time be punished for any malfeasance during his official life.

7. An indirect restriction of the powers of the consuls arose from the increased dignity and authority of the Senate. The change in this respect, however, was practical rather than theoretical. According to the strict form of the law the Senate still bore the same relation to the consuls that they had previously borne to the king. The Senate was still nothing more than an advisory body, and all vacancies among the senators were filled by appointments made by the consuls. The increased importance of the Senate arose out of the advantage which an official holding office for life always possesses over a superior officer holding office for only a brief term. In the present day it frequently happens that a political appointee at the head of a department or bureau, with the workings of which he is not familiar, finds himself compelled to rely almost implicitly upon some subordinate official whose working life has been spent in that office.

The short term of a consul and the life term of the members of the Senate thus tended to secure to this body an ever increasing influence. It was seldom that any serious conflict arose between the consul and the Senate. The consuls were men who were already senators or who expected to become such, while of the senators, many had held the office of consul and many more hoped to hold it in the future.

This curtailment of the kingly power and the division of the powers which remained between two consuls of equal rank, while it secured the protection of the citizens from the danger of a new monarchy, strongly hindered vigor and unity of action in the prosecution of any enterprise. There were times, therefore, during the succeeding centuries in the life of Rome, when to meet temporary emergencies a stronger and undivided rule was necessary. To meet this need a new official was created—the dictator—who might be nominated by one of the consuls upon the authorization of the Senate and who, during the term of his office, which could not exceed six months, possessed and exercised almost absolute authority at Rome, and superseded all the other officials in their duties.

The original intention was that such an official should be appointed only in cases of military necessity, but later this office was frequently created to aid the patricians in their contests with the plebeians. Only the patricians were eligible for any of the newly created offices. The Senate was composed exclusively of this order, and it has already been explained, in Chapter II, how, through the expedient of putting more Roman citizens in some centuries than in the others, the patricians were able to control the vote of the majority of the centuries in the comitia centuriata.

It is thus apparent that the mere overthrow of the kings at Rome had accomplished little for the ordinary Roman citizen. In fact, the rule of a single monarch is often more beneficial to the poorer classes of a community than the rule of a favored class. The establishment of a republic, however, had eliminated one political element, and cleared the stage for the contest between the patricians and plebeians.

That the economic condition of the poorer classes in Rome changed for the worse after the institution of the republic is certain. It was for the interest of the early Roman kings to favor and protect the small Roman farmers, both for military and economic reasons. While the permanent interests of the patricians would have been promoted by the encouragement of this class, their temporary selfish interests called for the destruction of the Roman middle class, primarily the middle agricultural class, and the division of all Roman inhabitants into a small aristocracy on the one hand and a large proletariat on the other.

The two forms of exactions which fell the heaviest upon the Roman poorer classes were the barbarous laws against debtors and the dishonest administration of the public leaders. The desperate condition of the debtors at Rome at this time was a result of a number of different causes, including the high rate of interest, the right of the creditor to sell the debtor into slavery if the debt were not paid, the policy of the patrician creditors to demand the last pound of flesh in all their transactions, and the conditions which existed in Rome at this time which compelled many small landowners, against their wish and without any fault of their own, to become borrowers of money.

One harsh feature of this condition was the fact that it was the military service, which as Roman citizens they were compelled to render to the state, that more often than any other cause compelled the plebeians to borrow money and thus ultimately drove them to their ruin. For example, a small Roman farmer, through absence from his home on military service for the state, might lose his crop for the year. To support himself and his family until the next harvest, and to supply the means for the planting of the next year's crop, he would be obliged to borrow money, which, under the exorbitant rates of interest, soon reached an amount out of proportion to the original loan. Perhaps a second campaign would deprive him of the means of returning the loan, and his lands would be taken from him and he himself sold into slavery. As a final blow, the unfortunate plebeian saw the lands which had been won for the state by armies composed of his fellow plebeians reserved entirely for the use of the favored patrician order.

No more pernicious and unfair system could have been evolved than that which governed the management of the Roman public lands in the very first years of the republic. The earlier policy, under the kings, had been to divide the public land of the state into small allotments and to distribute it among those citizens of the state who most needed it. With the republic this policy ceased, and the public lands were nominally retained in the public ownership, but in reality were let out on leases to the patricians and a few favored men among the plebeians.

In theory the state retained the right to take back the land at any time and to receive a rent from the lessee; but in practice both these rights were disregarded. The lands held in this manner by the patricians were soon considered by them as much their own property as those to which they held the legal title, and were devised and pledged by their owners in substantially the same manner as any other land. The collection of the rent was soon abandoned; and not only this, but the land being in theory state land, the lessee (who was supposed to, but did not, pay rent) was not liable to pay taxes on this land.

The final working out of this matter may be summed up by saying that the poorer class of the plebeians furnished most of the soldiers for the campaign, stood most of the expense, suffered nearly all the losses both of life and property, were excluded from any share in the land captured in the war, and as a culmination saw their taxes yearly increased on account of the fact that the patricians, who monopolized the public land, succeeded in dodging the payment of rent and in evading the payment of taxes.

It was these conditions which brought about the remarkable spectacle of what may be well designated the first recorded strike in history—a strike in the Roman army. In 495 B.C. the Roman citizens were summoned to take the field for another military