A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

358 The Early Republic
Frag. 37.
granted the nobles the choice of either putting this law to
not uttered in vain: no elections were held except those
of ffidiles and tribunes of the people. Licinius and Sextius
were reelected as tribunes of the people and suflfered no
curule magistrate to be chosen: and this desolation—the
plebs reelecting the two tribunes and they doing away with
elections of military tribunes — prevailed in the city for
five years. Finally after great struggles the dictator and
the senate were overpowered, so that the measures of the
tribunes were admitted. The elections of the consuls were
held in spite of the resistance of the nobility, at which
Lucius Sextius was made consul, the first of plebeian rank.
f. The Ogulnian Law
To admit A struggle arose among the leading men of the state,
plebeians
to the patricians and plebeians, a struggle stirred up by the
augural and
pontifical
tribunes of the people Q. and Cn. Ogulnius, who everywhere
colleges,
saw opportunities to make charges against the
300 B.C.
senatorial class before the plebeians. After trying other
Livy X. 6.
The law in
fact increased
the
number of
augurs and
things in vain, they undertook to inflame not the lowest
plebs, but the very heads of the plebs, retired consuls and
triumphatores, to whose honors nothing was lacking but
the priestly offices, which were not yet promiscuously bestowed.
pontiffs to
nine each,
Therefore they published a bill to this effect:
and provided
that four
augurs and
five pontiffs
should be
plebeian;
Botsford,
"Whereas there are four augurs and four pontifices at this
time, it is resolved to have the number of priests enlarged,
and four pontifices and five augurs shall be chosen in addition
from the plebeians."
Roman Assemblics,
3og.
g. The Hortensian Law
The struggle When the tribunes moved an annulment of debts, the
which led to
it.
law was often proposed without avail, since the leaders
Dio Cassius,
were by no means willing to accept it and the tribunes