vectigal_
upon the possessors, which _vectigal_ was to be used[25] in paying the
soldiers."

In the year 419, and again in 418, unavailing attempts were made for the
division of lands among the plebeians. Spurius Maecilius and Spurius
Metilius, the tribunes[26]for the year 412, proposed to give to the people,
in equal lots, the conquered lands. The patricians ridiculed this law,
stating that Rome itself was founded upon conquered soil and did not
possess a single acre of land that had not been taken by force of arms,
and that the people held nothing save that which had been assigned by the
republic. The object, then, of the tribunes was to distribute the fortunes
of the entire state. Such vapid foolishness as this failed not of the
effect which the patricians aimed at. Appius Claudius counselled the
adoption of the excellent means invented by his grandfather. Six tribunes
were bought over by the caresses, flatteries, and money of the patricians
and opposed their vetoes to their colleagues who were thus compelled to
retire.[27]

In the following year, 411, Lucius Sextius, in no way discouraged by the
ill success of his predecessors, proposed the establishment of a colony
at Bolae, a town in the country of the Volscians, which had been recently
conquered. The patricians[28] opposed this by the same method which they
had adopted in the preceding case, the veto by tribunes. Livy criticises
the impolitic opposition of the patricians in these words: "This was a most
seasonable time, after the punishment of the mutiny, that the division of
the territory of Bolae should be presented as a soother to their minds; by
which proceeding they would have diminished their eagerness for an agrarian
law, which tended to expel the patricians from the public land unjustly
possessed by them. Then this very indignity exasperated their minds, that
the nobility persisted not only in retaining the public lands, which they
got possession of by force, but would not even grant to the commons the
unoccupied land lately taken from the enemy, and which would, like the
rest,[29] soon become the prey of the few."

In 409, Icilius, without doubt a member of that plebeian family which had
furnished so many stout defenders of the liberties of the people, was
elected tribune of the people and brought forward an agrarian bill, but
a plague broke out and hindered any further action. In 407, the tribune,
Menius, introduced an agrarian bill and declared that