with consular power
to be at an end. In its place the consulate was restored with full[5]
provision that one of the two consuls should be taken from the plebeians.
The argument produced in favor of this bill appears to have been the urgent
want of the plebeians to possess a greater share in the government than was
vested in their tribunes, aediles, and quaestors. Otherwise, said Licinius
and his colleague, there will be no security that our debts will be settled
or that our lands will be obtained.[6] It would be difficult to frame three
bills, even in our time, reaching to a further, or fulfilling a larger
reform. "Everything was pointed against the power of the patricians[7]
in order to provide for the comfort of the plebeians." This to a certain
degree was true. It was chiefly from the patrician that the bill concerning
debts detracted the usurious gains which had been counted upon. It was
chiefly from him that the lands indicated in the second bill were to be
withdrawn. It was altogether from him that the honors of the consulship
were to be derogated. On the other hand the plebeians, save the few
proprietors and creditors among them, gained by every measure that had been
proposed. The poor man saw himself snatched from bondage and endowed with
an estate. He who was above the reach of debt saw himself in the highest
office of the state. Plebeians with reason exulted. Licinius evidently
designed reuniting the divided members of the plebeian body. Not one of
them, whether rich or poor, but seems called back by these bills to stand
with his own order from that time on. If this supposition was true, then
Licinius was the greatest leader whom the plebeians ever had up to the time
of Caesar. But[8] from the first he was disappointed. The plebeians who
most wanted relief cared so little for having the consulship opened to the
richer men of their estate that they would readily have dropped the bill
concerning it, lest a demand should endanger their own desires. In the same
temper the more eminent men of the order, themselves among the creditors of
the poor and the tenants of the domain, would have quashed the proceedings
of the tribunes respecting the discharge of debt and the distribution of
land, so that they carried the third bill only, which would make them
consuls without disturbing their possessions. While the plebeians continued
severed from one another, the patricians drew together in resistance to the
bills. Licinius s