e affairs of Rome until the
close of the republic, and afterward became a service to the imperial
government of the Caesars.

From a very early period in the history of the Roman nation the people
struggled for their rights and privileges against this aristocracy of
wealth and hereditary power. At the expulsion of the kings, in 500
B.C., the senate lived on, as did the old popular assembly of the
people, the former gaining strength, the latter becoming weakened.
Realizing what they had lost in political power, having lost their
farms by borrowing money of the rich patricians, and suffered
imprisonment and distress on that account, the plebeians, resolved to
endure no longer, marched out upon the hill, Mons Sacer, and demanded
redress by way of tribunes and other officers.

This was the beginning of an earnest struggle for 50 years {254} for
mere protection, to be followed by a struggle of 150 years for equality
of power and rights. The result of this was that a compromise was made
with the senate, which allowed the people to have tribunes chosen from
the plebeians, and a law was passed giving them the right of protection
against the oppression of any official, and subsequently the right of
intercession against any administrative or judicial act, except in the
case when a dictator was appointed. This gave the plebeians some
representation in the government of Rome. They worked at first for
protection, and also for the privilege of intermarriage among the
patricians. After this they began to struggle for equal rights and
privileges.

A few years after the revolt in 486 B.C. Spurius Cassius brought
forward the first agrarian law. The lands of the original Roman
territory belonged at first to the great families, and were divided and
subdivided among the various family groups. But a large part of the
land obtained by conquest of the Italians became the public domain, the
property of the entire people of Rome. It became necessary for these
lands to be leased by the Roman patricians, and as these same Roman
patricians were members of the senate, they became careless about
collecting rent of themselves, and so the lands were occupied year
after year, and, indeed, century after century, by the Roman families,
who were led to claim them as their own without rental. Cassius
proposed to divide a part of these lands among the needy plebeians and
the Latins as well, and to lease the rest for the profit of the public
trea