s, it is true,
could vote in the Comitia Centuriata, but, as they were mostly poor,
they were outvoted by the Patricians and their clients. The Consuls and
other magistrates were taken entirely from the Patricians, who also
possessed the exclusive knowledge and administration of the law. In one
word, the Patricians were a ruling and the Plebeians a subject class.
But this was not all. The Patricians formed not only a separate
_class_, but a separate _caste_, not marrying with the Plebeians, and
worshiping the gods with different religious rites. If a Patrician man
married a Plebeian wife, or a Patrician woman a Plebeian husband, the
state refused to recognize the marriage, and the offspring was treated
as illegitimate.

The Plebeians had to complain not only of political, but also of private
wrongs. The law of debtor and creditor was very severe at Rome. If the
borrower did not pay the money by the time agreed upon, his person was
seized by the creditor, and he was obliged to work as a slave.[14] Nay,
in certain cases he might even be put to death by the creditor; and if
there were more than one, his body might be cut in pieces and divided
among them. The whole weight of this oppressive law fell upon the
Plebeians; and what rendered the case still harder was, that they were
frequently compelled, through no fault of their own, to become
borrowers. They were small landholders, living by cultivating the soil
with their own hands; but as they had to serve in the army without pay,
they had no means of engaging laborers in their absence. Hence, on their
return home, they were left without the means of subsistence or of
purchasing seed for the next crop, and borrowing was their only
resource.

Another circumstance still farther aggravated the hardships of the
Plebeians. The state possessed a large quantity of land called _Ager
Publicus_, or the "Public Land." This land originally belonged to the
kings, being set apart for their support; and it was constantly
increased by conquest, as it was the practice on the subjugation of a
people to deprive them of a certain portion of their land. This public
land was let by the state subject to a rent; but as the Patricians
possessed the political power, they divided the public land among
themselves, and paid for it only a nominal rent. Thus the Plebeians, by
whose blood and unpaid toil much of this land had been won, were
excluded from all participation in it.

It was not to be expec