ents, was gradually created a great body of plebeians,
non-citizens, who began to demand political rights; and whom it was
necessary to organise for military purposes which was done by the
"Servian Constitution." Gradually Rome won a supremacy in the Latin
League, a position of superiority over the aggregate of the other
cantons.

In this community arose three political movements: (1) On the part of
the full citizen, patricii, to limit the power not of the state, but of
the kings; (2) of the non-citizens, to acquire political rights; (3) of
antagonism between the great landholders and the land-interests opposed
to them. The first resulted in the expulsion of the monarchs, and the
substitution of a dual kingship held for one year only. But in many
respects their joint power was curtailed as compared with that of the
monarch, while for emergencies they could appoint a temporary dictator.
The change increased the power of the General Assembly, to which it
became necessary to admit the non-citizen freeholders who were liable to
military duties. The life tenure of the members of the Senate greatly
increased the powers of that body, and intensified the antagonism of the
patriarch and the plebeians.

At the same time, a landed nobility was developing; and when fresh land
was acquired by the state, the Patricians claimed to control it. But the
great agricultural population could not submit to this process of land
absorption, and the consequent strife took the form of a demand for
political recognition, which issued in the appointment of Tribunes of
the Plebs, with power of administrative veto.

The struggle over privileges lasted for two hundred years. First the
Canuleian law made marriage valid between patricians and plebeians, and
instituted for a time military tribunes. The Licinian law, eighty years
later, admitted plebeians to the consulship, and also required the
employment of free labour in agriculture. The decisively democratic
measure was the Horticunian law, after another seventy years, giving the
exclusively plebeian assembly full legislative power. The practical
effect of the changes was to create a new aristocracy, semi-plebeian in
origin, and to reduce the personal power of the chief officers of state,
while somewhat increasing that of the remodelled Senate; rendering it a
body selfish indeed in internal matters, but essentially patriotic as
well as powerful.

_I.--The Description of Italy_

During the p