re obliged to own that all would perish together unless they went on
waiting on this seemingly useless belly. So Agrippa told them that all
ranks and states depended on one another, and unless all worked together
all must be confusion and go to decay. The fable seems to have convinced
both rich and poor; the debtors were set free and the debts forgiven.
And though the laws about debts do not seem to have been changed,
another law was made which gave the plebeians tribunes in peace as well
as war. These tribunes were always to be plebeians, chosen by their own
fellows. No one was allowed to hurt them during their year of office, on
pain of being declared accursed and losing his property; and they had
the power of stopping any decision of the senate by saying solemnly,
_Veto_, I forbid. They were called tribunes of the people, while the
officers in war were called military tribunes; and as it was on the Mons
Sacer, or Sacred Mount, that this was settled, these laws were called
the _Leges Sacrariae_. An altar to the Thundering Jupiter was built to
consecrate them: and, in gratitude for his management, Menenius Agrippa
was highly honored all his life, and at his death had a public funeral.

But the struggles of the plebeians against the patricians were not by
any means over. The Roman land--Agri (acre), it was called--had at first
been divided in equal shares--at least so it was said--but as belonging
to the state all the time, and only held by the occupier. As time went
on, some persons of course gathered more into their own hands, and
others of spendthrift or unfortunate families became destitute. Then
there was an outcry that, as the lands belonged to the whole state, it
ought to take them all back and divide them again more equally: but the
patricians naturally regarded themselves as the owners, and would not
hear of this scheme, which we shall hear of again and again by the name
of the Agrarian Law. One of the patricians, who had thrice been consul,
by name Spurius Cassius, did all he could to bring it about, but though
the law was passed he could not succeed in getting it carried out. The
patricians hated him, and a report got abroad that he was only gaining
favor with the people in order to get himself made king. This made even
the plebeians turn against him as a traitor; he was condemned by the
whole assembly of the people, and beheaded, after being scourged by the
lictors. The people soon mourned for their friend, an