aius Fabricius (consul
472, 476, 481; censor 479); both of them men without ancestral lineage
and without wealth, both summoned--in opposition to the aristocratic
principle of restricting re-election to the highest office of the
state--thrice by the votes of the burgesses to the chief magistracy,
both, as tribunes, consuls, and censors, opponents of patrician
privileges and defenders of the small farmer-class against the
incipient arrogance of the leading houses. The future parties were
already marked out; but the interests of party were still suspended
on both sides in presence of the interests of the commonweal. The
patrician Appius Claudius and the farmer Manius Curius--vehement in
their personal antagonism--jointly by wise counsel and vigorous action
conquered king Pyrrhus; and while Gaius Fabricius as censor inflicted
penalties on Publius Cornelius Rufinus for his aristocratic sentiments
and aristocratic habits, this did not prevent him from supporting the
claim of Rufinus to a second consulate on account of his recognized
ability as a general. The breach was already formed; but the
adversaries still shook hands across it.

The New Government

The termination of the struggles between the old and new burgesses,
the various and comparatively successful endeavours to relieve the
middle class, and the germs--already making their appearance amidst
the newly acquired civic equality--of the formation of a new
aristocratic and a new democratic party, have thus been passed
in review. It remains that we describe the shape which the new
government assumed amidst these changes, and the positions in which
after the political abolition of the nobility the three elements of
the republican commonwealth--the burgesses, the magistrates, and
the senate--stood towards each other.

The Burgess-Body--
Its Composition

The burgesses in their ordinary assemblies continued as hitherto to
be the highest authority in the commonwealth and the legal sovereign.
But it was settled by law that--apart from the matters committed once
for all to the decision of the centuries, such as the election of
consuls and censors--voting by districts should be just as valid
as voting by centuries: a regulation introduced as regards the
patricio-plebeian assembly by the Valerio-Horatian law of 305(12) and
extended by the Publilian law of 415, but enacted as regards the
plebeian separate assembly by the Hortensian law about 467.(13) We have
already n