n his third consulate (268), he submitted to the
burgesses a proposal to have the public domain measured and to lease
part of it for the benefit of the public treasury, while a further
portion was to be distributed among the necessitous. In other words,
he attempted to wrest the control of the public lands from the senate,
and, with the support of the burgesses, to put an end to the selfish
system of occupation. He probably imagined that his personal
distinction, and the equity and wisdom of the measure, might carry
it even amidst that stormy sea of passion and of weakness. But he
was mistaken. The nobles rose as one man; the rich plebeians took
part with them; the commons were displeased because Spurius Cassius
desired, in accordance with federal rights and equity, to give to
the Latin confederates their share in the assignation. Cassius had
to die. There is some truth in the charge that he had usurped regal
power, for he had indeed endeavoured like the kings to protect the
free commons against his own order. His law was buried along with
him; but its spectre thenceforward incessantly haunted the eyes of
the rich, and again and again it rose from the tomb against them,
until amidst the conflicts to which it led the commonwealth perished.

Decemvirs

A further attempt was made to get rid of the tribunician power by
securing to the plebeians equality of rights in a more regular and
more effectual way. The tribune of the people, Gaius Terentilius
Arsa, proposed in 292 the nomination of a commission of five men to
prepare a general code of law by which the consuls should in future be
bound in exercising their judicial powers. But the senate refused to
sanction this proposal, and ten years elapsed ere it was carried into
effect--years of vehement strife between the orders, and variously
agitated moreover by wars and internal troubles. With equal obstinacy
the party of the nobles hindered the concession of the law in the
senate, and the plebs nominated again and again the same men as
tribunes. Attempts were made to obviate the attack by other
concessions. In the year 297 an increase of the tribunes from four to
ten was sanctioned--a very dubious gain; and in the following year, by
an Icilian -plebiscitum- which was admitted among the sworn privileges
of the plebs, the Aventine, which had hitherto been a temple-grove and
uninhabited, was distributed among the poorer burgesses as sites for
buildings in heritable