step
was taken aiming directly at the political equalization of the orders.

But this league between the patricians and the wealthy plebeians by no
means bore within itself any guarantee of permanence. Beyond doubt
from the very first a portion of the leading plebeian families had
attached themselves to the movement-party, partly from a sense of what
was due to the fellow-members of their order, partly in consequence
of the natural bond which unites all who are treated as inferior,
and partly because they perceived that concessions to the multitude
were inevitable in the issue, and that, if turned to due account,
they would result in the abrogation of the exclusive rights of
the patriciate and would thereby give to the plebeian aristocracy a
decisive preponderance in the state. Should this conviction become
--as was inevitable--more and more prevalent, and should the plebeian
aristocracy at the head of its order take up the struggle with the
patrician nobility, it would wield in the tribunate a legalized
instrument of civil warfare, and it might, with the weapon of social
distress, so fight its battles as to dictate to the nobility the terms
of peace and, in the position of mediator between the two parties,
compel its own admission to the offices of state.

Such a crisis in the position of parties occurred after the fall of
the decemvirate. It had now become perfectly clear that the tribunate
of the plebs could never be set aside; the plebeian aristocracy could
not do better than seize this powerful lever and employ it for the
removal of the political disabilities of their order.

Throwing Open of Marriage and of Magistracies--
Military Tribunes with Consular Powers

Nothing shows so clearly the defencelessness of the clan-nobility
when opposed to the united plebs, as the fact that the fundamental
principle of the exclusive party--the invalidity of marriage between
patricians and plebeians--fell at the first blow scarcely four years
after the decemviral revolution. In the year 309 it was enacted by
the Canuleian plebiscite, that a marriage between a patrician and
a plebeian should be valid as a true Roman marriage, and that the
children begotten of such a marriage should follow the rank of the
father. At the same time it was further carried that, in place of
consuls, military tribunes--of these there were at that time, before
the division of the army into legions, six, and the number of these
magistrates was