terwards repaid by the community. The arrangement was
equitable and wise; but, as it was not placed upon the essential
foundation of turning the domains to proper account for the benefit
of the exchequer, there were added to the increased burden of service
frequent contributions, which were none the less ruinous to the man
of small means that they were officially regarded not as taxes
but as advances.

Combination of the Plebian Aristocracy and the Farmers against the
Nobility--
Licinio-Sextian Laws

Under such circumstances, when the plebeian aristocracy saw itself
practically excluded by the opposition of the nobility and the
indifference of the commons from equality of political rights,
and the suffering farmers were powerless as opposed to the close
aristocracy, it was natural that they should help each other by a
compromise. With this view the tribunes of the people, Gaius Licinius
and Lucius Sextius, submitted to the commons proposals to the
following effect: first, to abolish the consular tribunate; secondly,
to lay it down as a rule that at least one of the consuls should be
a plebeian; thirdly, to open up to the plebeians admission to one
of the three great colleges of priests--that of the custodiers of
oracles, whose number was to be increased to ten (-duoviri-,
afterwards -decemviri sacris faciundis-(6)); fourthly, as respected
the domains, to allow no burgess to maintain upon the common pasture
more than a hundred oxen and five hundred sheep, or to hold more than
five hundred -jugera- (about 300 acres) of the domain lands left free
for occupation; fifthly, to oblige the landlords to employ in the
labours of the field a number of free labourers proportioned to that
of their rural slaves; and lastly, to procure alleviation for debtors
by deduction of the interest which had been paid from the capital,
and by the arrangement of set terms for the payment of arrears.

The tendency of these enactments is obvious. They were designed
to deprive the nobles of their exclusive possession of the curule
magistracies and of the hereditary distinctions of nobility therewith
associated; which, it was characteristically conceived, could only be
accomplished by the legal exclusion of the nobles from the place of
second consul. They were designed, as a consequence, to emancipate
the plebeian members of the senate from the subordinate position which
they occupied as silent by-sitters,(7) in so far as those of them at
le