too reasonable to have required either pretext or concealment at the time of its proposal.

Such were the three Licinian bills, and it would be difficult in our own day to frame three others reaching to a further or fulfilling a larger reform in the liberty consistent with the religious and the civil institutions of the Roman Commonwealth. Plainly as the reform they proposed was demanded on every side, it was met by an opposition that turned it into a revolution before it was achieved. The first words of the historian on whom we most rely, after describing the bills, relate to the impossibility of accomplishing so great things, as he styles them, without the most violent contention.13 Licinius Stolo was not, then, an ordinary, but an extraordinary, reformer, whose projects it was easier for his intelligence to conceive and his will to urge than for his countrymen to support with spirit like his own. That his opponents were the creditors, the landholders, and the Patricians, of whom we have read almost too much already, needs not to be told; but that he did not, and could not, find any adherents positively and unstintedly to sustain him is one of the many testimonies which remain to the imperfections of Roman liberty. The Plebeians who most wanted relief and lands cared so little for having the consulship opened to the richer men of their estate, that they would readily have dropped the bill concerning it, lest it should endanger their own desires. In the

13"Cuncta ingentia et quæ sine certamine maximo obtineri non possent." Liv., VI. 35.

same temper, the more eminent men of the order, themselves among the creditors of the poor, and the tenants of the public domain, would have quashed the proceedings of the Tribunes in relation to the discharge of debt and the distribution of land, and carried the third bill only, which would make them Consuls without disturbing them in their possessions. Such a spirit amongst the classes on which Licinius and Sextius must have mainly, if not entirely, depended, did not promise them the triumph they deserved.

But there were various circumstances to encourage the Tribunes in the enterprise, of which the plan, at first sight, perhaps, too comprehensive, was proved correct and admirable by the manner in which it was variously sustained. Had either of the three bills been omitted or altered, there would have been none the less opposition to what was left of the reform, while a certain amount of support would be taken away. If the poorer Plebeians, for instance, had had their way, they might not themselves have been much more active or able in the cause they yet would then more especially esteem their own; while the richer men would have gone over in a body to side with the public tenants and the private creditors amongst the Patricians. Or suppose the case reversed, and the bill relating to the consulship had been brought forward alone, the debtors and the homeless citizens would have given it too little help with hands or hearts to secure its passage as a law. The great encouragement Licinius and Sextius must

have felt, therefore, was in the fact that their reform was found to be well contrived.

Other incentives were not wanting to urge the venture they had begun. Earnest men of the lower and temperate men of the higher estate would first look on, then speak approvingly, and at last join zealously in bringing the cause on which they thought the interests of the Commonwealth at stake to a favorable issue. If there were any thing to uphold the liberty of Rome, and conduct it safe through heathenism, it would be the union which purposes like those of Licinius Stolo inspired amongst the best of his countrymen. Where men were bound to duties of public life and military service almost alone, the greatest benefits to be expected from the laws were such, exactly, as were now proposed in Rome. The warrior was to be nerved by the gift of an unencumbered home; the citizen was to have, not only the home, but, besides, the hope of the highest honors of his country. And though either wavered in accepting all the promises offered them, there were some at once, and many in time, to accept and actively to promote the labor of the Tribunes.

The cords, however, by which alone the bills could be raised to the higher place of laws, were much too knotted to bear a strain without both grating and delay. As soon as the proposals of Licinius and Sextius were laid before the Tribes, every one of their eight colleagues vetoed the reading of the bills. Nothing could be done by two Tribunes, if the rest

were against them, except to be resolute and watch the opportunity for retaliation. At the election of the Consular Tribunes, about six months after the beginning of the tribunitian year, Licinius and his friend interposed their vetoes, and prevented a vote from being thrown. No magistrates could remain in office after their terms were expired, whether there were any successors or none to come after them; and the Commonwealth, accordingly, remained without either Consular Tribunes or Consuls at its head, although the vacant places were nominally filled by one Interrex after another, appointed by the Senate to keep up the name of government, even if he could do no more, and to hold the elections the moment that the Tribunes withdrew their vetoes or left their offices.

At the close of the year, Licinius and Sextius were both reëlected, but with colleagues on the side of their antagonists. Some time afterwards, though whether in that year or another is unknown, it became necessary to allow the other elections to proceed. The people of Tusculum, formerly the allies, and latterly, after the campaign of Çamillus, the adopted citizens of Rome, were in such peril from the attacks of the Latins of Velitræ, that no true Roman could hesitate to send them the assistance they desired. As an army could not go forth without its leaders, the election of Consuls or Consular Tribunes was indispensable; and Licinius, with his

14" Verecundia maxime non patres modo, sed etiam plebem movit." Liv., VI. 36.

colleague, withdrew from the opposition they had hitherto unflinchingly maintained. Six Consular Tribunes, three of them being moderate Patricians, were chosen, without there having been, so far as we can determine, any Plebeian to offer himself as a candidate. The Plebeians, indeed, owed it to their Tribunes to abstain from seeking an office of which the bills in abeyance required the abolishment. At all events, they showed increasing inclination to sustain Licinius and Sextius, not only by reëlecting them, perhaps, for several years, but by choosing at length three other Tribunes with them in favor of the bills. The five in opposition now limited their interposition against the reading of the bills to the time when the army should return; and the chances of the bills were further brightened by the election of Fabius Ambustus, the father-in-law of Licinius, and the zealous supporter of his reform,15 to the consular tribunate for the seventh year following the beginning of the revolution.16

That the achievements of Licinius Stolo deserve this name, already applied to them, will now be more clearly manifest than has been possible during the years of which the account is so utterly meagre as scarcely to raise a thought concerning the agitation that must have spread and continued throughout Rome. He and his colleague, it appears, had learned

15

.....

"Fabius quoque, quarum legum auctor fuerat, earum suasorem se haud dubium ferebat." Liv., VI. 36.

have given must be taken as purely conjectural in relation to the chronological details, which it is both useless and impossible to determine

16 A. C. 369. The narrative I precisely.