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 least who had filled the consulate thereby acquired a title to deliver their opinion with the patrician consulars before the other patrician senators.(8) They were intended, moreover, to withdraw from the nobles the exclusive possession of spiritual dignities; and in carrying out this purpose for reasons sufficiently obvious the old Latin priesthoods of the augurs and Pontifices were left to the old burgesses, but these were obliged to open up to the new burgesses the third great college of more recent origin and belonging to a worship that was originally foreign.  They were intended, in fine, to procure a share in the common usufructs of burgesses for the poorer commons, alleviation for the suffering debtors, and employment for the day-labourers that were destitute of work.  Abolition of privileges, civil equality, social reform—­these were the three great ideas, of which it was the design of this movement to secure the recognition.  Vainly the patricians exerted all the means at their command in opposition to these legislative proposals; even the dictatorship and the old military hero Camillus were able only to delay, not to avert their accomplishment.  Willingly would the people have separated the proposals; of what moment to it were the consulate and custodiership of oracles, if only the burden of debt were lightened and the public lands were free!  But it was not for nothing that the plebeian nobility had adopted the popular cause; it included the proposals in one single project of law, and after a long struggle—­it is said of eleven years—­the senate at length gave its consent and they passed in the year 387.

Political Abolition of the Patriciate

With the election of the first non-patrician consul—­the choice fell on one of the authors of this reform, the late tribune of the people, Lucius Sextius Lateranus—­the clan-aristocracy ceased both in fact and in law to be numbered among the political institutions of Rome.  When after the final passing of these laws the former champion of the clans, Marcus Furius Camillus, founded a sanctuary of Concord at the foot of the Capitol—­upon an elevated platform, where the senate was wont frequently to meet, above the old meeting-place of the burgesses, the Comitium—­we gladly cherish the belief that he recognized in the legislation thus completed the close of a dissension only too long continued.  The religious consecration of the new concord of the