to the Aventine.  Plebeians were already established in almost all parts of the city and held, as vassals of the patricians, considerable portions of Roman territory.  This little hill could never have furnished[22] homes of any sort to the whole plebeian population.  What it did do was to furnish to the plebeians a trysting place in time of strife with their patrician neighbors, where they could meet, apart and secure from interruption, to devise means for resisting the encroachments of the patricians and to further establish their rights as Roman citizens.  Thus a step toward their complete emancipation was taken.  For a moment the people were soothed and satisfied by their success, but soon they began to clamor for more complete, more radical, more general laws.  An attempt seems to have been made in 453 to extend the application of the lex Icilia to the ager publicus,[23] in general, but nothing came of it.  In 440, the tribune, Petilius, proposed an agrarian law.  What its conditions were Livy has not informed us, but has contented himself with saying that “Petilius made a useless attempt to bring before the senate a law for the division of the domain lands."[24] The consuls strenuously opposed him and his effort came to naught.

In our review of the agrarian agitation we must mention the forceless and insignificant attempt made by the son of Spurius Melius, in 434.  Again, in 422, we find that other attempts were made which availed nothing.  Yet the tribunes who attempted thus to gain the good will of the people set forth clearly the object which they had in view in bringing forward an agrarian bill.  Says Livy; “They held out the hope to the people of a division of the public land, the establishment of colonies, the levying of a vectigal upon the possessors, which vectigal was to be used[25] in paying the soldiers.”

In the year 419, and again in 418, unavailing attempts were made for the division of lands among the plebeians.  Spurius Maecilius and Spurius Metilius, the tribunes[26]for the year 412, proposed to give to the people, in equal lots, the conquered lands.  The patricians ridiculed this law, stating that Rome itself was founded upon conquered soil and did not possess a single acre of land that had not been taken by force of arms, and that the people held nothing save that which had been assigned by the republic.  The object, then, of the tribunes was to distribute the fortunes of the entire state.  Such vapid foolishness as this failed not of the effect which the patricians aimed at.  Appius Claudius counselled the adoption of the excellent means invented by his grandfather.  Six tribunes were bought over by the caresses, flatteries, and money of the patricians and opposed their vetoes to their colleagues who were thus compelled to retire.[27]