In this community arose three political movements:  (1) On the part of the full citizen, patricii, to limit the power not of the state, but of the kings; (2) of the non-citizens, to acquire political rights; (3) of antagonism between the great landholders and the land-interests opposed to them.  The first resulted in the expulsion of the monarchs, and the substitution of a dual kingship held for one year only.  But in many respects their joint power was curtailed as compared with that of the monarch, while for emergencies they could appoint a temporary dictator.  The change increased the power of the General Assembly, to which it became necessary to admit the non-citizen freeholders who were liable to military duties.  The life tenure of the members of the Senate greatly increased the powers of that body, and intensified the antagonism of the patriarch and the plebeians.

At the same time, a landed nobility was developing; and when fresh land was acquired by the state, the Patricians claimed to control it.  But the great agricultural population could not submit to this process of land absorption, and the consequent strife took the form of a demand for political recognition, which issued in the appointment of Tribunes of the Plebs, with power of administrative veto.

The struggle over privileges lasted for two hundred years.  First the Canuleian law made marriage valid between patricians and plebeians, and instituted for a time military tribunes.  The Licinian law, eighty years later, admitted plebeians to the consulship, and also required the employment of free labour in agriculture.  The decisively democratic measure was the Horticunian law, after another seventy years, giving the exclusively plebeian assembly full legislative power.  The practical effect of the changes was to create a new aristocracy, semi-plebeian in origin, and to reduce the personal power of the chief officers of state, while somewhat increasing that of the remodelled Senate; rendering it a body selfish indeed in internal matters, but essentially patriotic as well as powerful.

I.—­The Description of Italy

During the period of this long constitutional struggle, Rome and her kinsfolk had first been engaged in a stubborn and ultimately successful contest with the non-Aryan Etruscan race; and then Italy had been attacked by the migrating Aryan hordes of the Celts, known as Gauls, who sacked Rome, but retired to North Italy; events giving birth to many well-known stories, probably in the main mythical.  But the practical effect was to impose a greater solidarity of the Latin and kindred races, and a more decisive acceptance of Roman hegemony.