The moral of this fable was plain.  The people readily applied it to the patricians and themselves, and their leaders proposed terms of agreement to the patrician messengers.  They required that the debtors who could not pay should have their debts cancelled, and that those who had been given up into slavery should be restored to freedom.  This for the past.  And as a security for the future, they demanded that two of themselves should be appointed for the sole purpose of protecting the plebeians against the patrician magistrates, if they acted cruelly or unjustly toward the debtors.  The two officers thus to be appointed were called “Tribunes of the Plebs.”  Their persons were to be sacred and inviolable during their year of office, whence their office is called sacrosancta Potestas.  They were never to leave the city during that time, and their houses were to be open day and night, that all who needed their aid might demand it without delay.

This concession, apparently great, was much modified by the fact that the patricians insisted on the election of the tribunes being made at the Comitia of the Centuries, in which they themselves and their wealthy clients could usually command a majority.  In later times, the number of the tribunes was increased to five, and afterward to ten.  They were elected at the Comitia of the tribes.  They had the privilege of attending all sittings of the senate, though they were not considered members of that famous body.  Above all, they acquired the great and perilous power of the veto, by which any one of their number might stop any law, or annul any decree of the senate without cause or reason assigned.  This right of veto was called the “Right of Intercession.”

On the spot where this treaty was made, an altar was built to Jupiter, the causer and banisher of fear, for the plebeians had gone thither in fear and returned from it in safety.  The place was called Mons Sacer, or the Sacred Hill, forever after, and the laws by which the sanctity of the tribunitian office was secured were called the Leges Sacratae.

The tribunes were not properly magistrates or officers, for they had no express functions or official duties to discharge.  They were simply representatives and protectors of the plebs.  At the same time, however, with the institution of these protective officers, the plebeians were allowed the right of having two aediles chosen from their own body, whose business it was to preserve order and decency in the streets, to provide for the repair of all buildings and roads there, with other functions partly belonging to police officers, and partly to commissioners of public works.

THE BATTLE OF MARATHON

B.C. 490

SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY