=Tribunes of the Plebs.=—­One day, says the legend, the plebeians, finding themselves mistreated, withdrew under arms to a mountain, determined to break with the Roman people.  The patricians in consternation sent to them Menenius Agrippa who told them the fable of the members and the stomach.  The plebs consented to return but they made a treaty with the people.  It was agreed that their chiefs (they called them tribunes of the plebs) should have the right of protecting the plebeians against the magistrates of the people and of prohibiting any measure against them.  All that was necessary was to pronounce the word “Veto” (I forbid); this single word stopped everything; for religion prevented attacks on a tribune under penalty of being devoted to the infernal gods.

=Triumph of the Plebs.=—­The strife between the two orders beginning at the end of the fifth century continued for two centuries (494 B.C. to about 300 B.C.).[118]

The plebeians, much more numerous and wealthy, ended by gaining the victory.  They first secured the adoption of laws common to the two orders; afterward that marriage should be permitted between the patricians and the plebeians.  The hardest task was to obtain the high magistracies, or, as it was said, “secure the honors.”  Religious scruple ordained, indeed, that before one could be named as a magistrate, the gods must be asked for their approval of the choice.  This was determined by inspecting the flight of birds ("taking the auspices").  But the old Roman religion allowed the auspices to be taken only on the name of a patrician; it was not believed that the gods could accept a plebeian magistrate.  But there were great plebeian families who were bent on being the equals of the patrician families in dignity, as they were in riches and in importance.  They gradually forced the patricians to open to them all the offices, beginning with the consulship, and ending with the great pontifical office (Pontifex Maximus).  The first plebeian consul was named in 366 B.C., the first plebeian pontifex maximus in 302 B.C.[119] Patricians and plebeians then coalesced and henceforth formed but one people.

THE ROMAN PEOPLE

=The Right of Citizenship.=—­The people in Rome, as in Greece, is not the whole of the inhabitants, but the body of citizens.  Not every man who lives in the territory is a citizen, but only he who has the right of citizenship.  The citizen has numerous privileges: 

1.  He alone is a member of the body politic; he alone has the right of voting in the assemblies of the Roman people, of serving in the army, of being present at the religious ceremonials at Rome, of being elected a Roman magistrate.  These are what were called public rights.

2.  The citizen alone is protected by the Roman law; he only has the right of marrying legally, of becoming the father of a family, that