- Social orders
- Political struggle between patricians &
plebeians
- "Struggle between the orders"
- Difficult to understand
- Conflict resolved long before first
historians of Rome
wrote about it
- Misleading & distorted information in
ancient sources
- Patricians
- Descendants of original senators chosen by
Romulus
- Group of senatorial families with hereditary
privileges
- More privileged than plebeians
- Roman ruling class not exclusively patrician
- Plebeians (plebs)
- Origins of term obscure
- Range of meanings associated with it
- Group of underprivleged people
- Peasants
- Craftsmen
- Shopkeepers
- Traders
- Organized movement in early Republic
- Secession
- Form of civil disobedience used by plebs
- Aventine
Hill
- Center of plebeian activity
- First secession (494 BC)
- Plebeian assembly created
- Temple of Ceres, Liber, and Libera built
- Located at foot of Aventine Hill
- Important cult center for plebeians
- Only
a few architectural remains of temple survive
- Embedded
in later constructions
- Chief objectives of plebs in early republic
- Codification & publication of the law
- Special commission of 10 men convened (451 BC)
- Issued "Law of the Twelve Tables"
- Inscribed upon 12 bronze tablets
- Publicly displayed in Forum Romanum
- Not systematic code of law in modern senses
- Topics addressed
- Legal procedure
- Debt foreclosure
- Paternal authority over children
- Property rights
- Inheritance
- Funerary regulations
- Relief from debt & more equitable
distribution of economic resources (land)
- Licinio-Sextian laws (367 BC)
- Gaius Licinius & Lucius Sextius
- One of the two annual consulships now
reserved for plebeians
- Temple
of Concordia (c.
367 BC)
- Located
in Forum Romanum
- Built by Marcus Furius Camillus
- Celebrates peaceful settlement of differences
between patricians & plebeians
- (*)Drawing
of temple
- Construction of temple questioned by some
scholars
- Archaeological investigations of later Temple of Concordia (121 BC)
- Concrete platform contained stone from 4th
century structure
- Resolutions of Plebeian assembly given full
force of law in 287 BC
- Applied to all Roman people
