After the departure of the Gauls the question arose whether Rome should be rebuilt on its old site or whether all the Romans should migrate in a body to Veii. It was only after a long discussion that it was finally decided to remain at Rome.
The rebuilding of Rome was immediately followed by another period of conflict between the patricians and plebeians. Two causes of discontent brought about the renewal of this contest. The first was the financial condition of the poorer classes, who had been rendered more desperate through the losses occasioned by the Gallic invasion; and second, the desire of the richer plebeians to share in the political honors reserved exclusively for the patricians.
In this contest the leaders of the plebeians were the tribunes Gaius Licinius and Lucius Sextius, who were, year after year, reëlected to this office by the people.
The so-called Licinian Laws, first introduced by these tribunes in 376 B.C., were adopted only after the most bitter political contest which up to this time had ever been fought in Rome. Time and again, the tribunes resorted to their veto power to put a stop to the carrying on of every function of the Roman government. These laws were finally passed in 367 B.C., their three great provisions being as follows:
1. That of all debts on which interest had been paid, the sum of the interest paid should be deducted from the principal, and the remainder paid off in three successive years.
2. That no citizen should hold more than five hundred jugera (nearly 320 acres) of the public land, or should feed on the public pastures more than one hundred head of larger cattle and five hundred of smaller, under penalty of a heavy fine.
3. That henceforth consuls, not consular tribunes, should always be elected, and that one of the two consuls must be a plebeian.
Although the Licinian Laws are generally held to have equalized the different orders at Rome, to have terminated forever the bitter jealousy between patricians and plebeians, to have put a stop for a time to class controversies of all kinds, and to have rendered possible the great career of foreign conquest upon which Rome soon entered, the fact remains that the benefit of these laws was experienced far more by the small class of wealthy plebeians than by the great mass of this order.
Henceforth, with very few exceptions, one consul was always a plebeian, Lucius Sextius being the first plebeian consul and Gaius Licinius the third; but the chance of being elected consul was in reality limited to a small class of plebeians and conferred little practical benefit upon the ordinary member of the order.
The laws for the relief of the poorer classes were not so fully enforced. In particular, the wealthy citizens holding large allotments of the public land found methods by which to evade the carrying out of the provisions of this new law, and we are surprised to find Licinius himself as one of the offenders in this respect.