This great triumph was achieved with little tumult (so far as we hear) and no bloodshed. Who can refuse his admiration to a people which could carry through their most violent changes with such calmness and moderation?
But the patricians, worsted as they were, had not yet shot away all their arrows. At the first election after these laws were passed, L. Sextius was chosen the first plebeian consul. Now the consuls, though elected at the comitia of the centuries, were invested with the imperium or sovereign power by a law of the curies. This law the patricians, who alone composed the curies, refused to grant; and to support this refusal the senate had ordered Camillus, who was now some eighty years old, to be named dictator for the fifth time. The old soldier, always ready to fight at an advantage, perceived that nothing now was practicable but an honourable capitulation. The tribunes advised the people to submit to the dictator, but declared that they would indict him at the close of his office; and he, taking a calm view of the state of things, resolved to act as mediator.
EQUALISATION OF THE TWO ORDERS
[368-367 B.C.]
The matter was finally adjusted by a further compromise. The plebeian consul was invested with the imperium; but the judicial power was now taken from the consuls and put into the hands of a supreme patrician judge, called the Prætor of the City (Prætor Urbanus), and Sp. Camillus, son of the dictator, was the first prætor. A hundred men (centumviri) were named, to whom he might delegate all difficult cases not of a criminal nature. At the same time also another magistracy, the curule ædileship, was created, to be filled by patricians and plebeians in alternate years. These curule ædiles shared the duties of the plebeian ædiles, and besides this, had to superintend the great games, for which they were allowed a certain sum from the treasury. At the same time a fourth day was added to these games in honour of the plebeians.
Thus the patricians lost one of the consulships, but retained part of the consular functions under other titles. And when Camillus had thus effected peace between the orders, he vowed a temple to Concord; but before he could dedicate it, the old hero died. The temple, however, was built according to his design; its site, now one of the best known among those of ancient Rome, can still be traced with great certainty at the northwestern angle of the Forum, immediately under the Capitoline. The building was restored with great magnificence by the emperor Tiberius; and it deserved to be so, for it commemorated one of the greatest events of Roman history,—the final union of the two orders, from which point we must date that splendid period on which we now enter. By this event was a single city enabled to conquer, first of all Italy, and then all the civilised countries of the known world, that is, all the peoples bordering on the Mediterranean Sea.
Various causes were for some time interposed to prevent the due execution of the Licinian laws. Indeed the first two of these measures, which aimed at social improvements, may be said to have failed. Social abuses are always difficult to correct. The evils are, in these cases, of slow growth; their roots strike deep; they can only be abated by altering the habits and feelings of the people, which cannot be effected in the existing generation; they will not give way at once to the will of a law-giver, however good his judgment, however pure his motives, however just his objects. But the common difficulty of removing social evils was increased in Rome at this time by circumstances.
[367-343 B.C.]
For two years a pestilence raged in the city, which swept away great numbers of citizens and paralysed the industry of all. The most illustrious of its victims was Camillus, who died even more gloriously than he had lived, while discharging the office of peacemaker. About the same time the region of the city was shaken by earthquakes; the Tiber overflowed its bed and flooded the Great Circus, so that the games then going on were broken off. Not long after a vast gulf opened in the Forum, as if to say that the meeting-place of the Roman people was to be used no more. The seers said that the gods forbade this gulf to close till that which Rome held most valuable were thrown into it. Then, when men were asking what this might be, a noble youth, named M. Curtius, said aloud that Rome’s true riches were brave men, that nothing else so worthy could be devoted to the gods. Thus saying, he put on his armour, and mounting his horse, leaped into the gulf; and straightway, says the legend, the earth closed and became solid as before; and the place was called the Lacus Curtius forever after.
To these direct visitations of God, the pestilence and the earthquake, was added a still more terrible scourge in the continued inroads of the Gauls. It has been noticed above that in the years 361 and 350 B.C. hordes of these barbarians again burst into Latium and again ravaged the Roman territory.