New Project

Conflict of the Orders 
- the conflict between patricians and plebeians
- lasting from 494 BC to 287 BC
- plebeians sought political equality with the patricians
- played the major role in the development of the Constitution of the Roman Republic
- result: the creation of plebeian tribune (first acquisition of real power by the plebeians)

494 BCE: traditional date of the First Secession of the Plebs, during which they established their own assembly (the Concilium Plebis) and elected their own magistrates, the Tribunes and the Plebeian Aediles.

450 BCE: traditional date of the Law of the Twelve Tables, the first codification of Roman law 

445 BCE: patricians and plebeians were permitted to intermarry 

367 BCE: plebeians became eligible for the consulship

342 BCE: law passed making it mandatory that one of the two Consuls must be a plebeian

339 BCE: law passed making it mandatory that one of the two Censors must be a plebeian

300 BCE: half of the priesthoods (which were also state offices) must be plebeian

287 BCE: Third Secession, won the concession that all plebiscites, measures passed in the Concilium Plebis, had the force of laws for the whole Roman state

Civil War
- slaves were forced to work on estates
- small farmers found it difficult to compete with the large estates run by the labor of enslaved people
- Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus help Rome's poor
limiting the size of the estates
giving the land to the poor
"The savage beasts have their...dens,...but the men who bear arms and expose their lives for the safety of their country, enjoy...nothing more in it but the air and light... and wander from place to place with their wives and children."
violent deaths (senators felt threatened by their ideas)