of the people, making him in fact a magistrate of the community, and thus abolishing all distinction between Populus and Plebs, or removing the impediments which still hampered tribunician legislation in the concilium plebis. The conservatism of the Roman character, and perhaps the class feeling reviving again at the beginning of the third century in consequence of a renewed outbreak of the Plebs, caused the latter course to be adopted. In the year 287 the commons, oppressed by debt, again seceded—this time to the Janiculum. The plebeian dictator appointed to effect a settlement met social grievances by a political concession. He passed a law which most of our authorities represent as verbally identical with the Valerio-Horatian and Publilian laws,[1] but which seems to have been of a very different and far more definite character. The lawyers[2] regard the lex Hortensia as the measure which gave decrees of the Plebs the full force of laws. Henceforth there is between lex and plebiscitum merely a difference of form and name; their potestas is the same,[3] and even legal formulae use the words as practically identical.[4] A law could repeal a plebiscite and a plebiscite a law;[5] in the case of a conflict between the two, the rule of the Twelve Tables held good that the later repealed the earlier ordinance. It is not, therefore, surprising to find that in the annalists, even those with pretensions to accuracy, Populus and Plebs are used indifferently,[6] and it is only at times by carefully noting who is the presiding magistrate on the particular occasion, that we can determine whether the ordinance he elicitslege plebeive scito, quod C. Sempronius Ti. f. tr. pl. rogavit." Cf. lex Rubria (ib.) "ex lege Rubria seive id pl. sc. est."]
- ↑ Laelius Felix ap. Gell. 15, 27 "(plebi scitis) ante patricii non tenebantur, donec Q. Hortensius dictator legem tulit, ut eo jure quod plebs statuisset, omnes quirites tenerentur"; Plin. H.N. xvi. 10, 37 "ut quod ea (plebs) jussisset, omnes quirites teneret."
- ↑ Gaius i. 3 "olim patricii dicebant plebi scitis se non teneri, quia sine auctoritate eorum facta essent; sed postea lex Hortensia lata est, qua cautum est, ut plebi scita universum populum tenerent, itaque eo modo legibus exaequata sunt"; Pompon. in Dig. 1, 2, 2, 8 "pro legibus placuit et ea (plebiscita) observari lege Hortensia: et ita factum est, ut inter plebis scita et legem species constituendi interesset, potestas autem eadem esset."
- ↑ Pompon. l.c.
- ↑ The lex Agraria of 111 B.C. (Bruns Fontes) thus refers to a lex Sempronia of 123 B.C., "[ex
- ↑ Thus Cicero, exiled by a plebiscitum, was restored by a lex centuriata. See the section on the people.
- ↑ Of the many instances one of the most remarkable is to be found in Sall. Jug. 84, "Marius . . . cupientissima plebe consul factus, postquam ei provinciam Numidiam populus jussit." Here plebs should be populus and populus, plebs.
