was the state of things which led Spurius Cassius, himself a patrician, to advocate the assignment of certain conquered territory to the plebeians. His proposition, which tradition assigns to the year 486, brought no immediate results, but, as Livy notices (II. 41. 3), it marks the beginning of an agrarian agitation which went on to the close of the republican period, the first milestone of which was the lex Icilia, so called (Liv. III. 31. 1), of 456, which provided for the division among the plebeians of the ager publicus on the Aventine.
30. The Decemvirate. The third great achievement of the plebs during the period under consideration, the publication of the laws of the twelve tables, was the result of a long and bitter struggle. The first proposition looking to this end is said (Liv. III. 9. 5) to have been made by the tribune C. Terentilius Harsa in 462, and in 451 a compromise between the two parties was arranged, to the effect that the consuls and tribunes alike give place to a commission of ten men (decemviri legibus scribundis), who should not only exercise the functions of chief magistrates, but should be empowered to publish a code of laws binding on the whole community. The commission of the first year drew up ten tables, but left their task unfinished at the end of their term of office. The commission of the second year, so the story goes, took up the work where its predecessor had left off, but its conduct was so overbearing that the plebeians withdrew to the Aventine, and the decemvirs were forced out of office. The real course of events cannot be determined with certainty, but the appearance of plebeian names in the list of decemvirs for the second year makes it probable that part of the second commission was plebeian, that certain changes were proposed which the patricians would not accept, and that
