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Plebeians were the lower class of Rome, laborers and farmers who mostly worked land owned by the patricians. Some plebeians owned small plots of land, but this was rare until the second century BC. [2] Plebeians were tied to patricians through the clientela system of patronage that saw plebeians assisting their patrician patrons in war ...
The Conflict of the Orders or the Struggle of the Orders was a political struggle between the plebeians (commoners) and patricians (aristocrats) of the ancient Roman Republic lasting from 500 BC to 287 BC in which the plebeians sought political equality with the patricians.
In the annalistic tradition of Livy and Dionysius, the distinction between patricians and plebeians was as old as Rome itself, instituted by Romulus' appointment of the first hundred senators, whose descendants became the patriciate. [3] Modern hypotheses date the distinction "anywhere from the regal period to the late fifth century" BC. [3]
However, when the Twelve Tables were written down, the marriage between the two classes was prohibited. [14] This was repealed in 445 BC with the Lex Canuleia. [15] If a marriage was to occur between a patrician and a plebeian, the children of that marriage would then be given patrician status. This law was created to prevent the classes from ...
Five years earlier, as part of the process of establishing the Twelve Tables of Roman law, the second decemvirate had placed severe restrictions on the plebeian order, including a prohibition on the intermarriage of patricians and plebeians. [5] [6] Gaius Canuleius, one of the tribunes of the plebs, proposed a rogatio repealing this law.
Although legal reform occurred soon after the implementation of the Twelve Tables, these ancient laws provided social protection and civil rights for both the patricians and plebeians. At this time, there was extreme tension between the privileged class and the common people resulting in the need for some form of social order.
Some historians see the sharp contrast between the first, good decemvirate and the second, bad one as a legend to explain the Twelve Tables in general being good while the prohibition of marriage between patricians and plebeians was bad. This bad law was fictively ascribed to a second body of bad decemvirs.
This event, although far from resolving all the economic and social inequalities between patricians and plebeians, nevertheless marked an important turning point in Roman history as it gave rise to the formation of a new type of patrician-plebeian nobility which, allowing continuity in the government of the republic, constituted one of the main ...