After the expulsion of the kings, Rome was ruled by its aristocrats (roughly, the patricians) who abused their privileges. This led to a struggle between the people (plebeians) and the aristocrats that is referred to as the Conflict of the Orders, where the term "orders" means "plebeian" or "patrician". To help resolve the conflict, the patricians gave up most of their privileges, but retained vestigial and religious ones, by the time of the lex Hortensia, in 287. This law was named for a plebeian dictator.This article looks at events leading to the laws referred to as the "12 Tablets" that was codified in 449 B.C.
After Rome Expelled Their Kings
After the expulsion of the last king, Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud), monarchy was abolished in Rome. In its place were 2 annually-elected magistrates called consuls, who served throughout the Republic, except when there was a dictator (or military tribune with consular powers) or a 10-man decemvirate.
Magistrates, judges, and priests of the new republic mostly came from the patrician order, or upper class*. Unlike the patricians, the lower class plebeians may have suffered under this early Republican structure more than they had under monarchy, since they now had, in effect, many rulers. A similar situation in ancient Greece made the lower classes sometimes welcome tyrants. In Athens, the political movement led to codification of laws and then democracy. The Roman path was different.
During the first few centuries of the Republic the number of chafing plebeians increased. This was partly because their numbers increased naturally and partly because neighboring Latin tribes granted citizenship by treaty with Rome, were enrolled in the Roman tribes.
"Gaius Terentilius Harsa was a tribune of the plebs that year. Thinking that the absence of the consuls afforded a good opportunity for tribunitian agitation, he spent several days in haranguing the plebeians on the overbearing arrogance of the patricians. In particular he inveighed against the authority of the consuls as excessive and intolerable in a free commonwealth, for whilst in name it was less invidious, in reality it was almost more harsh and oppressive than that of the kings had been, for now, he said, they had two masters instead of one, with uncontrolled, unlimited powers, who, with nothing to curb their licence, directed all the threats and penalties of the laws against the plebeians."
Livy 3.9
The plebeians were oppressed by hunger, poverty and powerlessness. Allotments of land didn't solve the problems of poor farmers whose tiny plots stopped producing when overworked. Some plebeians whose land was sacked by the Gauls couldn't afford to rebuild, so they were forced to borrow. Interest rates were exorbitant, but since land couldn't be used for security, farmers in need of loans had to enter into contracts (nexa), pledging personal service. Farmers who defaulted (addicti), could be sold into slavery or even killed. Grain shortages led to famine which repeatedly (among others: 496, 492, 486, 477, 476, 456 and 453 B.C.) compounded the problems of the poor.
Some patricians were making a profit and gaining slaves, even if the people to whom they lent money defaulted, but Rome was more than just the patricians. It was becoming the main power in Italy and would soon become the dominant Mediterranean power, so what it needed was a fighting force. Referring back to the similarity with Greece mentioned on the first page of this article, Greece needed its fighters, too, and made concessions to the lower classes, but Greece wasn't a united force on the verge of taking over the Mediterranean. Since there weren't enough patricians in Rome to do all the fighting the young republic engaged in with its neighbors, the patricians soon realized they needed strong, healthy, young plebeian bodies to defend Rome.
*Cornell, in Ch. 10 of The Beginnings of Rome, points out problems with this traditional picture of the makeup of early Republican Rome. Among other problems, some of the early consuls appear not to have been patricians. Their names appear later in history as plebeians. Cornell also questions whether or not patricians as a class existed prior to the Republic and suggests that although the germs of the patriciate were there under the kings, the aristocrats consciously formed a group and closed their privileged ranks sometime after 507 B.C.
