The Struggle of the Orders: Social Divisions in the Roman Republic

The most noticeable element in the social organization of early Rome was the division between two groups—the patricians and the plebeians. The patrician class in Rome consisted of families who were descended from the original senators appointed during the period of the kings. Their initial prominence was probably due to their wealth as great landowners. Thus patricians constituted an aristocratic governing class. Only they could be consuls, magistrates, and senators. Through their patronage of large numbers of dependent clients, they could control the centuriate assembly and many other facets of Roman life.

The plebeians constituted the considerably larger group of “independent, unprivileged, poorer, and vulnerable men” as well as large nonpatrician landowners, less wealthy landholders, craftspeople, merchants, and small farmers. Although they were citizens, they did not possess the same rights as the patricians. Both patricians and plebeians could vote, but only the patricians could be elected to governmental offices. Both had the right to make legal contracts and marriages, but intermarriage between patricians and plebeians was forbidden. At the beginning of the fifth century B.C., the plebeians began a struggle to seek both political and social equality with the patricians.

The first success of the plebeians came in 494 B.C., when they withdrew physically from the state. The patricians, realizing that they could not defend Rome by themselves, were forced to compromise. Two new officials known as tribunes of the plebs were instituted (later raised to five and then ten in number). These tribunes were given the power to protect plebeians against arrest by patrician magistrates. Moreover, after a new popular assembly for plebeians only, called the council of the plebs, was created in 471 B.C., the tribunes became responsible for convoking it and placing proposals before it. If adopted, these measures became plebiscita (“it is the opinion of the plebs”), but they were binding only on the plebeians, not the patricians. Nevertheless, the council of the plebs gave the plebeians considerable political leverage. After 445 B.C., when a law allowed patricians and plebeians to intermarry, the division between the two groups became less important. In the fourth century B.C., the consulship was opened to the plebeians. The climax of the struggle between the orders came in 287 B.C. with passage of a law that stipulated that all plebiscita passed by the council of the plebs had the force of law and were binding on the entire community, including patricians.

The struggle between the orders, then, had a significant impact on the development of the Roman constitution. Plebeians could hold the highest offices of state, they could intermarry with the patricians, and they could pass laws binding on the entire Roman community. Although the struggle had been long, the Romans had handled it by compromise, not violent revolution. Theoretically, by 287 B.C., all Roman citizens were equal under the law, and all could strive for political office. But in reality, as a result of the right of intermarriage, a select number of patrician and plebeian families formed a new senatorial aristocracy that came to dominate the political offices. The Roman Republic had not become a democracy.