While the plebeians continued
severed from one another, the patricians drew together in resistance to the
bills. Licinius stood forth demanding, at once, all that it had cost his
predecessors their utmost energy to demand, singly and at long intervals,
from the patricians. Nothing was to be done but to unite in overwhelming
him and his supporters. "Great things were those that he claimed and not to
be secured without the greatest contention."[9] The very comprehensiveness
of his measures proved the safeguard of Licinius. Had he preferred but one
of these demands, he would have been unhesitatingly opposed by the
great majority of the patricians. On the other hand he would have had
comparatively doubtful support from the plebs. If the interests of the
poorer plebeians alone had been consulted, they would not have been much
more active or able in backing their tribunes, while the richer men would
have gone over in a body to the other side with the public tenants and the
private creditors among the patricians. Or, supposing the case reversed and
the bill relating to the consulship brought forward alone, the debtors and
the homeless citizens would have given the bill too little help with hands
or hearts to secure its passage as a law.
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