The tribes
assembled. "Will you have our bills?" asked Licinius and Sextius for the
last time. "We will," was the reply. It was amid more violent conflicts,
however, than had yet arisen that the bills became laws[22] at last.
It takes all the subsequent history of Rome to measure the consequences of
the Revolution achieved by Licinius and Sextius; but the immediate working
of their laws could have been nothing but a disappointment to their
originators and upholders. We can tell little or nothing about the
regard paid to the _decemvirs_. The priestly robes must have seemed an
unprecedented honor to the plebeian. For some ten years the law regarding
the consulship was observed, after which time it was occasionally[23]
violated, but can still be called a success. The laws[24] of relief, as may
be supposed of all such sumptuary enactments, were violated from the first.
No general recovery of the public land from those occupying more than five
hundred[25] jugera ever took place. Consequently there was no general
division of land among the lackland class. Conflicting claims and jealousy
on the part of the poor must have done much to embarrass and prevent the
execution of the law.
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