Livy, Books V, Vi, and VII, Vol. 1

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Excerpt from Livy, Books V, Vi, and VII, Vol. 1: With Introduction and Notes, Introduction and TextThe chief events included in these books are the siege and capture of Veii by the Romans, and the subsequent capture of Rome by the Gauls the rise of the city from its ruins, and the con¿icts in which it was engaged against the waning power of the Etruscan nation, more than once having again to encounter the forces of the Celts who had in¿icted so crushing a defeat on the power of Rome: and the beginning of the war known as the Samnite War. Internally there belongs to this period that portion of the struggle of the Orders, of the Plebs against the Patricians, which Mommsen terms 'the equalization of the orders and the new aristocracy.' The Licinio - Sextian laws which established the absolute right of the plebeians to one Of the consulships, the appointment of plebeian Masters of the Horse, and even a plebeian Dictator, broke down the long standing political distinctions and did away with the class privileges which had long made the patricians as such the dominating power in Rome. The success of Licinius and his colleagues was due to the fact that the leading plebeians (who practically had as little sympathy as the patricians with the special burdens of the proletariate) took advantage of the public indignation against usury and the exactions of the capitalist class to force their way to the highest Offices of state. It is re markable that the Licinian laws were finally carried en masse the bulk of the plebs being indifferent to the political claims of their leaders, provided some genuine relief against the burden of debt were devised for themselves. But the leading plebeians were not eager merely to remove the grievances of their poorer fellow-citizens. To quote the words of Licinius as recorded by Dio Cassius, 'if the people would not eat, they Should not drink either, and in the end, the aims of the compromise were achieved. The first law was directed to a settlement of the question of debt, the interest already paid by debtors was to be deducted from the capital, and the remainder of the debt to be paid within three years in equal instalments. The second (which is not classed as agrarian by Livy) provided that no one should hold as possessor more than 500 jugera of public land.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.