close of the year two patricians are found among the tribunes: either these are patricians who have joined the _Plebes_, or the patricians set forth the thoroughly sound principle, that the tribunes of the people, owing to their action upon the machinery of the state, were no longer a magistracy of a part of the nation, but of the whole. That at this period many patricians went over to the _Plebes_ is expressly asserted; yet the other version is also very probable. From this time, we often find the patricians mentioned as fellow-tribesmen of the plebeians. At the discussion of the project for the separation of the _Plebes_ and their settling at Veii, the senators are said to have gone about _prensantes suos quisque tribules_. In like manner we are told that Mamercus Æmilius, about fifteen years after the time of the Decemvirs, had been struck from the list of his tribe, and placed among the _ærarii_. Camillus also appeals to his _tribules_; yet this may perhaps have meant his patrician clansmen. That afterwards, in Cicero’s days, all the patricians were in the tribes is well known. Cæsar belonged to the _Tribus Fabia_; Sulpicius, to the _Lemonia_. After the war of Hannibal, C. Claudius says in Livy, that to strike one from the list of all the five and thirty tribes, was to deprive him of the right of citizenship. M. Livius expels his colleague Claudius from the tribes. The number of these examples might easily be enlarged. In the earlier times, there were patrician and plebeian tribes; in the later, the Ramnes, Tities and Luceres are no more spoken of: they only make their appearance still as the _sex suffragia_ in the centuries. The whole Roman nation was now thrown together into the same tribes. The same was done at Athens, when the ten _phylæ_ of the _Demos_ became the only ones, and the four old mixed tribes were broken up. I believed formerly that this was to be attributed to the decemviral legislation; yet, if we bear in mind how carefully the decemvirs otherwise distinguish between the two orders, we cannot possibly suppose, that in this respect they should have aimed at their fusion. We must place it at a somewhat later period, and we are led to decide upon the time of the second censors; it was therefore soon after the decemvirs. In the fragments of Dio Cassius it is mentioned, that the patricians had preferred the plebeian order on account of its greater power, and had passed over to it. Greater power at that time the _Plebes_ had not; but it had greater strength, and it was easy to foresee what it would attain to. It was for many a more pleasing position to be in the ranks of those who were advancing, than of those who stood still.