compulsion, blows, an attempt at murder were all obvious cases; but forcible resistance to a tribune’s will[378] came under this head, and, after the law which guaranteed the right of meeting to the Plebs, any act, whether of magistrates or individuals, which interrupted a meeting of the Plebs summoned by a tribune.[379] In fact, during the earliest years of the struggles of the Plebs, the rights of the corporation are represented only by the powers of the tribune, through whom alone it claimed official recognition; and thus from 494 to the epoch of the decemviral legislation (451) the tribunate is engaged in efforts to gain a better representation of the plebeian community, and to secure an equality in the administration of the law, which should render the clumsy negative system of the constant interposition of their _auxilium_ less necessary. The first attempt seems to have been to some extent secured by the _plebiscitum_ passed by Publilius Volero in 471, which enacted that the _concilium_ of the Plebs, instead of meeting as before by _curiae_, should now meet by tribes (_tributim_).[380] As this was a purely self-regarding ordinance, it probably did not require the consent of Senate and people,[381] and we are told that it was looked on with disfavour by the Patricians. The grounds of their objections are not easily fathomed, nor is the gain to the Plebs brought about by the change particularly clear.[382] The number of the tribes at this time is unknown, but it was probably twenty-one. This growth had been brought about by an abandonment of the Servian principle. After the Roman territory, lost in great part during the earliest years of the Republic, had been regained, a wholly new subdivision of the _ager Romanus_ had been adopted. The four Servian tribes were confined to the ring-wall of the city, and the land without the walls was now separated into _tribus_, which were called the country (_rusticae_) as opposed to the city tribes (_tribus urbanae_). Sixteen of these country tribes bear the names of patrician _gentes_;[383] they must have been named from the clan settlements and were obviously the first created. It is affirmed by Dionysius[384] that, at the time of the trial of Coriolanus (491 B.C.), the number of the tribes was twenty-one; but it has been conjectured with some plausibility that the twenty-first was added in this very year 471, when the tribe was first used for voting purposes, in order to create an inequality of votes, and that it bears its _local_ name (Clustumina or Crustumina) in memory of the secession of the Plebs to the Sacred Mount.[385] The Plebs may have petitioned the consuls to add one more to the divisions of the state; for it was they alone who could effect the change, the creation of a tribe being an administrative act which none but the magistrates of the community could carry out.