But this practical sagacity was to be put to many a hard test in the period we sketched in the last chapter. No sooner was the _respublica_ established, than a great question pressed for solution, that of the mutual relations of the privileged and unprivileged classes. What was really the origin of this distinction of class we do not yet know, and perhaps never shall. Here the fact must suffice, that the privileged, the patricians as they were called, the representatives of families belonging to the old clans (_gentes_) were alone deemed capable of preserving the peace between citizens and gods, or between the citizens themselves, and therefore they alone could hold the _imperium_ and take the auspices. Both classes served in the army and voted at elections, but without the chance of holding the _imperium_ the plebeians were helpless. Yet it is quite certain that they had grievances of their own, and real ones. We must think of them as in the main small holders of land, with little or no capital, and constantly obliged to borrow either in the form of money or stock. They became debtors to the rich, who would usually be the patricians, and the old customary law of debt was hard and even savage. The result of this was, according to the traditional story, that once at least, if not twice, they actually _struck_; they left their work and went off in a body, threatening to found a new city some miles farther up the Tiber. They knew well that they were indispensable to the State as soldiers, and the patricians knew it too. Fortunately, the plebeians also knew that the State, with all its traditions of religion and government, of duty and discipline, was indispensable to themselves. They knew nothing of the forms and formulæ which were deemed necessary for the maintenance of peace with gods and men. They could not carry away with them the gods of the city, under whose protection they and their forefathers had lived. They would simply be adrift, without oars or rudder, and such a position was absolutely unthinkable. So they returned to the city—so the story runs—and the result was a compromise, the first of a long series of compromises which finally made Rome into a compact and united commonwealth, and enabled her to tide over three centuries of continual struggle and endeavour. The story of these compromises is too long and complicated to be told in this book, but the successive stages can briefly be pointed out.