encamped on a hill near, declaring they would starve sooner than live in such a place as Rome was. The government was thus reduced to a dead lock; Spurius Cassius was chosen consul by the patricians; and by his instrumentality an arrangement was come to, by which the demands of the commons were conceded, existing debts abolished, a treaty of mutual obligation for the future agreed to between the populus and the plebs as between two independent communities, and a new office instituted, under the title of the _Tribuneship of the Common People_, for the express purpose of protecting the interests of the plebs. The commons then returned to the city; two tribunes of the people were appointed; and their number was subsequently increased first to five, and afterwards to ten. No one could have foreseen how important this office would become. Not content with alleviating the temporary distresses of the plebeians, Spurius Cassius wished permanently to ameliorate their condition; and accordingly, in his third consulship, in the year of the city 268, or B. C. 486, he boldly proposed and carried what was called an _Agrarian Law_. It is absolutely necessary that the reader of Roman history should understand this term. According to the early Roman constitution, the lands acquired in war became the property of the whole populus, or body of patricians, in common. Portions of the conquered lands might be purchased from the state by rich persons; and in such cases the purchaser, whether patrician or plebeian, became absolute owner. Usually, however, the lands were not sold, but were annexed to the unallotted property already belonging to the populus. With regard to this state land, a very curious system prevailed. Any patrician (but none else) was allowed to occupy and cultivate as much of it as he chose, on condition of paying to the state a tithe of the annual produce if it were arable land, and a fifth if it were laid out in oliveyards or vineyards. The land thus occupied did not, by right of possession, become the property of the individual: he was liable to be turned out of it at the pleasure of the state――his landlord; and it was entirely at his own risk that he laid out capital in improving it. As, however, it rarely happened that an individual was ejected from land which he had thus occupied, large tracts of the state land were speedily occupied by enterprising patricians. Such being the plan of distribution, it is evident that in the state lands, occupied and unoccupied, the government possessed a constant fund upon which they could draw in cases of emergency. By selling portions of it, they could raise money; and by assigning portions of it to indigent families, they could permanently provide for them. Several times, it appears, this had been done in the case of indigent plebeian families; and the agrarian law of Spurius Cassius was simply a proposal that――a large accession to the state lands having just taken place――the