The fact is that after the enactment of the Genucian and Publilian laws the plebeians continued for about a generation relatively content with their economic condition. Frequent victories brought booty,[1906] and conquests made extensive assignments of land possible.[1907] But the people must have found the third Samnite war oppressive. Although of far shorter duration than the second, it required larger armies and longer and more distant campaigns. Under the burden of military service the plebs again fell into debt, in spite of the unusual distributions of booty among the soldiers when victorious.[1908] Their burden was rendered the heavier by the circumstance that many of the wealthy were violating the Licinian-Sextian restrictions on the use of public land and pasture, and were doubtless failing to pay their dues[1909]—a course of conduct which rendered necessary not only the assignment of the spoil of 293 to the aerarium but also the imposition of a tributum especially vexatious to the plebs.[1910] The distress was augmented by a pestilence which began in 295 and continued for several years.[1911] Whereas all on actual service were by law exempt from prosecution for debt, many citizens who remained at home were the victims of the usurers, who were occasionally fined for their illegal exactions.[1912] Again all the commons incurred hopeless debts, which at the close of the war (290) the creditors must have proceeded to exact with their usual ruthlessness. The institution of the tresviri capitales in the following year[1913] is proof of the intention of the government to enforce the criminal law with the utmost rigor. A new movement for the relief of debtors had already set in, and the creditors were organizing resistance to the popular demands. As long as the nobility could rely upon the tribunate of the plebs,[1914] they felt secure. Even if a bill for the benefit of the poor should be presented, they believed their interests to be well fortified by tribunician intercession and by the senate, which, composed chiefly of creditors, would certainly refuse its sanction to such a measure. The grave economic distress, however, at length filled the tribunate with men who were at one in demanding a radical measure of relief, and who accordingly presented a bill for the abolition of debts. Many times they offered it to the tribes in vain; the senate refused its assent; for the creditors, among whom must be counted a majority of the senators, hoped to recover both principal and interest. Willing to compromise, the tribunes then offered the senate, if it should yield, a choice of two alternatives, neither of which can be deduced with certainty from the mutilated fragment of Dio Cassius, our authority for this event. One of them, however, is conjectured to be that the principal alone should be recovered,[1915] in what way cannot be made out; and the other that the interest already paid should be deducted from the principal, and the