Immediately after the passage of the Licinian Laws the patricians secured the creation of a new office. The man holding this office was called _prætor_, and was given the judicial powers formerly belonging to the consuls. At a later period the number of prætors was increased to two, one of whom, known as the _prætor urbanus_, had jurisdiction over controversies between Roman citizens, and the other, the _prætor peregrinus_, who had jurisdiction over controversies between foreigners residing at Rome and between Romans and foreigners. CHAPTER V THE PERIOD OF FOREIGN CONQUEST The most glorious period of Roman history, from the military standpoint, followed closely upon the cessation of fierce national contests in the fourth century before Christ. The united efforts of patricians and plebeians, devoted to the task of foreign conquest, proved sufficient in a few generations to win for Rome her world empire. "The fifth century is the most beautiful century of Rome. The plebeians had conquered the consulship and are succeeding in conquering their admission to other magistracies which the patricians wished to reserve; they free themselves from the servitude which, under the name of Nexus, weighed on the debtors. They arrive at political equality and individual independence; at the same time the old aristocracy still dominates in the Senate and maintains there the inflexibility of its resolves and the persistence of its designs. It was thanks to this interior condition that the Roman people was able to survive the strongest tests from without over which it had triumphed, and to make that progress which cost it most dear. We see the peoples fight, one by one, and often all together; the Latin people, the Etruscans, the Goths, the Samnites, the other Sabellic peoples of the Apennines; and the end is always victory. The beginnings of this history were somber. Rome was afflicted by one of those pestilences which one finds in all the epochs of the history of this unsanitary city. Thence was the origin of those scenic pieces imported by the Etruscans and giving origin to comedy--a means devised to appease the gods; so that Roman comedy had an origin religious and dismal. The fifth century is for Rome the age of great devotions and of grand sacrifices." (J. J. Ampère in _L'empire romaine à Rome_.) A full description of the various military campaigns of Rome would tend to obscure rather than to illumine the political and economic history of the city. An enumeration of the foreign conquests of Rome during this period, however, is necessary to indicate the rapid increase in the territorial possessions of Rome, with their inevitable reaction upon the domestic conditions of the republic.