Licinian-Sextian Laws (367 BC): Plebeians Win the Consulship

The Licinian-Sextian laws (Latin leges Liciniae Sextiae) were reforms passed in Rome in 367 BC that opened the consulship, the Republic’s highest office, to plebeians. Proposed by the tribunes Gaius Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius Lateranus, they also addressed debt and the use of public land. They mark a turning point in the long “Conflict of the Orders” between patricians and plebeians.

Background: patricians, plebeians and a crisis

In the early Roman Republic, political and religious offices were largely reserved for the patricians, a closed group of aristocratic families. The plebeians, the rest of the citizen body, had won their own officials, the tribunes of the plebs, and a written law code in the Twelve Tables, but they were still excluded from the consulship.

For much of the 5th and early 4th centuries BC, Rome was often governed not by two consuls but by “military tribunes with consular power”, boards of three to six men. Plebeians could in theory hold this office, yet few did. After the Gallic sack of Rome around 390 BC, rebuilding and war left many small farmers deeply in debt, sharpening tensions between rich and poor.

The proposals

According to Livy, Licinius and Sextius put forward three bills in 376 BC:

• Debt: interest already paid would be deducted from the principal, and the balance repaid in three equal annual instalments.
• Public land: no one could occupy more than 500 iugera (about 125 hectares) of the ager publicus, land owned by the Roman state.
• Consulship: the consular tribunate would be abolished, consuls restored, and one of the two consuls drawn from the plebs.

A fourth measure, added later, replaced the two patrician priests who kept the Sibylline Books with a board of ten, half of them plebeians.

Ten years of struggle

The patricians resisted fiercely. Livy describes years of deadlock in which other tribunes, won over by the patricians, vetoed the bills, while Licinius and Sextius were re-elected as tribunes year after year and blocked elections of senior magistrates in return. His account includes a period of several years with no curule magistrates at all, but this “anarchy” is probably an artefact of later Roman chronology and its length is doubtful.

The veteran general Marcus Furius Camillus was named dictator in 368 and again in 367 BC. Tradition holds that he eventually brokered a compromise, and that he vowed a temple to Concordia, the goddess of harmony, to mark the reconciliation between the orders. The laws passed in 367 BC, and Lucius Sextius was elected consul for 366 BC.

The compromise

The patricians did not give way for nothing. The same settlement created two new offices that, at first, were reserved for patricians. The praetor took over much of the administration of justice in the city, and two curule aediles were added to look after public games, markets and buildings. Within a few decades plebeians could hold these posts as well.

The consulship itself did not become reliably shared at once. Patricians held both consulships in several years between 355 and 343 BC. A later law, the Lex Genucia of 342 BC, is said to have confirmed plebeian access, and from then on one consul each year was usually a plebeian.

Myths and facts

Myth: the laws were caused by a family quarrel. Livy tells how Fabia, daughter of the patrician Marcus Fabius Ambustus and wife of the plebeian Licinius, envied her sister, married to a patrician tribune, and urged her father and husband to win office for plebeians. Most historians treat this as a moralising tale rather than a real cause.

Fact: the land limit is uncertain. The 500-iugera cap was cited by later reformers such as Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BC. Many scholars think the limit was projected back onto 367 BC, or added to an earlier, smaller rule, because Rome controlled relatively little public land at the time.

Fact: Licinius broke his own law. Livy records that in 357 BC Licinius Stolo was fined for holding 1,000 iugera, having emancipated his son to disguise half of it.

Timeline

• 376 BC: Tribunes Licinius and Sextius propose their bills (traditional date).
• 375–371 BC: Livy’s reported years without senior magistrates; the chronology is disputed.
• 368 BC: Marcus Furius Camillus is named dictator amid the deadlock.
• 367 BC: The Licinian-Sextian laws are passed; Camillus is again dictator.
• 366 BC: Lucius Sextius Lateranus serves as the first plebeian consul; the first praetor takes office.
• 357 BC: Licinius Stolo is fined under his own land law.
• 342 BC: The Lex Genucia confirms plebeian access to the consulship.

Consequences

The most lasting effect was political. Wealthy plebeian families could now reach the consulship, command armies and enter the Senate after their term. Over the next century they merged with the patricians into a new ruling class, the nobilitas, defined by office-holding rather than birth. The plebeian victories that followed, from access to the dictatorship and censorship to the Lex Hortensia of 287 BC, built on the breakthrough of 367 BC.

For poorer plebeians the gains were more limited. Debt remained a recurring problem, and debt bondage (nexum) was only abolished later in the century, traditionally in 326 BC.

Why it matters

The Licinian-Sextian laws broke the patricians’ monopoly on Rome’s top office and created the mixed patrician-plebeian elite that led the Republic through its great expansion. They show how the Roman constitution grew through negotiated compromise rather than a single founding act.