class struggle
entries
concepts
patricians and plebeians
the beginning of a five-hundred-year cold war. how the elite closed ranks by inventing the patricians and raising a barrier of blood to leave the plebs without political rights.
events
the first general strike
the plebs paralyse rome by walking out of the city in the secessio plebis of 494 bce. weary of debt-bondage, they force the patrician senate to capitulate and create the tribunate of the plebs.
institutions
the law that legalised love
the patricians prohibited by law any marriage with plebeians to shield their purity of blood. the pressure of the plebs forces through the lex canuleia in 445 bce and opens the first crack in the wall of power.