Smith, William: A smaller dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities (London, 1871)

PLEBES.

298

was obtained by the use either of boards at
the sides, or of a large wicker basket tied
upon the cart. The annexed cut exhibits a
cart, the body of which is supplied by a
basket. The commonest kind of cart-wheel
was that called tympanum, " the drum," from
its resemblance to the musical instrument of

the same name. It was nearly a foot in
thickness, and was made either by sawing
the trunk of a tree across in a horizontal
direction, or by nailing together boards of
the requisite shape and size. (See the cut.)
These wheels advanced slowly, and made a loud
creaking, which was heard to a great distance.

Plaustrum, Waggon. (From a. Bas-Reliefat Rome.)

PLEBES or PLEBS. PLEBEII. This
word contains the same root as im-pleo, com-
plect, &c., and is therefore etymologically
connected with 77X7)80?, a term which was
applied to the plebeians by the more correct
Greek writers on Roman history, while
others wrongly called them £rjju.05 or oi 677^0-
Ti/cot. The plebeians were the body of com-
mons or the commonalty of Rome, and thus
constituted one of the two great elements of
which the Roman nation consisted, and
which has given to the earlier periods of
Roman history its peculiar character and
interest. The time when the plebeians first
appear as a distinct class of Roman citizens
in contradistinction to the patricians, is in
the reign of Tullns Hostilius. Alba, the
head of the Latin confederacy, was in his
reign taken by the Romans and razed to the
ground. The most distinguished of its in-
habitants were transplanted to Rome and
received among the patricians ; but the great
bulk of Alban citizens, who were likewise
transferred to Rome, received settlements on
the Caelian hill, and were kept in a state of
submission to the populns Romanus or the
patricians. This new population of Rome,
which in number is said to have been equal
to the old inhabitants of the city or the
patricians, were the plebeians. They were
Latins, and consequently of the same blood
as the Ramnes, the noblest of the three
patrician tribes. After the conquest of Alba,

planted to Rome, and incorporated with the
plebeians already settled there, and the Aven-
tine was assigned to them as their habitation.
Some portions of the land which these new
citizens had possessed were given back to
them by the Romans, so that they remained
free land-owners as much as the conquerors
themselves, and thus were distinct from the
clients.—The plebeians were citizens, but not
optimo jure ; they were perfectly distinct
from the patricians, and were neither con-
tained in the three tribes, nor in the curiae,
nor in the patrician gentes. The only point
of contact between the two estates was the
army. The plebeians were obliged to fight
and shed their blood in the defence of their
new fellow-citizens, without being allowed
to share any of their rights or privileges, and
without even the right of intermarriage (con-
nubium.) In all judicial matters the}' were
entirely at the mercy of the patricians, and
had no right of appeal against any unjust
sentence, though they were not, like the
clients, bound to have a patronus. They
continued to have their own sacra, which they
had had before the conquest, but these were
regulated by the patrician pontiffs. Lastly,
they were free land-owners, and had their
own gentes.— The population of the Roman
state thus consisted of two opposite elements;
a ruling class or an aristocracy, and the
commonalty, which, though of the same
stock as the noblest among the rulers, and

Rome, in the reign of Ancus Martius, ac- , exceeding them in numbers, yet enjoyed none
quired possession of a considerable extent of j of the rights which might enable them to
country, containing a number of dependent j take a part in the management of public
Latin towns, as Medullia, Fidenae, Politorium, affairs, religious or civil. Their citizenship
Tellenae, and Ficana. Great numbers of the resembled the relation of aliens to a state, in
inhabitants of these towns were again trans- which they are merely tolerated on condition