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

PLKKES.

300

PLETHRON.

b.c. 421 the plebeians were admitted to the
quaestorship, which opened to them the way
into the senate, where henceforth their num-
ber continued to increase. [Quaestor ;
Senatus.] In b. c. 367 the tribunes L.
Licinius Stolo and L. Sextius placed them-
selves at the head of the commonalty, and
resumed the contest against the patricians.
After a fierce struggle, which lasted for seve-
ral years, they at length carried a rogation,
according to which decemvirs were to be
appointed for keeping the Sibylline books
instead of duumvirs, of whom half were to
be plebeians. The next great step was the
restoration of the consulship, on condition
that one consul should always be a plebeian.
A third rogation of Licinius, which was only
intended to afford momentary relief to the
poor plebeians, regulated the rate of interest.
From this time forward the plebeians also
appear in the possession of the right to
occupy parts of the ager publicus. In b.c.
3G6, L. Sextius Lateranus was the first ple-
beian consul. The patricians, however, who
always contrived to yield no more than what
it was absolutely impossible for them to
retain, stripped the consulship of a consider-
able part of its power, and transferred it to
two new curule offices, viz. that of praetor and
of curule aedile [Aediles ; Praetor.] But
after such great advantages had been once
gained by the plebeians, it was impossible to
stop them in their progress towards a perfect
equality of political rights with the patricians.
In b. c. 356, C. Marcius Rutilus was the first
plebeian dictator ; in b. c. 351 the censorship
was thrown open to the plebeians, and in b. c.
336 the praetorship. The Ogulnian law, in
b. c. 300, also opened to them the offices of
pontifex and augur. These advantages were,
as might be supposed, not gained without the
fiercest opposition of the patricians, and even
after they were gained and sanctioned by
law, the patricians exerted every means to
obstruct the operation of the law. Such
fraudulent attempts led, in b.c. 286, to the
last secession of the plebeians, after which,
however, the dictator Q. Hortensius success-
fully and permanently reconciled the two
orders, secured to the plebeians all the rights
they had acquired until then, and procured
for their plebiscita the full power of leges
binding upon the whole nation. After the
passing of the Hortensian law, the political
distinction between patricians and plebeians
ceased, and, with a few unimportant excep-
tions, both orders were placed on a footing of
perfect equality. Henceforth the name popu-
lus is sometimes applied to the plebeians
alone, and sometimes to the whole body of
Roman citizens, as assembled in the comitia

centuriata or tributa. The term plebs or
plebecula, on the other hand, was applied, in
a loose manner of speaking, to the multitude
or populace, in opposition to the nobiles or
the senatorial party.—A person who was
born a plebeian could only be raised to the
rank of a patrician by a lex curiata, as was
sometimes done during the kingly period,
and in the early times of the republic. It
frequently occurs in the history of Rome that
one and the same gens contains plebeian as
well as patrician families. In the gens
Cornelia, for instance, we find the plebeian
families of the Balbi, Mammulae, Merulae,
&c, along with the patrician Scipiones, Sul-
lae, Lentuli, &c. The occurrence of this
phenomenon may be accounted for in different
ways. It may have been, that one branch of
a plebeian family was made patrician while
the others remained plebeians. It may also
have happened that two families had the
same nomen gentilicium without being actual
members of the same gens. Again, a patri-
cian family might go over to the plebeians,
and as such a family continued to bear the
name of its patrician gens, this gens appa-
rently contained a plebeian family. When a
peregrinus obtained the eivitas through the
influence of a patrician, or when a slave was
emancipated by his patrician master, they
generally adopted the nomen gentilicium of
their benefactor, and thus appear to belong
to the same gens with him.

PLEBISCITUM, a name properly applied
to a law passed at the comitia tributa on the
rogation of a tribune. Originally, a plebisci-
tum required confirmation by the comitia
curiata and the senate ; but a Lex Hor-
tensia was passed b. c. 286, to the effect
that plebiscita should bind all the populus
(vniversus populus), and this lex rendered
confirmation unnecessary. The Lex Hor-
tensia is always referred to as the lex which
put plebiscita as to their binding force ex-
actly on the same footing as leges. The
principal plebiscita are mentioned under the
article Lex.

PLECTRUM. [Lyra.]

PLETHRON (n\d8pov\ the fundamental
land measure in the Greek system, being the
square of 100 feet, that is, 10,000 square
feet. The later Greek writers use it as the
translation of the Roman jugerum, probably
because the latter was the standard land
measure in the Roman system ; but, in size,
the plethrou answered more nearly to the
Roman actus, or half-jugerum, which was
the older unit of land measures. As fre-
quently happened with the ancient land
measures, the side of the plethron was taken
as a measure of length, with the same name.