From a very early period in the history of the Roman nation the people struggled for their rights and privileges against this aristocracy of wealth and hereditary power. At the expulsion of the kings, in 500 B.C., the senate lived on, as did the old popular assembly of the people, the former gaining strength, the latter becoming weakened. Realizing what they had lost in political power, having lost their farms by borrowing money of the rich patricians, and suffered imprisonment and distress on that account, the plebeians, resolved to endure no longer, marched out upon the hill, Mons Sacer, and demanded redress by way of tribunes and other officers.
This was the beginning of an earnest struggle for 50 years { 254} for mere protection, to be followed by a struggle of 150 years for equality of power and rights. The result of this was that a compromise was made with the senate, which allowed the people to have tribunes chosen from the plebeians, and a law was passed giving them the right of protection against the oppression of any official, and subsequently the right of intercession against any administrative or judicial act, except in the case when a dictator was appointed. This gave the plebeians some representation in the government of Rome. They worked at first for protection, and also for the privilege of intermarriage among the patricians. After this they began to struggle for equal rights and privileges.
A few years after the revolt in 486 B.C. Spurius Cassius brought forward the first agrarian law. The lands of the original Roman territory belonged at first to the great families, and were divided and subdivided among the various family groups. But a large part of the land obtained by conquest of the Italians became the public domain, the property of the entire people of Rome. It became necessary for these lands to be leased by the Roman patricians, and as these same Roman patricians were members of the senate, they became careless about collecting rent of themselves, and so the lands were occupied year after year, and, indeed, century after century, by the Roman families, who were led to claim them as their own without rental. Cassius proposed to divide a part of these lands among the needy plebeians and the Latins as well, and to lease the rest for the profit of the public treasury. The patricians fought against Cassius because he was to take away their lands, and the plebeians were discontented with him because he had favored the Latins. The result was that at the close of his office he was sentenced and executed for the mere attempt to do justice to humanity.