This, in short, was the time when the Roman burgess-body in the
later sense of the term originated. The plebeians had hitherto been
--metoeci-- who were subjected to their share of taxes and burdens,
but who were nevertheless in the eye of the law really nothing but
tolerated aliens, between whose position and that of foreigners proper
it may have seemed hardly necessary to draw a definite line of
distinction. They were now enrolled in the lists as burgesses liable
to military service, and, although they were still far from being on
a footing of legal equality--although the old burgesses still remained
exclusively entitled to perform the acts of authority constitutionally
pertaining to the council of elders, and exclusively eligible to the
civil magistracies and priesthoods, nay even by preference entitled to
participate in the usufructs of burgesses, such as the joint use of
the public pasture--yet the first and most difficult step towards
complete equalization was gained from the time when the plebeians no
longer served merely in the common levy, but also voted in the common
assembly and in the common council when its opinion was asked, and the
head and back of the poorest --metoikos-- were as well protected by
the right of appeal as those of the noblest of the old burgesses.

One consequence of this amalgamation of the patricians and plebeians
in a new corporation of Roman burgesses was the conversion of the
old burgesses into a clan-nobility, which was incapable of receiving
additions or even of filling up its own ranks, since the nobles no
longer possessed the right of passing decrees in common assembly
and the adoption of new families into the nobility by decree of the
community appeared still less admissible. Under the kings the ranks
of the Roman nobility had not been thus closed, and the admission of
new clans was no very rare occurrence: now this genuine characteristic
of patricianism made its appearance as the sure herald of the speedy