recognized right of the patrician consuls to revise and modify the
senatorial list at least every fourth year, ineffective as presumably
it was over against the nobility, might very well be employed in their
interest, and an obnoxious plebeian might by means of it be kept out
of the senate or even be removed from its ranks.

The Plebeian Opposition

It is therefore quite true that the immediate effect of the revolution
was to establish the aristocratic government. It is not, however, the
whole truth. While the majority of contemporaries probably thought
that the revolution had brought upon the plebeians only a more rigid
despotism, we who come afterwards discern in that very revolution the
germs of young liberty. What the patricians gained was gained at the
expense not of the community, but of the magistrate's power. It is
true that the community gained only a few narrowly restricted rights,
which were far less practical and palpable than the acquisitions
of the nobility, and which not one in a thousand probably had the
wisdom to value; but they formed a pledge and earnest of the future.
Hitherto the --metoeci-- had been politically nothing, the old
burgesses had been everything; now that the former were embraced
in the community, the old burgesses were overcome; for, however much
might still be wanting to full civil equality, it is the first breach,
not the occupation of the last post, that decides the fall of the
fortress. With justice therefore the Roman community dated its
political existence from the beginning of the consulate.

While however the republican revolution may, notwithstanding the
aristocratic rule which in the first instance it established, be
justly called a victory of the former --metoeci-- or the -plebs-,