successfully carried till the year 379, when the senate, well disposed
towards the commons by reason of the conquest of the Volscians, decreed the
nomination of five commissioners to divide the Pomptine territory[31] among
the plebs. This was a new victory for the people and must have inspired
them with the hope of one day obtaining in full their rights in the public
domains.

We have now passed in review the agrarian laws proposed and, in some cases,
enacted between the years 485 and 376, _i.e._ between the _lex Cassia_ and
the _lex Licinia_, which the greater part of the historians have neglected.
We have now come to the propositions of that illustrious plebeian whose
laws, whose character, and whose object have been so diversely appreciated
by all those persons who have studied in any way the constitutional history
of Rome. We wish to enter into a detailed examination of the _lex Licinia_,
but before so doing have deemed it expedient to thus pass in review the
agrarian agitations. The result of this work has, we trust, been a better
understanding of the real tendency, the true purpose, of the law which is
now to absorb our attention. It was no innovation, as some writers of the
day assert, but in reality confined itself to the well beaten track of its
predecessors, striving only to make their attainments more general, more
substantial and more complete.

[Footnote 1: "Solicitati, eo anno, sunt dulcedine agrariae legis animi
plebis,. . . vana lex vanique legis auctores." Livy, II, 42.]

[Footnote 2: Dionysius, VIII, 606, 607.]

[Footnote 3: Livy, _loc. cit._: Dionysius, _loc. cit._]

[Footnote 4: Dionys., VIII, 554.]