In Italy, and her confederate arms,
Could not have made this peace!"

A temple was accordingly built in memory of this event, and in honor of
Feminine Fortune, at the request of the women of Rome, for the senate
had decreed that any wish they might express should be gratified. As
for Coriolanus, he is said to have lived long in banishment, bewailing
his misfortune, and saying that exile bore heavily on an old man. The
entire story, heroic and tragic as it is related to us, is not
substantiated, and we do not really know whether if true it should be
assigned to the year 488 B.C., or to a date a score of years later.

During all the century we are now considering, the plebeians were
slowly gaining ground in their attempts to improve their political
condition, though they did not fail to meet rebuffs, and though they
were many times unjustly treated by their proud opponents. These
efforts at home were complicated, too, by the fact that nearly all the
time there was war with one or another of the adjoining nations.
Treaties were made at this period with some of the neighboring peoples,
by a good friend of the plebeians, Spurius Cassius, who was consul in
the year 486, and these to a certain extent repaired the losses that
had followed the war with Porsena after the fall of the Tarquins.
Cassius tried to strengthen the state internally, too, by dividing
certain lands among the people, and by requiring rents to be paid for
other tracts, and setting the receipts aside to pay the commons when
they should be called out as soldiers. This is known as the first of
the many Agrarian Laws (_ager_, a meadow, a field) that are recorded in
Roman history, though something of the same nature is said to have
existed in the days of Servius Tullius.