The patricians sacrificed their own real advantages, as well as the interests of their country, to maintain an ascendancy as injurious to themselves, as it was unjust to the other citizens.

But no sooner had the agrarian laws established a more equitable distribution of property, and other popular laws opened the magistracy to merit without distinction of rank, than the city rose to empire with unexampled rapidity.
FOOTNOTES: [1] The Licinian law provided that no one should rent at a time more than 500 acres of public land.
[2] The league by which the Latin states were bound (jus Latii) was more favourable than that granted to the other Italians (jus Italicum.) * * * * *.