should be a plebeian. This last provision opened to any one of the
plebeian class the highest office in the state. The nobles, when they saw
that it would be impossible to resist the popular demand, had recourse to
the old device. They effected a compromise, whereby the judicial powers of
the consuls were taken from them and conferred upon a new magistrate, who
bore the name of praetor. Only patricians, of course, were to be eligible
to this new office. They then permitted the Licinian laws to pass (367
B.C.).

During the latter half of the fourth century B.C. (between the years 356-
300) the plebeians gained admittance to the dictatorship, the censorship,
the praetorship, and to the College of Augurs and the College of Pontiffs.
They had been admitted to the College of Priests having charge of the
Sibylline books, at the time of the passing of the Licinian laws. With
plebeians in all these positions, the rights of the lower order were
fairly secured against oppressive and partisan decisions on the part of
the magistrates, and against party fraud in the taking of the auspices and
in the regulation of the calendar. There was now political equality
between the nobility and the commonalty.


WARS FOR THE MASTERY OF ITALY.

THE FIRST SAMNITE WAR (343-341 B.C.).--The union of the two orders in the
state allowed the Romans now to employ their undivided strength in
subjugating the different states of the peninsula. The most formidable
competitors of the Romans for supremacy in Italy were the Samnites, rough
and warlike mountaineers who held the Apennines to the east of Latium.
They were worthy rivals of the "children of Mars." The successive
struggles between these martial races are known as the First, Second, and