[7] The annals attribute the cause of the uprising to debt problems, with the proximate cause being the call to arms to fight against the Lucanians, giving the plebeians more leverage in depriving the patricians of needed manpower in the war.
The more likely cause is therefore the desire of rural plebeians to control the distribution of public lands (Latin: ager publicus) won in the Third Samnite War.
[11] With both the urban and the rural sections of the populace clamouring for reform and the military necessities of manpower granting the plebs a strong negotiating position, the law entered the realm of the inevitable.
However, this served as an impediment towards the participation of rural plebeians in the concilium plebis, as they were then unable to vote on convenient days when they would have been in the city.
[5] It also cemented the pre-eminence of the Tribal Assembly and the Plebeian Council in legislation, with primarily minor and procedural laws passed in the late Republic.