Secessio plebis
During the secessio plebis, the plebs would abandon the city en masse in a protest emigration and leave the patrician order to themselves.
In 495 BC, the plebeian populace of Rome began to raise significant concerns about debt, including questioning the necessity of beatings and imprisonment of debtors by money-lenders.
Roman historian Livy records an account of a former military official throwing himself into the forum in an extremely dishevelled state, telling the people of his troubles.
Upon returning home, he was forced to take a loan to afford paying a tax that had been imposed on him, driving him deeply into debt due to usury.
[3] This outrage further compounded by continued senate inaction resulted in the plebeians seceding to the Mons Sacer (the Sacred Mountain), over three miles from the city, on the advice of Lucius Sicinius Vellutus.
The body selected two senators, Lucius Valerius Potitus and Marcus Horatius Barbatus, to go meet with the people to negotiate.
Those gathered at Mons Sacer demanded the restoration of both the plebeian tribunes and the right to appeal, as they had been suspended during the term of the decemviri.
The consuls vehemently opposed Canuleius, arguing that the tribune was proposing nothing less than the breakdown of Rome's social and moral fabric, at a time when the city was faced with external threats.
He then proposed that, in addition to restoring the right of conubium, the law should be changed to allow plebeians to hold the consulship; all but one of the other tribunes supported this measure.
[14] A remark by a consul, that the children of mixed marriages might incur the displeasure of the gods, inflamed the plebeians into a military strike, refusing to defend the city against attacking neighbours.
In 290 BC, Roman armies led by consuls Manius Curius Dentatus and Publius Cornelius Rufinus conquered large territories in the plains of Rieti and Amiternum from the Sabines.
Meanwhile, plebeian farmers, many of whom had fought in the war, found difficulty in repaying debts incurred with these wealthy patricians.
[6] This law finally eliminated the political disparity between the two classes, closing the Conflict of Orders after about two hundred years of struggle.
This event, although far from resolving all the economic and social inequalities between patricians and plebeians, nevertheless marked an important turning point in Roman history as it gave rise to the formation of a new type of patrician-plebeian nobility (nobilitas) which, allowing continuity in the government of the republic, constituted one of the main elements of strength in its economic and military expansion.
