legal

Licinio-Sextian Reforms Open Consulship to Plebeians

Date

-367

Part of

legal

In 367 BCE, the Licinio–Sextian reforms pried open the consulship to plebeians, shifting who could command armies and preside in courts. The struggle unfolded between the Aventine Hill’s seceding crowds and the senate’s stone benches. When the law passed, one office at the Republic’s summit changed color—no longer solely patrician purple.

What Happened

The Conflict of the Orders stretched across generations. Plebeians had won tribunes with sacrosanct bodies; they had won a public code in the Twelve Tables. But the consulship—two seats with imperium over war and law—remained the summit of patrician privilege. In 367 BCE, two tribunes, Gaius Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius Lateranus, presented a package of bills that targeted that summit [16].

The setting was familiar. Crowds on the Aventine Hill, the Forum’s paving stones heating in the afternoon, the rumble from the Curia. The Licinio–Sextian proposals addressed debt, landholding, and crucially, access to the consulship. The point was not merely symbolic. Command at the head of legions left marks on the map and on civic careers. If plebeians could enter that stream, the current of Roman politics would carry more of the city.

Resistance was loud. Patrician leaders in the senate argued that tradition—mos maiorum—would be broken. Tribunes met obstruction with vetoes; elections stalled. The months clacked by like counting stones. After a long deadlock—one ancient narrative tells of a decade of obstructed elections—the measures passed. Lucius Sextius Lateranus soon appeared as consul, the first plebeian to hold the office [16,17,18].

The sounds that followed were ritual: lictors shouting for space in the Forum, the creak of the curule chair as a plebeian consul sat for the first time, the murmurs on the Capitoline as sacrifices were offered. The color of precedent had shifted. The consul’s purple border still flashed, but citizens could imagine different shoulders under it.

The reform did not make class disappear. Patricians retained priesthoods that shaped calendars and auspices. The senate still convened in the Curia Hostilia; the Comitia Centuriata still weighted votes by wealth. But an opening at the top changes the whole climb. Ambitious plebeians now had a legal staircase to the pinnacle, and plebeian talent could be repaid with command as well as with applause.

In the next century, plebeians would move through the cursus honorum with greater regularity, holding praetorships, aedileships, and ultimately the consulship. When legions marched from the Campus Martius through the Porta Capena and down the Via Appia, they could be led by men whose ancestors had once seceded in protest. Law redrew Rome’s horizon [16,18].

Why This Matters

Opening the consulship to plebeians altered the Republic’s internal coalition. It enlarged the pool of potential commanders and jurists, allowing plebeian elites to invest in the system rather than stand outside it. That investment stabilized governance by aligning plebeian ambition with the state’s highest responsibilities [16].

The reform speaks directly to the theme of reform versus elite resistance. Tribunes leveraged their veto and mass support to force negotiation; patricians defended tradition but ultimately yielded on access while retaining other levers of influence, including priesthoods and senatorial leadership. The resulting balance translated social pressure into constitutional change [16,17,18].

This access mattered later when popular leaders sought to legislate land or grain reforms. Plebeian consuls could sponsor bills, command armies, and preside over trials, complicating any attempt to fence off power. It also meant that when civil conflicts erupted in the 1st century BCE, loyalties did not map neatly onto patrician versus plebeian lines. The Republic’s political elite had become more socially mixed.

For historians, the Licinio–Sextian moment illustrates how incremental inclusion—conceded under pressure—can thicken a constitution’s resilience while also widening the field for future contests. The consulship did not lose prestige; it gained a broader constituency. In doing so, it made the Republic both more representative and more competitive [16,18,17].