or PLEBS, connected etymologically with the root PLEO, and with πλῆθος, a term applied by the more correct among the Greek writers on Roman history to the commonality of Rome. It thus stands contrasted with patrician; and the two great divisions of the Roman people thus indicated give to the earliest periods of Roman history its peculiar character and interest. The ancients themselves do not agree about the time at which the distinction arose between the plebeians and the patricians. They are generally believed to have formed two distinct classes so early as the time of Romulus; while a recent writer (Dr W. Hume's Forschungen aus dem Gebiete der Römischen Verfassungsgeschichte, Frankfurt, 1847) endeavours to prove that the plebeians were originally identical with the clients. The time when they first appear as a distinct class in contrast to the patricians is in the reign of Tullus Hostilius. The plebeian order, recently increased by the Alban conquest, was, in the days of Ancus Marcius, far superior in point of numbers to the populus Romanus. They were excluded, however, from the senate, the comitia, and from all civil and priestly offices of state. In all matters connected with the army the plebeians had to shed their blood, if need were, in defence of their fellow-citizens. In judicial affairs they had to succumb to the patricians. They continued to have their own sacra; and they were free landowners, and had their own gentes.

The population of Rome thus consisted of two opposing elements. The plebeian order stood in no definite relation to the patricians; and it had no means of protecting itself against any arbitrary proceeding of the ruling class. Such a state of things could not last. Tarquinius Priscus was the first to conceive the idea of ameliorating the condition of the plebeians; but he only effected the admission of the noblest among the old plebeian families into the three old tribes. It remained for others to effect their enlargement. This was reserved for Servius Tullius. He divided the city into four parts; the plebeians into twenty-six tribes; and each plebeian received, according to Niebuhr, seven jugera of land. Each tribe had its own sacra, festivals, and meetings, which were convoked by their tribunes.

The next king that ruled over Rome the plebeians lost all they had gained. A third of the plebeians lost their estates in the war with Porsenna, became impoverished, and were perhaps for a time subject to the Etruscans. After the first secession, however, B.C. 494, the plebeians gained several great advantages. These advantages continued to progress until, in B.C. 286, Hortensius succeeded in successfully and permanently reconciling the two orders, and procuring for the plebescita of the plebeians the full power of leges binding upon the whole nation. Thus, after many generations, the government of Rome had passed from an oppressive oligarchy to a moderate democracy, in which each party had its proper influence, and the power of checking the other if it should venture to assume more than it could legally claim.