Rome’s patricians conceded plebeian offices but kept final veto authority

Evidence

In his speech during the second leg of the Mahad Satyagraha on 25 December 1927, Ambedkar refers to the patrician–plebeian struggle, or ‘the Conflict of the Orders’ as it is more commonly known, in greater detail. The Conflict of the Orders, in which the plebeians sought political equality with the patricians, lasted between 494 and 287 BCE. In this protracted conflict, the patricians were occasionally forced to give some concession to the plebeians, but always sought to retain the final authority. Thus the provisions for economic reform in laws like Lex Licinia Sextia (367 BCE) and Leges Genuciae (342 BCE)—ceiling on the ownership of land by a single person, ban on lending that carried interest, etc.—were largely ignored by the patricians. In his Mahad speech, Ambedkar gives a very interesting account of how the positions of ‘tribunes’, constituted to protect the rights of the plebeians, were held exclusively by patricians in the beginning. Even when later laws stipulated that one of the two tribunes must be a plebeian, the patricians retained the power to reject an elected plebeian tribune through the authority of the oracle at Delphi (always a patrician). — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1052

Categorization

• XREF: Parallel to how dominant castes in India co-opt reform structures; connects to the book’s broader argument about Brahmins retaining ultimate authority despite concessions.