Summary of Book VI
THE book contains the victorious campaigns against the
Volsci, the Aequi, and the Praenestini. Four tribes were
added, the Stellatina, the Tromentina, the Sabatina,
and the Arniensis. Marcus Manlius, who had defended
the Capitol against the Gauls, after liberating the debtors
and releasing those whose persons had been seized, was
found guilty of aiming at sovereignty, and was flung from
the Rock; to stigmatize him the senate decreed that none
of the Manlian family should bear the name of Marcus.
1 Gaius Licinius and Lucius Sextius, tribunes of the plebs,
proposed a law that the consuls, who were formerly chosen
from the patricians, might be elected from the plebs, and
in a strenuous struggle against the opposition of the
patricians, carried their point, after these same tribunes
of the plebs had for five years been the only magistrates,
2 and Lucius Sextius was the first plebeian to be elected consul. Another law was also passed, that none might
hold above five hundred
iugera of land.