7 B.C., the plebeians' struggle for equality was met with the leges Liciniae Sextiae, which stated that one of the Consuls selected each year must be a plebeian. The Consuls held an extremely high office, presiding over the legislative bodies of the comitia centuriata and the comitia tributa. Both of these bodies consisted of the whole citizen body, patricians and plebeians, but voting tended to favor the patricians due to an unequal system of weighting (Gibbon 674). However, by 287 B.C., with the lex Hortensia, the resolutions of the concilium plebis, the all-plebeian voting unit, achieved full legislative force with those of the two comitia. This was a significant victory, as the lawmaking process up to that point had involved the formal submission of a bill for the approval of the patrician senate, while plebiscites needed no senatorial sanction (Wolff 65).
After 367 B.C., having essentially settled the political unrest within its borders, Rome turned its attention outward. Territorial expansion was, if not the motive, then certainly the result of two wars with Carthage during the 3rd century B.C., Rome's "only rival for control of the Western Mediterranean" (Nicholas 7). Wars, expansion, and the a
...