Plebeians
group · 3 works · 6 mentions · 9 anchored passages
Plebs · the Plebs · Plebeian · Plebeian class · plebeians
in the texts
Institutes of Roman Law
The non-patrician class of Roman society who formed the bulk of the community, lacked full legal rights, and whose demand for legal protection drove early codification.
and this Plebs possessed a solidarity which gave it the means of lifting up its voice in a demand, not for power, but for the protection of legal rights, and for the knowledge which was essential to that protection.
In the Monarchy, however, and even in the early Republic it seems that the system of law was not marked by perfect uniformity, since the two classes of Patricians and Plebeians, which made up the Roman State, appear to have been distinguished, not only by the possession of different political privileges, but also by the possession of different systems of customary law.
When the army was made the basis of the new Comitia Centuriata, the wealthier Plebeians who were members of the army gained a vote;
Ancient Law
The plebeian class of Rome, excluded from the Comitia Curiata and associated with the alternative Mancipatory Will.
The effect of the political maxim, Plebs Gentem non habet, “a Plebeian cannot be a member of a house,” was entirely to exclude the Plebeians from the Comitia Curiata.
Lectures on the Early History of Institutions
The unprivileged order of Continental Celtic society, organized into family-based groups rather than a miscellaneous mass.
’ The Plebeians, again, so far from constituting a great miscellaneous multitude, were distributed into every sort of natural group, based ultimately upon the Family.