The Conflict of the Orders refers to the political struggles between the people and the aristocrats in ancient Rome from 500 to 287 BCE. Ancient Rome’s populace was classified in two major categories: plebeians (free roman citizens) and patricians (roman aristocrats). The tug of war between the plebeians who desired greater political freedom and patricians who sought to maintain their power ultimately ended in the overhaul of Roman politics into what we now know of the Roman Republic.
The crux of the Conflict of the Orders was the establishment of three laws that ensured balance in Roman politics. Those three were the Canuleian law that enabled free citizens to apply for any political position, the Licinian-Sextian law that legally mandated that one of the two Consuls be from the plebeian class, and the Hortensian law which empowered the people’s assembly to bind all Romans regardless of their class under its legislation. These legislations were significant in that they separated political power between the two classes and allowed each faction to form a check on the other’s abuse of power. Centuries of struggle divested political monopoly from the aristocrats and opened the door for commoners to aggressively participate in politics. Another major change spawned by these laws is the completion of the Roman Constitution. The Constitution stood above any institution in Rome, and Rome began to move away from traditional aristocracy as power was more invested towards the Senate, which was imbued with legal and political influences.
The Senate was composed between the plebeians and the patricians, but the line between the two classes began to fade away as they were no different from each other. Instead, it gave rise to new classifications. When we ask if the Conflict of the Orders was successful, the plebeians undoubtedly gained political power that matched that of the patricians by legislation. However, the aristocracy remained within Roman societies – such as the nobiles, the group of high-ranking officers in the republic. They acted no different from traditional patricians and sought to maintain their power and privilege. It is very ironic how political equality resulted in the merging of two classes and gave birth to a new form of inequality between new classes. Arguably, the conflict between the two classes gave rise to another form of combinative oligarchy that continued to exert its will on Rome.