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St. Mary's Convent High school, Mapusa is staging a play titled "Lion King"
December 1, 2007 - Hanuman Hall, Mapusa
to fundraise for a false ceiling for the school hall
& upgrading the school playground
Headmistress Sr. Namika A.C. / Teacher Mrs. Sonia Noronha
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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>From Prof. Barry Cunliffe's 'Rome And Her Empire', Oxford University.
In a small community, the senatorial system, whereby the real power of the
state was vested in the principal families, worked without discord, but with an
increase in the population, particularly among the small traders and the urban
poor who sold their labour, tensions began to develop. These so called "plebs",
as citizens, were members of the Assembly, but even so they were exposed to
abuse all the time that power was retained by the "patricians."
In the struggle which followed, the plebs began to hold unofficial councils
of their own. Negotiations were at first abortive, but when the plebs
threatened to withdraw their labour and leave Rome, a compromise was rapidly
reached (495 B.C.). Henceforth the Council of the Plebs could appoint two
magistrate-tribunes of their own, and fifty years later that Council could
issue decrees that were binding on the state as a whole. This new "plebiscite"
greatly weakened the monopoly of the patricians.
With further reforms, the priesthood was opened to both orders, consulships
of the Republic were offered to plebians, and the Senate was denied veto powers
over the Council of the Plebs.
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