Lex Hortensia

The lex Hortensia, also sometimes referred to as the Hortensian law, was a law passed in Ancient Rome in 287 BC which made all resolutions passed by the Plebeian Council, known as plebiscita, binding on all citizens. It was passed by the dictator Quintus Hortensius in a compromise to bring the plebeians back from their secession to the Janiculum hill.

It was the final result of the long struggle between patricians and plebeians, where the plebeians would periodically secede from the city in protest (secessio plebis) when they felt they were deprived of their rights. The law contained similar stipulations of the two earlier laws, the lex Valeria-Horatia of 449 BC and lex Publilia of 339 BC. Unlike the prior two laws, however, lex Hortensia eliminated the requirement that the Senate ratify, in the case of the lex Valeria-Horatia, or give its prior approval to, in the case of the lex Publilia, plebiscites before becoming binding on all citizens. Its passage secured the end of the Conflict of the Orders, and secured theoretically equal political rights between patricians and plebeians.

In the annalistic tradition, around the year 287 BC, a plebeian dictator by the name of Hortensius was appointed to handle a civil uprising that eventually led to the secession of the plebs to the Jaculinum hill; only after the passage of the lex Hortensia in the Centuriate Assembly, or comitia centuriata, did the plebs return to the city. The annals attribute the cause of the uprising to debt problems, with the proximate cause being the call to arms to fight against the Lucanians, giving the plebeians more leverage in depriving the patricians of needed manpower in the war.

However, there is considerable reason to doubt this story, which Livy attributes to urban rabble in the forum, as large masses of urban poor did not really exist in the middle Republic. Furthermore, rural landowners controlled the vast majority of the votes in the Plebeian Council (Latin: concilium plebis), as they controlled 29 of the voting blocs that never numbered more than 35, since the Council was organised in the same way as the Tribal Assembly (Latin: comitia tributa), just with the exclusion of patricians. The more likely cause is therefore the desire of rural plebeians to control the distribution of public lands (Latin: ager publicus) won in the Third Samnite War.

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