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Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) - "Roughing It, Part 7."

Anonymous - "Relacion historica de los sucesos de la rebelion de Jose Gabriel"

Frederich Schiller - "Love and Intrigue"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge - "Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4."

Publishers Newswire Announced Today its Latest List of Books to Bookmark, for Q4/2008
REDONDO BEACH, Calif. -- Publishers Newswire, an online resource for small publishers, as well as lesser known and first-time book authors, has announced its latest quarterly 'Books to Bookmark' list, for Q4/2008. This list is a round-up of new and interesting books which are often missed due to not originating from big name authors, or major New York book publishing houses.

Book, 'Letters From Heroes', captures triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and II
GILROY, Calif. -- The hardships, struggles, hopes and triumphs of the men and women who served in World War I and World War II is wonderfully captured in 'Letters From Heroes' (ISBN: 978-1-58909-570-0), by Edward T. Cook, a new book just published by Bookstand Publishing. This poignant collection of real letters from real servicemen allow the reader to see things through the eyes of these soldiers and understand their thoughts about war, training, sickness, the enemy and even their food.

In New Book, Mystery of the 6,000 Year Old Science and Art of Astrology Has Been Solved
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Author of the new book, ASTROMASKS (ISBN: 978-0-615-23386-4), Vijay Rishii Ph.D., announced today that his book reveals the secret code behind the ancient and controversial science of astrology. The author decodes astrology using a new concept of complementary pairs, and gives new meanings to the zodiac signs and their real connection to humans on earth, which has never been done before in the entire history of astrology.

The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5) - Theodor Mommsen

T >> Theodor Mommsen >> The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5)

Taking a connected view of these measures, we can scarcely attribute
to them any other design than that of substituting for tribunician
intercession a limitation of the consular powers by written law.
On both sides there must have been a conviction that things could not
remain as they were, and the perpetuation of anarchy, while it ruined
the commonwealth, was in reality of no benefit to any one. People in
earnest could not but discern that the interference of the tribunes
in administration and their action as prosecutors had an absolutely
pernicious effect; and the only real gain which the tribunate brought
to the plebeians was the protection which it afforded against a
partial administration of justice, by operating as a sort of court
of cassation to check the caprice of the magistrate. Beyond doubt,
when the plebeians desired a written code, the patricians replied that
in that event the legal protection of tribunes would be superfluous;
and upon this there appears to have been concession by both sides.
Perhaps there was never anything definitely expressed as to what
was to be done after the drawing up of the code; but that the plebs
definitely renounced the tribunate is not to be doubted, since it was
brought by the decemvirate into such a position that it could not get
back the tribunate otherwise than by illegal means. The promise given
to the plebs that its sworn liberties should not be touched, may be
referred to the rights of the plebeians independent of the tribunate,
such as the -provocatio- and the possession of the Aventine. The
intention seems to have been that the decemvirs should, on their
retiring, propose to the people to re-elect the consuls who should
now judge no longer according to their arbitrary pleasure but
according to written law.

Legislation of the Twelve Tables

The plan, if it should stand, was a wise one; all depended on whether
men's minds exasperated on either side with passion would accept that
peaceful adjustment. The decemvirs of the year 303 submitted their
law to the people, and it was confirmed by them, engraven on ten
tables of copper, and affixed in the Forum to the rostra in front
of the senate-house. But as a supplement appeared necessary,
decemvirs were again nominated in the year 304, who added two more
tables. Thus originated the first and only Roman code, the law of the
Twelve Tables. It proceeded from a compromise between parties, and
for that very reason could not well have contained any changes in the
existing law of a comprehensive nature, going beyond the regulation of
secondary matters and of the mere adaptation of means and ends. Even
in the system of credit no further alleviation was introduced than the
establishment of a--probably low--maximum of interest (10 per cent)
and the threatening of heavy penalties against the usurer-penalties,
characteristically enough, far heavier than those of the thief; the
harsh procedure in actions of debt remained at least in its leading
features unaltered. Still less, as may easily be conceived, were
changes contemplated in the rights of the orders. On the contrary the
legal distinction between burgesses liable to be taxed and those who
were without estate, and the invalidity of marriage between patricians
and plebeians, were confirmed anew in the law of the city. In like
manner, with a view to restrict the caprice of the magistrate and
to protect the burgess, it was expressly enacted that the later law
should uniformly have precedence over the earlier, and that no decree
of the people should be issued against a single burgess. The most
remarkable feature was the exclusion of appeal to the -comitia
tributa- in capital causes, while the privilege of appeal to the
centuries was guaranteed; which admits of explanation from the
circumstance that the penal jurisdiction was in fact usurped by the
plebs and its presidents,(11) and with the tribunate there necessarily
fell the tribunician capital process, while it was perhaps the
intention to retain the aedilician process of fine (-multa-).
The essential political significance of the measure resided far less
in the contents of the legislation than in the formal obligation now
laid upon the consuls to administer justice according to these forms
of process and these rules of law, and in the public exhibition of
the code, by which the administration of justice was subjected to the
control of publicity and the consul was compelled to dispense equal
and truly common justice to all.

Fall of the Decemvirs

The end of the decemvirate is involved in much obscurity. It only
remained--so runs the story--for the decemvirs to publish the last
two tables, and then to give place to the ordinary magistracy. But
they delayed to do so: under the pretext that the laws were not yet
ready, they themselves prolonged their magistracy after the expiry
of their official year--which was so far possible, as under Roman
constitutional law the magistracy called in an extraordinary way to
the revision of the constitution could not become legally bound by
the term set for its ending. The moderate section of the aristocracy,
with the Valerii and Horatii at their head, are said to have attempted
in the senate to compel the abdication of the decemvirate; but the
head of the decemvirs Appius Claudius, originally a rigid aristocrat,
but now changing into a demagogue and a tyrant, gained the ascendancy
in the senate, and the people submitted. The levy of two armies
was accomplished without opposition, and war was begun against the
Volscians as well as against the Sabines. Thereupon the former
tribune of the people, Lucius Siccius Dentatus, the bravest man in
Rome, who had fought in a hundred and twenty battles and had forty-five
honourable scars to show, was found dead in front of the camp,
foully murdered, as it was said, at the instigation of the decemvirs.
A revolution was fermenting in men's minds; and its outbreak was
hastened by the unjust sentence pronounced by Appius in the process as
to the freedom of the daughter of the centurion Lucius Verginius, the
bride of the former tribune of the people Lucius Icilius--a sentence
which wrested the maiden from her relatives with a view to make her
non-free and beyond the pale of the law, and induced her father
himself to plunge his knife into the heart of his daughter in the
open Forum, to rescue her from certain shame. While the people in
amazement at the unprecedented deed surrounded the dead body of the
fair maiden, the decemvir commanded his lictors to bring the father
and then the bridegroom before his tribunal, in order to render to
him, from whose decision there lay no appeal, immediate account
for their rebellion against his authority. The cup was now full.
Protected by the furious multitude, the father and the bridegroom of
the maiden made their escape from the lictors of the despot, and
while the senate trembled and wavered in Rome, the pair presented
themselves, with numerous witnesses of the fearful deed, in the two
camps. The unparalleled tale was told; the eyes of all were opened
to the gap which the absence of tribunician protection had made in the
security of law; and what the fathers had done their sons repeated.
Once more the armies abandoned their leaders: they marched in warlike
order through the city, and proceeded once more to the Sacred Mount,
where they again nominated their own tribunes. Still the decemvirs
refused to lay down their power; then the army with its tribunes
appeared in the city, and encamped on the Aventine. Now at length,
when civil war was imminent and the conflict in the streets might
hourly begin, the decemvirs renounced their usurped and dishonoured
power; and the consuls Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius negotiated
a second compromise, by which the tribunate of the plebs was again
established. The impeachment of the decemvirs terminated in the two
most guilty, Appius Claudius and Spurius Oppius, committing suicide
in prison, while the other eight went into exile and the state
confiscated their property. The prudent and moderate tribune of
the plebs, Marcus Duilius, prevented further judicial prosecutions
by a seasonable use of his veto.

So runs the story as recorded by the pen of the Roman aristocrats;
but, even leaving out of view the accessory circumstances, the great
crisis out of which the Twelve Tables arose cannot possibly have
ended in such romantic adventures, and in political issues so
incomprehensible. The decemvirate was, after the abolition of the
monarchy and the institution of the tribunate of the people, the
third great victory of the plebs; and the exasperation of the opposite
party against the institution and against its head Appius Claudius
is sufficiently intelligible. The plebeians had through its means
secured the right of eligibility to the highest magistracy of the
community and a general code of law; and it was not they that had
reason to rebel against the new magistracy, and to restore the
purely patrician consular government by force of arms. This end
can only have been pursued by the party of the nobility, and if the
patricio-plebeian decemvirs made the attempt to maintain themselves
in office beyond their time, the nobility were certainly the first to
enter the lists against them; on which occasion doubtless the nobles
would not neglect to urge that the stipulated rights of the plebs should
be curtailed and the tribunate, in particular, should be taken from it.
If the nobility thereupon succeeded in setting aside the decemvirs,
it is certainly conceivable that after their fall the plebs should
once more assemble in arms with a view to secure the results both
of the earlier revolution of 260 and of the latest movement; and the
Valerio-Horatian laws of 305 can only be understood as forming a
compromise in this conflict.

The Valerio-Horatian Laws

The compromise, as was natural, proved very favourable to the
plebeians, and again imposed severely felt restrictions on the
power of the nobility. As a matter of course the tribunate of the
people was restored, the code of law wrung from the aristocracy was
definitively retained, and the consuls were obliged to judge according
to it. Through the code indeed the tribes lost their usurped
jurisdiction in capital causes; but the tribunes got it back, as a way
was found by which it was possible for them to transact business as
to such cases with the centuries. Besides they retained, in the right
to award fines without limitation and to submit this sentence to the
-comitia tributa-, a sufficient means of putting an end to the civic
existence of a patrician opponent. Further, it was on the proposition
of the consuls decreed by the centuries that in future every
magistrate--and therefore the dictator among the rest--should be bound
at his nomination to allow the right of appeal: any one who should
nominate a magistrate on other terms was to expiate the offence with
his life. In other respects the dictator retained his former powers;
and in particular his official acts could not, like those of the
consuls, be cancelled by a tribune.

The plenitude of the consular power was further restricted in so far
as the administration of the military chest was committed to two
paymasters (-quaestores-) chosen by the community, who were nominated
for the first time in 307. The nomination as well of the two new
paymasters for war as of the two administering the city-chest now
passed over to the community; the consul retained merely the conduct
of the election instead of the election itself. The assembly in which
the paymasters were elected was that of the whole patricio-plebeian
freeholders, and voted by districts; an arrangement which likewise
involved a concession to the plebeian farmers, who had far more
command of these assemblies than of the centuriate -comitia-.

A concession of still greater consequence was that which allowed the
tribunes to share in the discussions of the senate. To admit the
tribunes to the hall where the senate sat, appeared to that body
beneath its dignity; so a bench was placed for them at the door that
they might from that spot follow its proceedings. The tribunician
right of intercession had extended also to the decrees of the senate
as a collective body, after the latter had become not merely a
deliberative but a decretory board, which probably occurred at first
in the case of a -plebiscitum- that was meant to be binding for the
whole community;(12) it was natural that there should thenceforth be
conceded to the tribunes a certain participation in the discussions
of the senate-house. In order also to secure the decrees of the
senate-- with the validity of which indeed that of the most important
-plebiscita- was bound up--from being tampered with or forged, it
was enacted that in future they should be deposited not merely under
charge of the patrician -quaestores urbani- in the temple of Saturn,
but also under that of the plebian aediles in the temple of Ceres.
Thus this struggle, which was begun in order to get rid of the
tribunician power, terminated in the renewed and now definitive
sanctioning of its right to annul not only particular acts of
administration on the appeal of the person aggrieved, but also any
resolution of the constituent powers of the state at pleasure.
The persons of the tribunes, and the uninterrupted maintenance of
the college at its full number, were once more secured by the most
sacred oaths and by every element of reverence that religion could
present, and not less by the most formal laws. No attempt to abolish
this magistracy was ever from this time forward made in Rome.




Notes for Book II Chapter II


1. II. I. Right of Appeal

2. I. XIII. Landed proprietors

3. I. VI. Character of the Roman Law

4. II. I. Collegiate Arrangement

5. I. XI. Property

6. I. XI. Punishment of Offenses against Order

7. That the plebeian aediles were formed after the model of the
patrician quaestors in the same way as the plebeian tribunes after
the model of the patrician consuls, is evident both as regards their
criminal functions (in which the distinction between the two
magistracies seems to have lain in their tendencies only, not in their
powers) and as regards their charge of the archives. The temple of
Ceres was to the aediles what the temple of Saturn was to the
quaestors, and from the former they derived their name. Significant
in this respect is the enactment of the law of 305 (Liv. iii. 55),
that the decrees of the senate should be delivered over to the aediles
there (p. 369), whereas, as is well known, according to the ancient
--and subsequently after the settlement of the struggles between the
orders, again preponderant--practice those decrees were committed to
the quaestors for preservation in the temple of Saturn.

8. I. VI. Levy Districts

9. I. III. Clan-Villages

10. II. II. Secession to the Sacred mount

11. II. II. Intercession

12. II. II. Legislation




CHAPTER III

The Equalization of the Orders, and the New Aristocracy


Union of the Plebians

The tribunician movements appear to have mainly originated in social
rather than political discontent, and there is good reason to suppose
that some of the wealthy plebeians admitted to the senate were no
less opposed to these movements than the patricians. For they too
benefited by the privileges against which the agitation was mainly
directed; and although in other respects they found themselves treated
as inferior, it probably seemed to them by no means an appropriate
time for asserting their claim to participate in the magistracies,
when the exclusive financial power of the whole senate was assailed.
This explains why during the first fifty years of the republic no step
was taken aiming directly at the political equalization of the orders.

But this league between the patricians and the wealthy plebeians by no
means bore within itself any guarantee of permanence. Beyond doubt
from the very first a portion of the leading plebeian families had
attached themselves to the movement-party, partly from a sense of what
was due to the fellow-members of their order, partly in consequence
of the natural bond which unites all who are treated as inferior,
and partly because they perceived that concessions to the multitude
were inevitable in the issue, and that, if turned to due account,
they would result in the abrogation of the exclusive rights of
the patriciate and would thereby give to the plebeian aristocracy a
decisive preponderance in the state. Should this conviction become
--as was inevitable--more and more prevalent, and should the plebeian
aristocracy at the head of its order take up the struggle with the
patrician nobility, it would wield in the tribunate a legalized
instrument of civil warfare, and it might, with the weapon of social
distress, so fight its battles as to dictate to the nobility the terms
of peace and, in the position of mediator between the two parties,
compel its own admission to the offices of state.

Such a crisis in the position of parties occurred after the fall of
the decemvirate. It had now become perfectly clear that the tribunate
of the plebs could never be set aside; the plebeian aristocracy could
not do better than seize this powerful lever and employ it for the
removal of the political disabilities of their order.

Throwing Open of Marriage and of Magistracies--
Military Tribunes with Consular Powers

Nothing shows so clearly the defencelessness of the clan-nobility
when opposed to the united plebs, as the fact that the fundamental
principle of the exclusive party--the invalidity of marriage between
patricians and plebeians--fell at the first blow scarcely four years
after the decemviral revolution. In the year 309 it was enacted by
the Canuleian plebiscite, that a marriage between a patrician and
a plebeian should be valid as a true Roman marriage, and that the
children begotten of such a marriage should follow the rank of the
father. At the same time it was further carried that, in place of
consuls, military tribunes--of these there were at that time, before
the division of the army into legions, six, and the number of these
magistrates was adjusted accordingly-with consular powers(1) and
consular duration of office should be elected by the centuries.
The proximate cause was of a military nature, as the various wars
required a greater number of generals in chief command than the
consular constitution allowed; but the change came to be of essential
importance for the conflicts of the orders, and it may be that
that military object was rather the pretext than the reason for
this arrangement. According to the ancient law every burgess or
--metoikos-- liable to service might attain the post of an officer,(2)
and in virtue of that principle the supreme magistracy, after having
been temporarily opened up to the plebeians in the decemvirate, was
now after a more comprehensive fashion rendered equally accessible to
all freeborn burgesses. The question naturally occurs, what interest
the aristocracy could have--now that it was under the necessity of
abandoning its exclusive possession of the supreme magistracy and of
yielding in the matter--in refusing to the plebeians the title, and
conceding to them the consulate under this singular form?(3) But,
in the first place, there were associated with the holding of the
supreme magistracy various honorary rights, partly personal, partly
hereditary; thus the honour of a triumph was regarded as legally
dependent on the occupancy of the supreme magistracy, and was never
given to an officer who had not administered the latter office in
person; and the descendants of a curule magistrate were at liberty to
set up the image of such an ancestor in the family hall and to exhibit
it in public on fitting occasions, while this was not allowed in the
case of other ancestors.(4) It is as easy to be explained as it is
difficult to be vindicated, that the governing aristocratic order
should have allowed the government itself to be wrested from their
hands far sooner than the honorary rights associated with it,
especially such as were hereditary; and therefore, when it was obliged
to share the former with the plebeians, it gave to the actual supreme
magistrate the legal standing not of the holder of a curule chair, but
of a simple staff-officer, whose distinction was one purely personal.
Of greater political importance, however, than the refusal of the
-ius imaginum- and of the honour of a triumph was the circumstance,
that the exclusion of the plebeians sitting in the senate from
debate necessarily ceased in respect to those of their number who,
as designated or former consuls, ranked among the senators whose
opinion had to be asked before the rest; so far it was certainly
of great importance for the nobility to admit the plebeian only to
a consular office, and not to the consulate itself.

Opposition of the Patriciate

But notwithstanding these vexatious disabilities the privileges of the
clans, so far as they had a political value, were legally superseded
by the new institution; and, had the Roman nobility been worthy of its
name, it must now have given up the struggle. But it did not. Though
a rational and legal resistance was thenceforth impossible, spiteful
opposition still found a wide field of petty expedients, of chicanery
and intrigue; and, far from honourable or politically prudent as such
resistance was, it was still in a certain sense fruitful of results.
It certainly procured at length for the commons concessions which
could not easily have been wrung from the united Roman aristocracy;
but it also prolonged civil war for another century and enabled
the nobility, in defiance of those laws, practically to retain the
government in their exclusive possession for several generations
longer.

Their Expedients

The expedients of which the nobility availed themselves were as
various as political paltriness could suggest. Instead of deciding
at once the question as to the admission or exclusion of the plebeians
at the elections, they conceded what they were compelled to concede
only with reference to the elections immediately impending. The vain
struggle was thus annually renewed whether patrician consuls or
military tribunes from both orders with consular powers should be
nominated; and among the weapons of the aristocracy this mode of
conquering an opponent by wearying and annoying him proved by no
means the least effective.

Subdivision of the Magistracy--
Censorship

Moreover they broke up the supreme power which had hitherto been
undivided, in order to delay their inevitable defeat by multiplying
the points to be assailed. Thus the adjustment of the budget and of
the burgess--and taxation-rolls, which ordinarily took place every
fourth year and had hitherto been managed by the consuls, was
entrusted as early as the year 319 to two valuators (-censores-),
nominated by the centuries from among the nobles for a period, at
the most, of eighteen months. The new office gradually became the
palladium of the aristocratic party, not so much on account of its
financial influence as on account of the right annexed to it of
filling up the vacancies in the senate and in the equites, and of
removing individuals from the lists of the senate, equites, and
burgesses on occasion of their adjustment. At this epoch, however,
the censorship by no means possessed the great importance and moral
supremacy which afterwards were associated with it.

Quaestorship

But the important change made in the year 333 in respect to the
quaestorship amply compensated for this success of the patrician
party. The patricio-plebeian assembly of the tribes--perhaps taking
up the ground that at least the two military paymasters were in fact
officers rather than civil functionaries, and that so far the plebeian
appeared as well entitled to the quaestorship as to the military
tribuneship--carried the point that plebeian candidates also were
admitted for the quaestorial elections, and thereby acquired for
the first time the privilege of eligibility as well as the right of
election for one of the ordinary magistracies. With justice it was
felt on the one side as a great victory, on the other as a severe
defeat, that thenceforth patrician and plebeian were equally capable
of electing and being elected to the military as well as to the urban
quaestorship.

Attempts at Counterrevolution

The nobility, in spite of the most obstinate resistance, only
sustained loss after loss; and their exasperation increased as their
power decreased. Attempts were doubtless still made directly to
assail the rights secured by agreement to the commons; but such
attempts were not so much the well-calculated manoeuvres of party as
the acts of an impotent thirst for vengeance. Such in particular was
the process against Maelius as reported by the tradition--certainly
not very trustworthy--that has come down to us. Spurius Maelius,
a wealthy plebeian, during a severe dearth (315) sold corn at such
prices as to put to shame and annoy the patrician store-president
(-praefectus annonae-) Gaius Minucius. The latter accused him of
aspiring to kingly power; with what amount of reason we cannot decide,
but it is scarcely credible that a man who had not even filled the
tribunate should have seriously thought of sovereignty. Nevertheless
the authorities took up the matter in earnest, and the cry of "King"
always produced on the multitude in Rome an effect similar to that
of the cry of "Pope" on the masses in England. Titus Quinctius
Capitolinus, who was for the sixth time consul, nominated Lucius
Quinctius Cincinnatus, who was eighty years of age, as dictator
without appeal, in open violation of the solemnly sworn laws.(5)
Maelius, summoned before him, seemed disposed to disregard the
summons; and the dictator's master of the horse, Gaius Servilius
Ahala, slew him with his own hand. The house of the murdered man was
pulled down, the corn from his granaries was distributed gratuitously
to the people, and those who threatened to avenge his death were
secretly made away with. This disgraceful judicial murder--a disgrace
even more to the credulous and blind people than to the malignant
party of young patricians--passed unpunished; but if that party had
hoped by such means to undermine the right of appeal, it violated
the laws and shed innocent blood in vain.