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Various - "Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870"

Percy Keese Fitzhugh - "Roy Blakeley"

John Lord - "Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII"

Edward Bulwer Lytton - "Paul Clifford, Complete"

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)

The Tribunate of the People as an Instrument of Government

While the Roman magistrate was thus more and more completely and
definitely transformed from the absolute lord into the limited
commissioner and administrator of the community, the old
counter-magistracy, the tribunate of the people, was undergoing at
the same time a similar transformation internal rather than external.
It served a double purpose in the commonwealth. It had been from
the beginning intended to protect the humble and the weak by a
somewhat revolutionary assistance (-auxilium-) against the overbearing
violence of the magistrates; it had subsequently been employed to get
rid of the legal disabilities of the commons and the privileges of the
gentile nobility. The latter end was attained. The original object
was not only in itself a democratic ideal rather than a political
possibility, but it was also quite as obnoxious to the plebeian
aristocracy into whose hands the tribunate necessarily fell, and
quite as incompatible with the new organization which originated
in the equalization of the orders and had if possible a still more
decided aristocratic hue than that which preceded it, as it was
obnoxious to the gentile nobility and incompatible with the patrician
consular constitution. But instead of abolishing the tribunate, they
preferred to convert it from a weapon of opposition into an instrument
of government, and now introduced the tribunes of the people, who were
originally excluded from all share in administration and were neither
magistrates nor members of the senate, into the class of governing
authorities.

While in jurisdiction they stood from the beginning on an equality
with the consuls and in the early stages of the conflicts between the
orders acquired like the consuls the right of initiating legislation,
they now received--we know not exactly when, but presumably at or soon
after the final equalization of the orders--a position of equality
with the consuls as confronting the practically governing authority,
the senate. Hitherto they had been present at the proceedings of the
senate, sitting on a bench at the door; now they obtained, like the
other magistrates and by their side, a place in the senate itself and
the right to interpose their word in its discussions. If they were
precluded from the right of voting, this was simply an application of
the general principle of Roman state-law, that those only should give
counsel who were not called to act; in accordance with which the whole
of the acting magistrates possessed during their year of office only a
seat, not a vote, in the council of the state.(17) But concession did
not rest here. The tribunes received the distinctive prerogative of
supreme magistracy, which among the ordinary magistrates belonged
only to the consuls and praetors besides--the right of convoking the
senate, of consulting it, and of procuring decrees from it.(18) This
was only as it should be; the heads of the plebeian aristocracy
could not but be placed on an equality with those of the patrician
aristocracy in the senate, when once the government had passed
from the clan-nobility to the united aristocracy. Now that this
opposition-college, originally excluded from all share in the public
administration, became--particularly with reference to strictly urban
affairs--a second supreme executive and one of the most usual and most
serviceable instruments of the government, or in other words of the
senate, for managing the burgesses and especially for checking the
excesses of the magistrates, it was certainly, as respected its
original character, absorbed and politically annihilated; but this
course was really enjoined by necessity. Clearly as the defects of
the Roman aristocracy were apparent, and decidedly as the steady
growth of aristocratic ascendency was connected with the practical
setting aside of the tribunate, none can fail to see that government
could not be long carried on with an authority which was not only
aimless and virtually calculated to put off the suffering proletariate
with a deceitful prospect of relief, but was at the same time
decidedly revolutionary and possessed of a--strictly speaking
--anarchical prerogative of obstruction to the authority of the
magistrates and even of the state itself. But that faith in an ideal,
which is the foundation of all the power and of all the impotence
of democracy, had come to be closely associated in the minds of the
Romans with the tribunate of the plebs; and we do not need to
recall the case of Cola Rienzi in order to perceive that, however
unsubstantial might be the advantage thence arising to the multitude,
it could not be abolished without a formidable convulsion of the
state. Accordingly with genuine political prudence they contented
themselves with reducing it to a nullity under forms that should
attract as little attention as possible. The mere name of this
essentially revolutionary magistracy was still retained within
the aristocratically governed commonwealth--an incongruity for the
present, and for the future, in the hands of a coming revolutionary
party, a sharp and dangerous weapon. For the moment, however, and for
a long time to come the aristocracy was so absolutely powerful and
so completely possessed control over the tribunate, that no trace at
all is to be met with of a collegiate opposition on the part of
the tribunes to the senate; and the government overcame the forlorn
movements of opposition that now and then proceeded from individual
tribunes, always without difficulty, and ordinarily by means of
the tribunate itself.

The Senate. Its Composition

In reality it was the senate that governed the commonwealth, and did
so almost without opposition after the equalization of the orders.
Its very composition had undergone a change. The free prerogative of
the chief magistrates in this matter, as it had been exercised after
the setting aside of the old clan-representation,(19) had been already
subjected to very material restrictions on the abolition of the
presidency for life.(20)

A further step towards the emancipation of the senate from the power
of the magistrates took place, when the adjustment of the senatorial
lists was transferred from the supreme magistrates to subordinate
functionaries--from the consuls to the censors.(21) Certainly,
whether immediately at that time or soon afterwards, the right of
the magistrate entrusted with the preparation of the list to omit
from it individual senators on account of a stain attaching to them
and thereby to exclude them from the senate was, if not introduced,
at least more precisely defined,(22) and in this way the foundations
were laid of that peculiar jurisdiction over morals on which the high
repute of the censors was chiefly based.(23) But censures of that
sort--especially since the two censors had to be at one on the matter
--might doubtless serve to remove particular persons who did not
contribute to the credit of the assembly or were hostile to the spirit
prevailing there, but could not bring the body itself into dependence
on the magistracy.

But the right of the magistrates to constitute the senate according
to their judgment was decidedly restricted by the Ovinian law, which
was passed about the middle of this period, probably soon after the
Licinian laws. That law at once conferred a seat and vote in the
senate provisionally on every one who had been curule aedile, praetor,
or consul, and bound the next censors either formally to inscribe
these expectants in the senatorial roll, or at any rate to exclude
them from the roll only for such reasons as sufficed for the rejection
of an actual senator. The number of those, however, who had been
magistrates was far from sufficing to keep the senate up to the normal
number of three hundred; and below that point it could not be allowed
to fall, especially as the list of senators was at the same time that
of jurymen. Considerable room was thus always left for the exercise
of the censorial right of election; but those senators who were chosen
not in consequence of having held office, but by selection on the part
of the censor--frequently burgesses who had filled a non-curule public
office, or distinguished themselves by personal valour, who had killed
an enemy in battle or saved the life of a burgess--took part in
voting, but not in debate.(24) The main body of the senate, and
that portion of it into whose hands government and administration
were concentrated, was thus according to the Ovinian law substantially
based no longer on the arbitrary will of a magistrate, but indirectly
on election by the people. The Roman state in this way made some
approach to, although it did not reach, the great institution of
modern times, representative popular government, while the aggregate
of the non-debating senators furnished--what it is so necessary and
yet so difficult to get in governing corporations--a compact mass
of members capable of forming and entitled to pronounce an opinion,
but voting in silence.

Powers of the Senate

The powers of the senate underwent scarcely any change in form. The
senate carefully avoided giving a handle to opposition or to ambition
by unpopular changes, or manifest violations, of the constitution; it
permitted, though it did nor promote, the enlargement in a democratic
direction of the power of the burgesses. But while the burgesses
acquired the semblance, the senate acquired the substance of power
--a decisive influence over legislation and the official elections,
and the whole control of the state.

Its Influence in Legislation

Every new project of law was subjected to a preliminary deliberation
in the senate, and scarcely ever did a magistrate venture to lay a
proposal before the community without or in opposition to the senate's
opinion. If he did so, the senate had--in the intercessory powers of
the magistrates and the annulling powers of the priests--an ample set
of means at hand to nip in the bud, or subsequently to get rid of,
obnoxious proposals; and in case of extremity it had in its hands
as the supreme administrative authority not only the executing, but
the power of refusing to execute, the decrees of the community. The
senate further with tacit consent of the community claimed the right
in urgent cases of absolving from the laws, under the reservation that
the community should ratify the proceeding--a reservation which from
the first was of little moment, and became by degrees so entirely a
form that in later times they did not even take the trouble to propose
the ratifying decree.

Influence on the Elections

As to the elections, they passed, so far as they depended on the
magistrates and were of political importance, practically into the
hands of the senate. In this way it acquired, as has been mentioned
already,(25) the right to appoint the dictator. Great regard had
certainly to be shown to the community; the right of bestowing the
public magistracies could not be withdrawn from it; but, as has
likewise been already observed, care was taken that this election of
magistrates should not be constructed into the conferring of definite
functions, especially of the posts of supreme command when war was
imminent. Moreover the newly introduced idea of special functions on
the one hand, and on the other the right practically conceded to the
senate of dispensation from the laws, gave to it an important share
in official appointments. Of the influence which the senate exercised
in settling the official spheres of the consuls in particular, we have
already spoken.(26) One of the most important applications of the
dispensing right was the dispensation of the magistrate from the legal
term of his tenure of office--a dispensation which, as contrary to the
fundamental laws of the community, might not according to Roman state-law
be granted in the precincts of the city proper, but beyond these
was at least so far valid that the consul or praetor, whose term was
prolonged, continued after its expiry to discharge his functions
"in a consul's or praetor's stead" (-pro consule- -pro praetore-).
Of course this important right of extending the term of office
--essentially on a par with the right of nomination--belonged by
law to the community alone, and at the beginning was in fact exercised
by it; but in 447, and regularly thenceforward, the command of the
commander-in-chief was prolonged by mere decree of the senate. To this
was added, in fine, the preponderating and skilfully concerted influence
of the aristocracy over the elections, which guided them ordinarily,
although not always, to the choice of candidates agreeable to
the government.

Senatorial Government

Finally as regards administration, war, peace and alliances, the
founding of colonies, the assignation of lands, building, in fact
every matter of permanent and general importance, and in particular
the whole system of finance, depended absolutely on the senate.
It was the senate which annually issued general instructions to the
magistrates, settling their spheres of duty and limiting the troops
and moneys to be placed at the disposal of each; and recourse was
had to its counsel in every case of importance. The keepers of the
state-chest could make no payment to any magistrate with the exception
of the consul, or to any private person, unless authorized by a previous
decree of the senate. In the management, however, of current affairs
and in the details of judicial and military administration the supreme
governing corporation did not interfere; the Roman aristocracy had too
much political judgment and tact to desire to convert the control of
the commonwealth into a guardianship over the individual official,
or to turn the instrument into a machine.

That this new government of the senate amidst all its retention
of existing forms involved a complete revolutionizing of the old
commonwealth, is clear. That the free action of the burgesses should
be arrested and benumbed; that the magistrates should be reduced to
be the presidents of its sittings and its executive commissioners;
that a corporation for the mere tendering of advice should seize the
inheritance of both the authorities sanctioned by the constitution
and should become, although under very modest forms, the central
government of the state--these were steps of revolution and
usurpation. Nevertheless, if any revolution or any usurpation appears
justified before the bar of history by exclusive ability to govern,
even its rigorous judgment must acknowledge that this corporation
timeously comprehended and worthily fulfilled its great task. Called
to power not by the empty accident of birth, but substantially by the
free choice of the nation; confirmed every fifth year by the stern
moral judgment of the worthiest men; holding office for life, and so
not dependent on the expiration of its commission or on the varying
opinion of the people; having its ranks close and united ever after
the equalization of the orders; embracing in it all the political
intelligence and practical statesmanship that the people possessed;
absolute in dealing with all financial questions and in the guidance
of foreign policy; having complete power over the executive by virtue
of its brief duration and of the tribunician intercession which was
at the service of the senate after the termination of the quarrels
between the orders--the Roman senate was the noblest organ of the
nation, and in consistency and political sagacity, in unanimity and
patriotism, in grasp of power and unwavering courage, the foremost
political corporation of all times--still even now an "assembly of
kings," which knew well how to combine despotic energy with republican
self-devotion. Never was a state represented in its external
relations more firmly and worthily than Rome in its best times by
its senate. In matters of internal administration it certainly
cannot be concealed that the moneyed and landed aristocracy, which
was especially represented in the senate, acted with partiality in
affairs that bore upon its peculiar interests, and that the sagacity
and energy of the body were often in such cases employed far from
beneficially to the state. Nevertheless the great principle
established amidst severe conflicts, that all Roman burgesses were
equal in the eye of the law as respected rights and duties, and the
opening up of a political career (or in other words, of admission
to the senate) to every one, which was the result of that principle,
concurred with the brilliance of military and political successes in
preserving the harmony of the state and of the nation, and relieved
the distinction of classes from that bitterness and malignity which
marked the struggle of the patricians and plebeians. And, as the
fortunate turn taken by external politics had the effect of giving the
rich for more than a century ample space for themselves and rendered
it unnecessary that they should oppress the middle class, the Roman
people was enabled by means of its senate to carry out for a longer
term than is usually granted to a people the grandest of all human
undertakings--a wise and happy self-government.




Notes for Book II Chapter III


1. The hypothesis that legally the full -imperium- belonged to the
patrician, and only the military -imperium- to the plebeian, consular
tribunes, not only provokes various questions to which there is no
answer--as to the course followed, for example, in the event of the
election falling, as was by law quite possible, wholly on plebeians
--but specially conflicts with the fundamental principle of Roman
constitutional law, that the -imperium-, that is to say, the right
of commanding the burgess in name of the community, was functionally
indivisible and capable of no other limitation at all than a
territorial one. There was a province of urban law and a province
of military law, in the latter of which the -provocatio- and other
regulations of urban law were not applicable; there were magistrates,
such as the proconsuls, who were empowered to discharge functions
simply in the latter; but there were, in the strict sense of law,
no magistrates with merely jurisdictional, as there were none with
merely military, -imperium-. The proconsul was in his province, just
like the consul, at once commander-in-chief and supreme judge, and was
entitled to send to trial actions not only between non-burgesses and
soldiers, but also between one burgess and another. Even when, on the
institution of the praetorship, the idea rose of apportioning special
functions to the -magistratus maiores-, this division of powers had
more of a practical than of a strictly legal force; the -praetor
urbanus- was primarily indeed the supreme judge, but he could also
convoke the centuries, at least for certain cases, and could
command an army; the consul in the city held primarily the supreme
administration and the supreme command, but he too acted as a judge
in cases of emancipation and adoption--the functional indivisibility
of the supreme magistracy was therefore, even in these instances,
very strictly adhered to on both sides. Thus the military as well as
jurisdictional authority, or, laying aside these abstractions foreign
to the Roman law of this period, the absolute magisterial power, must
have virtually pertained to the plebeian consular tribunes as well as
to the patrician. But it may well be, as Becker supposes (Handb. ii.
2, 137), that, for the same reasons, for which at a subsequent period
there was placed alongside of the consulship common to both orders
the praetorship actually reserved for a considerable time for the
patricians, even during the consular tribunate the plebeian members
of the college were -de facto- kept aloof from jurisdiction, and so
far the consular tribunate prepared the way for the subsequent actual
division of jurisdiction between consuls and praetors.

2. I. VI. Political Effects of the Servian Military Organization

3. The defence, that the aristocracy clung to the exclusion of
the plebeians from religious prejudice, mistakes the fundamental
character of the Roman religion, and imports into antiquity the modern
distinction between church and state. The admittance of a non-burgess
to a religious ceremony of the citizens could not indeed but appear
sinful to the orthodox Roman; but even the most rigid orthodoxy never
doubted that admittance to civic communion, which absolutely and
solely depended on the state, involved also full religious equality.
All such scruples of conscience, the honesty of which in themselves
we do not mean to doubt, were precluded, when once they granted to the
plebeians -en masse- at the right time the patriciate. This only may
perhaps be alleged by way of excuse for the nobility, that after it
had neglected the right moment for this purpose at the abolition of
the monarchy, it was no longer in a position subsequently of itself
to retrieve the neglect (II. I. The New Community).

4. Whether this distinction between these "curule houses" and the
other families embraced within the patriciate was ever of serious
political importance, cannot with certainty be either affirmed or
denied; and as little do we know whether at this epoch there really
was any considerable number of patrician families that were not yet
curule.

5. II. II. The Valerio-Horatian Laws

6. I. XII. Foreign Worships

7. II. I. Senate,

8. II. I. Senate, II. III. Opposition of the Patriciate

9. II. II. Legislation of the Twelve Tables

10. II. III. Equivalence Law and Plebiscitum

11. The statements as to the poverty of the consulars of this period,
which play so great a part in the moral anecdote-books of a later age,
mainly rest on a misunderstanding on the one hand of the old frugal
economy--which might very well consist with considerable prosperity
--and on the other hand of the beautiful old custom of burying men who
had deserved well of the state from the proceeds of penny collections
--which was far from being a pauper burial. The method also of
explaining surnames by etymological guess-work, which has imported
so many absurdities into Roman history, has furnished its quota to
this belief (-Serranus-).

12. II. II. The Valerio-Horatian Laws

13. II. III. Equivalence Law and Plebiscitum

14. II. I. Restrictions on the Delegation of Powers

15. II. III. Increasing Powers of the Burgesses

16. Any one who compares the consular Fasti before and after 412
will have no doubt as to the existence of the above-mentioned law
respecting re-election to the consulate; for, while before that year
a return to office, especially after three or four years, was a
common occurrence, afterwards intervals of ten years and more were
as frequent. Exceptions, however, occur in very great numbers,
particularly during the severe years of war 434-443. On the other
hand, the principle of not allowing a plurality of offices was
strictly adhered to. There is no certain instance of the combination
of two of the three ordinary curule (Liv. xxxix. 39, 4) offices (the
consulate, praetorship, and curule aedileship), but instances occur
of other combinations, such as of the curule aedileship and the office
of master of the horse (Liv. xxiii. 24, 30); of the praetorship
and censorship (Fast. Cap. a. 501); of the praetorship and the
dictatorship (Liv. viii. 12); of the consulate and the dictatorship
(Liv. viii. 12).

17. II. I. Senate

18. Hence despatches intended for the senate were addressed to
Consuls, Praetors, Tribunes of the Plebs, and Senate (Cicero, ad
Fam. xv. 2, et al.)

19. I. V. The Senate

20. II. I. Senate

21. II. III. Censorship

22. This prerogative and the similar ones with reference to the
equestrian and burgess-lists were perhaps not formally and legally
assigned to the censors, but were always practically implied in
their powers. It was the community, not the censor, that conferred
burgess-rights; but the person, to whom the latter in making up the
list of persons entitled to vote did not assign a place or assigned an
inferior one, did not lose his burgess-right, but could not exercise
the privileges of a burgess, or could only exercise them in the
inferior place, till the preparation of a new list. The same was the
case with the senate; the person omitted by the censor from his list
ceased to attend the senate, as long as the list in question remained
valid--unless the presiding magistrate should reject it and reinstate
the earlier list. Evidently therefore the important question in this
respect was not so much what was the legal liberty of the censors,
as how far their authority availed with those magistrates who had to
summon according to their lists. Hence it is easy to understand
how this prerogative gradually rose in importance, and how with the
increasing consolidation of the nobility such erasures assumed
virtually the form of judicial decisions and were virtually respected
as such. As to the adjustment of the senatorial list undoubtedly the
enactment of the Ovinian -plebiscitum- exercised a material share of
influence--that the censors should admit to the senate "the best men
out of all classes."