The History of Rome, Book II - Theodor Mommsen
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The consequences followed as a matter of course. The first and
most essential condition of all aristocratic government is, that
the plenary power of the state be vested not in an individual but
in a corporation. Now a preponderantly aristocratic corporation,
the senate, had appropriated to itself the government, and at the
same time the executive power not only remained in the hands of the
nobility, but was also entirely subject to the governing corporation.
It is true that a considerable number of men not belonging to the
nobility sat in the senate; but as they were incapable of holding
magistracies or even of taking part in the debates, and thus were
excluded from all practical share in the government, they necessarily
played a subordinate part in the senate, and were moreover kept in
pecuniary dependence on the corporation through the economically
important privilege of using the public pasture. The gradually
recognized right of the patrician consuls to revise and modify the
senatorial list at least every fourth year, ineffective as presumably
it was over against the nobility, might very well be employed in their
interest, and an obnoxious plebeian might by means of it be kept out
of the senate or even be removed from its ranks.
The Plebeian Opposition
It is therefore quite true that the immediate effect of the revolution
was to establish the aristocratic government. It is not, however, the
whole truth. While the majority of contemporaries probably thought
that the revolution had brought upon the plebeians only a more rigid
despotism, we who come afterwards discern in that very revolution the
germs of young liberty. What the patricians gained was gained at the
expense not of the community, but of the magistrate's power. It is
true that the community gained only a few narrowly restricted rights,
which were far less practical and palpable than the acquisitions
of the nobility, and which not one in a thousand probably had the
wisdom to value; but they formed a pledge and earnest of the future.
Hitherto the --metoeci-- had been politically nothing, the old
burgesses had been everything; now that the former were embraced
in the community, the old burgesses were overcome; for, however much
might still be wanting to full civil equality, it is the first breach,
not the occupation of the last post, that decides the fall of the
fortress. With justice therefore the Roman community dated its
political existence from the beginning of the consulate.
While however the republican revolution may, notwithstanding the
aristocratic rule which in the first instance it established, be
justly called a victory of the former --metoeci-- or the -plebs-,
the revolution even in this respect bore by no means the character
which we are accustomed in the present day to designate as democratic.
Pure personal merit without the support of birth and wealth could
perhaps gain influence and consideration more easily under the regal
government than under that of the patriciate. Then admission to
the patriciate was not in law foreclosed; now the highest object of
plebeian ambition was to be admitted into the dumb appendage of
the senate. The nature of the case implied that the governing
aristocratic order, so far as it admitted plebeians at all, would
grant the right of occupying seats in the senate not absolutely to
the best men, but chiefly to the heads of the wealthy and notable
plebeian families; and the families thus admitted jealously guarded
the possession of the senatorial stalls. While a complete legal
equality therefore had subsisted within the old burgess-body, the
new burgess-body or former --metoeci-- came to be in this way divided
from the first into a number of privileged families and a multitude
kept in a position of inferiority. But the power of the community now
according to the centuriate organization came into the hands of that
class which since the Servian reform of the army and of taxation had
borne mainly the burdens of the state, namely the freeholders, and
indeed not so much into the hands of the great proprietors or into
those of the small cottagers, as into those of the intermediate class
of farmers--an arrangement in which the seniors were still so far
privileged that, although less numerous, they had as many voting-
divisions as the juniors. While in this way the axe was laid to the
root of the old burgess-body and their clan-nobility, and the basis
of a new burgess-body was laid, the preponderance in the latter rested
on the possession of land and on age, and the first beginnings were
already visible of a new aristocracy based primarily on the actual
consideration in which the families were held--the future nobility.
There could be no clearer indication of the fundamentally conservative
character of the Roman commonwealth than the fact, that the revolution
which gave birth to the republic laid down at the same time the
primary outlines of a new organization of the state, which was in
like manner conservative and in like manner aristocratic.
Notes for Book II Chapter I
1. I. IX. The Tarquins
2. The well-known fable for the most part refutes itself. To a
considerable extent it has been concocted for the explanation of
surnames (-Brutus-, -Poplicola-, -Scaevola-). But even its apparently
historical ingredients are found on closer examination to have been
invented. Of this character is the statement that Brutus was captain
of the horsemen (-tribunus celerum-) and in that capacity proposed
the decree of the people as to the banishment of the Tarquins; for,
according to the Roman constitution, it is quite impossible that a
mere officer should have had the right to convoke the curies. The
whole of this statement has evidently been invented with the view of
furnishing a legal basis for the Roman republic; and very ill invented
it is, for in its case the -tribunus celerum- is confounded with the
entirely different -magister equitum- (V. Burdens Of The Burgesses
f.), and then the right of convoking the centuries which pertained
to the latter by virtue of his praetorian rank is made to apply to
the assembly of the curies.
3. -Consules- are those who "leap or dance together," as -praesul- is
one who "leaps before," -exsul-, one who "leaps out" (--o ekpeson--),
-insula-, a "leap into," primarily applied to a mass of rock fallen
into the sea.
4. The day of entering on office did not coincide with the beginning
of the year (1st March), and was not at all fixed. The day of
retiring was regulated by it, except when a consul was elected
expressly in room of one who had dropped out (-consul suffectus-);
in which case the substitute succeeded to the rights and consequently
to the term of him whom he replaced. But these supplementary consuls
in the earlier period only occurred when merely one of the consuls had
dropped out: pairs of supplementary consuls are not found until the
later ages of the republic. Ordinarily, therefore, the official year
of a consul consisted of unequal portions of two civil years.
5. I. V. The King
6. I. XI. Crimes
7. I. V. Prerogatives of the Senate
8. I. V. The King
9. I. V. The King
10. I. VI. Dependents and Guests
11. I. VI. Political Effects of the Servian Military Organization
12. I. V. The Senate as State Council
13. I. V. Prerogatives of the Senate
14. That the first consuls admitted to the senate 164 plebeians, is
hardly to be regarded as a historical fact, but rather as a proof that
the later Roman archaeologists were unable to point out more than 136
-gentes- of the Roman nobility (Rom, Forsch. i. 121).
15. It may not be superfluous to remark, that the -iudicium
legitimum-, as well as that -quod imperio continetur-, rested on
the imperium of the directing magistrate, and the distinction only
consisted in the circumstance that the -imperium- was in the former
case limited by the -lex-, while in the latter it was free.
16. II. I. Restrictions on the Delegation of Powers
CHAPTER II
The Tribunate of the Plebs and the Decemvirate
Material Interests
Under the new organization of the commonwealth the old burgesses had
attained by legal means to the full possession of political power.
Governing through the magistracy which had been reduced to be their
servant, preponderating in the Senate, in sole possession of all
public offices and priesthoods, armed with exclusive cognizance of
things human and divine and familiar with the whole routine of
political procedure, influential in the public assembly through the
large number of pliant adherents attached to the several families,
and, lastly, entitled to examine and to reject every decree of the
community,--the patricians might have long preserved their practical
power, just because they had at the right time abandoned their claim
to sole legal authority. It is true that the plebeians could not but
be painfully sensible of their political disabilities; but undoubtedly
in the first instance the nobility had not much to fear from a purely
political opposition, if it understood the art of keeping the
multitude, which desired nothing but equitable administration and
protection of its material interests, aloof from political strife.
In fact during the first period after the expulsion of the kings we
meet with various measures which were intended, or at any rate seemed
to be intended, to gain the favour of the commons for the government
of the nobility especially on economic grounds. The port-dues were
reduced; when the price of grain was high, large quantities of corn
were purchased on account of the state, and the trade in salt was made
a state-monopoly, in order to supply the citizens with corn and salt
at reasonable prices; lastly, the national festival was prolonged for
an additional day. Of the same character was the ordinance which we
have already mentioned respecting property fines,(1) which was not
merely intended in general to set limits to the dangerous
fining-prerogative of the magistrates, but was also, in a significant
manner, calculated for the especial protection of the man of small means.
The magistrate was prohibited from fining the same man on the same
day to an extent beyond two sheep or beyond thirty oxen, without
granting leave to appeal; and the reason of these singular rates
can only perhaps be found in the fact, that in the case of the man of
small means possessing only a few sheep a different maximum appeared
necessary from that fixed for the wealthy proprietor of herds of oxen
--a considerate regard to the wealth or poverty of the person fined,
from which modern legislators might take a lesson.
But these regulations were merely superficial; the main current flowed
in the opposite direction. With the change in the constitution
there was introduced a comprehensive revolution in the financial and
economic relations of Rome, The government of the kings had probably
abstained on principle from enhancing the power of capital, and had
promoted as far as it could an increase in the number of farms.
The new aristocratic government, again, appears to have aimed from
the first at the destruction of the middle classes, particularly of
the intermediate and smaller holdings of land, and at the development
of a domination of landed and moneyed lords on the one hand, and of
an agricultural proletariate on the other.
Rising Power of the Capitalists
The reduction of the port-dues, although upon the whole a popular
measure, chiefly benefited the great merchant. But a much greater
accession to the power of capital was supplied by the indirect system
of finance-administration. It is difficult to say what were the
remote causes that gave rise to it: but, while its origin may
probably be referred to the regal period, after the introduction of
the consulate the importance of the intervention of private agency
must have been greatly increased, partly by the rapid succession of
magistrates in Rome, partly by the extension of the financial action
of the treasury to such matters as the purchase and sale of grain and
salt; and thus the foundation must have been laid for that system of
farming the finances, the development of which became so momentous and
so pernicious for the Roman commonwealth. The state gradually put
all its indirect revenues and all its more complicated payments and
transactions into the hands of middlemen, who gave or received a round
sum and then managed the matter for their own benefit. Of course only
considerable capitalists and, as the state looked strictly to tangible
security, in the main only large landholders, could enter into such
engagements: and thus there grew up a class of tax-farmers and
contractors, who, in the rapid growth of their wealth, in their
power over the state to which they appeared to be servants, and
in the absurd and sterile basis of their moneyed dominion, quite
admit of comparison with the speculators on the stock exchange
of the present day.
Public Land
The concentrated aspect assumed by the administration of finance
showed itself first and most palpably in the treatment of the public
lands, which tended almost directly to accomplish the material and
moral annihilation of the middle classes. The use of the public
pasture and of the state-domains generally was from its very nature
a privilege of burgesses; formal law excluded the plebeian from
the joint use of the common pasture. As however, apart from
the conversion of the public land into private property or its
assignation, Roman law knew no fixed rights of usufruct on the part
of individual burgesses to be respected like those of property, it
depended solely on the pleasure of the king, so long as the public
land remained such, to grant and to define its joint enjoyment; and it
is not to be doubted that he frequently made use of his right, or at
least his power, as to this matter in favour of plebeians. But on the
introduction of the republic the principle was again strictly insisted
on, that the use of the common pasture belonged in law merely to the
burgess of best right, or in other words to the patrician; and, though
the senate still as before allowed exceptions in favour of the wealthy
plebeian houses represented in it, the small plebeian landholders and
the day-labourers, who stood most in need of the common pasture, had
its joint enjoyment injuriously withheld from them. Moreover there
had hitherto been paid for the cattle driven out on the common pasture
a grazing-tax, which was moderate enough to make the right of using
that pasture still be regarded as a privilege, and yet yielded no
inconsiderable revenue to the public purse. The patrician quaestors
were now remiss and indulgent in levying it, and gradually allowed it
to fall into desuetude. Hitherto, particularly when new domains were
acquired by conquest, allocations of land had been regularly arranged,
in which all the poorer burgesses and --metoeci-- were provided for;
it was only the land which was not suitable for agriculture that was
annexed to the common pasture. The ruling class did not venture
wholly to give up such assignations, and still less to propose them
merely in favour of the rich; but they became fewer and scantier, and
were replaced by the pernicious system of occupation-that is to say,
the cession of domain-lands, not in property or under formal lease for
a definite term, but in special usufruct until further notice, to the
first occupant and his heirs-at-law, so that the state was at any time
entitled to resume them, and the occupier had to pay the tenth sheaf,
or in oil and wine the fifth part of the produce, to the exchequer.
This was simply the -precarium- already described(2) applied to the
state-domains, and may have been already in use as to the public land
at an earlier period, particularly as a temporary arrangement until
its assignation should be carried out. Now, however, not only did
this occupation-tenure become permanent, but, as was natural, none but
privileged persons or their favourites participated, and the tenth and
fifth were collected with the same negligence as the grazing-money.
A threefold blow was thus struck at the intermediate and smaller
landholders: they were deprived of the common usufructs of burgesses;
the burden of taxation was increased in consequence of the domain
revenues no longer flowing regularly into the public chest; and those
land-allocations were stopped, which had provided a constant outlet
for the agricultural proletariate somewhat as a great and well-regulated
system of emigration would do at the present day. To these
evils was added the farming on a large scale, which was probably
already beginning to come into vogue, dispossessing the small agrarian
clients, and in their stead cultivating the estates by rural slaves;
a blow, which was more difficult to avert and perhaps more pernicious
than all those political usurpations put together. The burdensome and
partly unfortunate wars, and the exorbitant taxes and task-works to
which these gave rise, filled up the measure of calamity, so as either
to deprive the possessor directly of his farm and to make him the
bondsman if not the slave of his creditor-lord, or to reduce him
through encumbrances practically to the condition of a temporary
lessee of his creditor. The capitalists, to whom a new field was
here opened of lucrative speculation unattended by trouble or risk,
sometimes augmented in this way their landed property; sometimes they
left to the farmer, whose person and estate the law of debt placed in
their hands, nominal proprietorship and actual possession. The latter
course was probably the most common as well as the most pernicious;
for while utter ruin might thereby be averted from the individual,
this precarious position of the farmer, dependent at all times on the
mercy of his creditor--a position in which he knew nothing of property
but its burdens--threatened to demoralise and politically to
annihilate the whole farmer-class. The intention of the legislator,
when instead of mortgaging he prescribed the immediate transfer of
the property to the creditor with a view to prevent insolvency and to
devolve the burdens of the state on the real holders of the soil,(3)
was evaded by the rigorous system of personal credit, which might
be very suitable for merchants, but ruined the farmers. The free
divisibility of the soil always involved the risk of an insolvent
agricultural proletariate; and under such circumstances, when all
burdens were increasing and all means of deliverance were foreclosed,
distress and despair could not but spread with fearful rapidity among
the agricultural middle class.
Relations of the Social Question to the Question between Orders
The distinction between rich and poor, which arose out of these
relations, by no means coincided with that between the clans and the
plebeians. If far the greater part of the patricians were wealthy
landholders, opulent and considerable families were, of course,
not wanting among the plebeians; and as the senate, which even then
perhaps consisted in greater part of plebeians, had assumed the
superintendence of the finances to the exclusion even of the patrician
magistrates, it was natural that all those economic advantages, for
which the political privileges of the nobility were abused, should go
to the benefit of the wealthy collectively; and the pressure fell the
more heavily upon the commons, since those who were the ablest and
the most capable of resistance were by their admission to the senate
transferred from the class of the oppressed to the ranks of
the oppressors.
But this state of things prevented the political position of the
aristocracy from being permanently tenable. Had it possessed the
self-control to govern justly and to protect the middle class--as
individual consuls from its ranks endeavoured, but from the reduced
position of the magistracy were unable effectually, to do--it might
have long maintained itself in sole possession of the offices of
state. Had it been willing to admit the wealthy and respectable
plebeians to full equality of rights--possibly by connecting the
acquisition of the patriciate with admission into the senate--both
might long have governed and speculated with impunity. But neither
of these courses was adopted; the narrowness of mind and short-
sightedness, which are the proper and inalienable privileges of
all genuine patricianism, were true to their character also in Rome,
and rent the powerful commonwealth asunder in useless, aimless,
and inglorious strife.
Secession to the Sacred Mount
The immediate crisis however proceeded not from those who felt the
disabilities of their order, but from the distress of the farmers.
The rectified annals place the political revolution in the year 244,
the social in the years 259 and 260; they certainly appear to have
followed close upon each other, but the interval was probably longer.
The strict enforcement of the law of debt--so runs the story--excited
the indignation of the farmers at large. When in the year 259 the
levy was called forth for a dangerous war, the men bound to serve
refused to obey the command. Thereupon the consul Publius Servilius
suspended for a time the application of the debtor-laws, and gave
orders to liberate the persons already imprisoned for debt as well as
prohibited further arrests; so that the farmers took their places in
the ranks and helped to secure the victory. On their return from the
field of battle the peace, which had been achieved by their exertions,
brought back their prison and their chains: with merciless rigour
the second consul, Appius Claudius, enforced the debtor-laws and his
colleague, to whom his former soldiers appealed for aid, dared not
offer opposition. It seemed as if collegiate rule had been introduced
not for the protection of the people, but to facilitate breach of
faith and despotism; they endured, however, what could not be changed.
But when in the following year the war was renewed, the word of the
consul availed no longer. It was not till Manius Valerius was
nominated dictator that the farmers submitted, partly from their awe
of the higher magisterial authority, partly from their confidence in
his friendly feeling to the popular cause--for the Valerii were one of
those old patrician clans by whom government was esteemed a privilege
and an honour, not a source of gain. The victory was again with the
Roman standards; but when the victors came home and the dictator
submitted his proposals of reform to the senate, they were thwarted
by its obstinate opposition. The army still stood in its array, as
usual, before the gates of the city. When the news arrived, the long
threatening storm burst forth; the -esprit de corps- and the compact
military organization carried even the timid and the indifferent along
with the movement. The army abandoned its general and its encampment,
and under the leadership of the commanders of the legions--the
military tribunes, who were at least in great part plebeians--marched
in martial order into the district of Crustumeria between the Tiber
and the Anio, where it occupied a hill and threatened to establish
in this most fertile part of the Roman territory a new plebeian city.
This secession showed in a palpable manner even to the most obstinate
of the oppressors that such a civil war must end with economic ruin
to themselves; and the senate gave way. The dictator negotiated an
agreement; the citizens returned within the city walls; unity was
outwardly restored. The people gave Manius Valerius thenceforth the
name of "the great" (-maximus-)--and called the mount beyond the Anio
"the sacred mount." There was something mighty and elevating in such
a revolution, undertaken by the multitude itself without definite
guidance under generals whom accident supplied, and accomplished
without bloodshed; and with pleasure and pride the citizens recalled
its memory. Its consequences were felt for many centuries: it was
the origin of the tribunate of the plebs.
Plebian Tribunes and Plebian Aediles
In addition to temporary enactments, particularly for remedying the
most urgent distress occasioned by debt, and for providing for a
number of the rural population by the founding of various colonies,
the dictator carried in constitutional form a law, which he moreover
--doubtless in order to secure amnesty to the burgesses for the
breach of their military oath--caused every individual member of the
community to swear to, and then had it deposited in a temple under the
charge and custody of two magistrates specially appointed from the
plebs for the purpose, the two "house-masters" (-aediles-). This law
placed by the side of the two patrician consuls two plebeian tribunes,
who were to be elected by the plebeians assembled in curies. The
power of the tribunes was of no avail in opposition to the military
-imperium-, that is, in opposition to the authority of the dictator
everywhere or to that of the consuls beyond the city; but it
confronted, on a footing of independence and equality, the ordinary
civil powers which the consuls exercised. There was, however, no
partition of powers. The tribunes obtained the right which pertained
to the consul against his fellow-consul and all the more against an
inferior magistrate,(4) namely, the right to cancel any command issued
by a magistrate, as to which the burgess whom it affected held himself
aggrieved and lodged a complaint, through their protest timeously
and personally interposed, and likewise of hindering or cancelling
at discretion any proposal made by a magistrate to the burgesses,
in other words, the right of intercession or the so-called
tribunician veto.