The History of Rome, Book II - Theodor Mommsen
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Continued Distress
It is plain that all these expedients might perhaps in some respects
mitigate, but could not remove, the existing economic disorders.
The continuance of the distress is shown by the appointment of a
bank-commission to regulate the relations of credit and to provide
advances from the state-chest in 402, by the fixing of legal payment
by instalments in 407, and above all by the dangerous popular
insurrection about 467, when the people, unable to obtain new
facilities for the payment of debts, marched out to the Janiculum,
and nothing but a seasonable attack by external enemies, and the
concessions contained in the Hortensian law,(10) restored peace to
the community. It is, however, very unjust to reproach these earnest
attempts to check the impoverishment of the middle class with their
inadequacy. The belief that it is useless to employ partial and
palliative means against radical evils, because they only remedy
them in part, is an article of faith never preached unsuccessfully
by baseness to simplicity, but it is none the less absurd. On the
contrary, we may ask whether the vile spirit of demagogism had not
even thus early laid hold of this matter, and whether expedients were
really needed so violent and dangerous as, for example, the deduction
of the interest paid from the capital. Our documents do not enable
us to decide the question of right or wrong in the case. But we
recognize clearly enough that the middle class of freeholders
still continued economically in a perilous and critical position;
that various endeavours were made by those in power to remedy it by
prohibitory laws and by respites, but of course in vain; and that the
aristocratic ruling class continued to be too weak in point of control
over its members, and too much entangled in the selfish interests of
its order, to relieve the middle class by the only effectual means at
the disposal of the government--the entire and unreserved abolition
of the system of occupying the state-lands--and by that course to free
the government from the reproach of turning to its own advantage the
oppressed position of the governed.
Influence of the Extension of the Roman Dominion in Elevating the
Farmer-Class
A more effectual relief than any which the government was willing
or able to give was derived by the middle classes from the political
successes of the Roman community and the gradual consolidation of the
Roman sovereignty over Italy. The numerous and large colonies which
it was necessary to found for the securing of that sovereignty, the
greater part of which were sent forth in the fifth century, furnished
a portion of the agricultural proletariate with farms of their own,
while the efflux gave relief to such as remained at home. The
increase of the indirect and extraordinary sources of revenue, and
the flourishing condition of the Roman finances in general, rendered
it but seldom necessary to levy any contribution from the farmers in
the form of a forced loan. While the earlier small holdings were
probably lost beyond recovery, the rising average of Roman prosperity
must have converted the former larger landholders into farmers, and
in so far added new members to the middle class. People of rank
sought principally to secure the large newly-acquired districts for
occupation; the mass of wealth which flowed to Rome through war and
commerce must have reduced the rate of interest; the increase in the
population of the capital benefited the farmer throughout Latium;
a wise system of incorporation united a number of neighbouring and
formerly subject communities with the Roman state, and thereby
strengthened especially the middle class; finally, the glorious
victories and their mighty results silenced faction. If the distress
of the farmers was by no means removed and still less were its sources
stopped, it yet admits of no doubt that at the close of this period
the Roman middle class was on the whole in a far less oppressed
condition than in the first century after the expulsion of the kings.
Civic Equality
Lastly civic equality was in a certain sense undoubtedly attained
or rather restored by the reform of 387, and the development of its
legitimate consequences. As formerly, when the patricians still in
fact formed the burgesses, these had stood upon a footing of absolute
equality in rights and duties, so now in the enlarged burgess-body
there existed in the eye of the law no arbitrary distinctions.
The gradations to which differences of age, sagacity, cultivation, and
wealth necessarily give rise in civil society, naturally also pervaded
the sphere of public life; but the spirit animating the burgesses and
the policy of the government uniformly operated so as to render these
differences as little conspicuous as possible. The whole system of
Rome tended to train up her burgesses on an average as sound and
capable, but not to bring into prominence the gifts of genius. The
growth of culture among the Romans did not at all keep pace with the
development of the power of their community, and it was instinctively
repressed rather than promoted by those in power. That there should
be rich and poor, could not be prevented; but (as in a genuine
community of farmers) the farmer as well as the day-labourer
personally guided the plough, and even for the rich the good economic
rule held good that they should live with uniform frugality and above
all should hoard no unproductive capital at home--excepting the
salt-cellar and the sacrificial ladle, no silver articles were at
this period seen in any Roman house. Nor was this of little moment.
In the mighty successes which the Roman community externally achieved
during the century from the last Veientine down to the Pyrrhic war we
perceive that the patriciate has now given place to the farmers; that
the fall of the highborn Fabian would have been not more and not less
lamented by the whole community than the fall of the plebeian Decian
was lamented alike by plebeians and patricians; that the consulate did
not of itself fall even to the wealthiest aristocrat; and that a poor
husbandman from Sabina, Manius Curius, could conquer king Pyrrhus in
the field of battle and chase him out of Italy, without ceasing to be
a simple Sabine farmer and to cultivate in person his own bread-corn.
New Aristocracy
In regard however to this imposing republican equality we must not
overlook the fact that it was to a considerable extent only formal,
and that an aristocracy of a very decided stamp grew out of it or
rather was contained in it from the very first. The non-patrician
families of wealth and consideration had long ago separated from the
plebs, and leagued themselves with the patriciate in the participation
of senatorial rights and in the prosecution of a policy distinct from
that of the plebs and very often counteracting it. The Licinian laws
abrogated the legal distinctions within the ranks of the aristocracy,
and changed the character of the barrier which excluded the plebeian
from the government, so that it was no longer a hindrance unalterable
in law, but one, not indeed insurmountable, but yet difficult to be
surmounted in practice. In both ways fresh blood was mingled with
the ruling order in Rome; but in itself the government still remained,
as before, aristocratic. In this respect the Roman community was a
genuine farmer-commonwealth, in which the rich holder of a whole hide
was little distinguished externally from the poor cottager and held
intercourse with him on equal terms, but aristocracy nevertheless
exercised so all-powerful a sway that a man without means far sooner
rose to be master of the burgesses in the city than mayor in his own
village. It was a very great and valuable gain, that under the new
legislation even the poorest burgess might fill the highest office
of the state; nevertheless it was a rare exception when a man from
the lower ranks of the population reached such a position,(11) and
not only so, but probably it was, at least towards the close of
this period, possible only by means of an election carried by
the opposition.
New Opposition
Every aristocratic government of itself calls forth a corresponding
opposition party; and as the formal equalization of the orders only
modified the aristocracy, and the new ruling order not only succeeded
the old patriciate but engrafted itself on it and intimately coalesced
with it, the opposition also continued to exist and in all respects
pursued a similar course. As it was now no longer the plebeian
burgesses as such, but the common people, that were treated as
inferior, the new opposition professed from the first to be the
representative of the lower classes and particularly of the small
farmers; and as the new aristocracy attached itself to the patriciate,
so the first movements of this new opposition were interwoven with the
final struggles against the privileges of the patricians. The first
names in the series of these new Roman popular leaders were Manius
Curius (consul 464, 479, 480; censor 481) and Gaius Fabricius (consul
472, 476, 481; censor 479); both of them men without ancestral lineage
and without wealth, both summoned--in opposition to the aristocratic
principle of restricting re-election to the highest office of the
state--thrice by the votes of the burgesses to the chief magistracy,
both, as tribunes, consuls, and censors, opponents of patrician
privileges and defenders of the small farmer-class against the
incipient arrogance of the leading houses. The future parties were
already marked out; but the interests of party were still suspended
on both sides in presence of the interests of the commonweal. The
patrician Appius Claudius and the farmer Manius Curius--vehement in
their personal antagonism--jointly by wise counsel and vigorous action
conquered king Pyrrhus; and while Gaius Fabricius as censor inflicted
penalties on Publius Cornelius Rufinus for his aristocratic sentiments
and aristocratic habits, this did not prevent him from supporting the
claim of Rufinus to a second consulate on account of his recognized
ability as a general. The breach was already formed; but the
adversaries still shook hands across it.
The New Government
The termination of the struggles between the old and new burgesses,
the various and comparatively successful endeavours to relieve the
middle class, and the germs--already making their appearance amidst
the newly acquired civic equality--of the formation of a new
aristocratic and a new democratic party, have thus been passed
in review. It remains that we describe the shape which the new
government assumed amidst these changes, and the positions in which
after the political abolition of the nobility the three elements of
the republican commonwealth--the burgesses, the magistrates, and
the senate--stood towards each other.
The Burgess-Body--
Its Composition
The burgesses in their ordinary assemblies continued as hitherto to
be the highest authority in the commonwealth and the legal sovereign.
But it was settled by law that--apart from the matters committed once
for all to the decision of the centuries, such as the election of
consuls and censors--voting by districts should be just as valid
as voting by centuries: a regulation introduced as regards the
patricio-plebeian assembly by the Valerio-Horatian law of 305(12) and
extended by the Publilian law of 415, but enacted as regards the
plebeian separate assembly by the Hortensian law about 467.(13) We have
already noticed that the same individuals, on the whole, were entitled
to vote in both assemblies, but that--apart from the exclusion of
the patricians from the plebeian separate assembly--in the general
assembly of the districts all entitled to vote were on a footing of
equality, while in the centuriate comitia the working of the suffrage
was graduated with reference to the means of the voters, and in so
far, therefore, the change was certainly a levelling and democratic
innovation. It was a circumstance of far greater importance that,
towards the end of this period, the primitive freehold basis of the
right of suffrage began for the first time to be called in question.
Appius Claudius, the boldest innovator known in Roman history, in his
censorship in 442 without consulting the senate or people so adjusted
the burgess-roll, that a man who had no land was received into
whatever tribe he chose and then according to his means into the
corresponding century. But this alteration was too far in advance
of the spirit of the age to obtain full acceptance. One of the
immediate successors of Appius, Quintus Fabius Rullianus, the famous
conqueror of the Samnites, undertook in his censorship of 450 not to
set it aside entirely, but to confine it within such limits that the
real power in the burgess-assemblies should continue to be vested in
the holders of land and of wealth. He assigned those who had no land
collectively to the four city tribes, which were now made to rank not
as the first but as the last. The rural tribes, on the other hand,
the number of which gradually increased between 367 and 513 from
seventeen to thirty-one--thus forming a majority, greatly
preponderating from the first and ever increasing in preponderance,
of the voting-divisions--were reserved by law for the whole of the
burgesses who were freeholders. In the centuries the equalization of
the freeholders and non-freeholders remained as Appius had introduced
it. In this manner provision was made for the preponderance of the
freeholders in the comitia of the tribes, while for the centuriate
comitia in themselves the wealthy already turned the scale. By this
wise and moderate arrangement on the part of a man who for his warlike
feats and still more for this peaceful achievement justly received the
surname of the Great (-Maximus-), on the one hand the duty of bearing
arms was extended, as was fitting, also to the non-freehold burgesses;
on the other hand care was taken that their influence, especially
that of those who had once been slaves and who were for the most part
without property in land, should be subjected to that check which
is unfortunately, in a state allowing slavery, an indispensable
necessity. A peculiar moral jurisdiction, moreover, which gradually
came to be associated with the census and the making up of the
burgess-roll, excluded from the burgess-body all individuals
notoriously unworthy, and guarded the full moral and political
purity of citizenship.
Increasing Powers of the Burgesses
The powers of the comitia exhibited during this period a tendency to
enlarge their range, but in a manner very gradual. The increase in
the number of magistrates to be elected by the people falls, to some
extent, under this head; it is an especially significant fact that
from 392 the military tribunes of one legion, and from 443 four
tribunes in each of the first four legions respectively, were
nominated no longer by the general, but by the burgesses. During this
period the burgesses did not on the whole interfere in administration;
only their right of declaring war was, as was reasonable, emphatically
maintained, and held to extend also to cases in which a prolonged
armistice concluded instead of a peace expired and what was not in
law but in fact a new war began (327). In other instances a question
of administration was hardly submitted to the people except when the
governing authorities fell into collision and one of them referred
the matter to the people--as when the leaders of the moderate party
among the nobility, Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius, in 305, and
the first plebeian dictator, Gaius Marcius Rutilus, in 398, were not
allowed by the senate to receive the triumphs they had earned; when
the consuls of 459 could not agree as to their respective provinces of
jurisdiction; and when the senate, in 364, resolved to give up to the
Gauls an ambassador who had forgotten his duty, and a consular tribune
carried the matter to the community. This was the first occasion on
which a decree of the senate was annulled by the people; and heavily
the community atoned for it. Sometimes in difficult cases the
government left the decision to the people, as first, when Caere sued
for peace, after the people had declared war against it but before
war had actually begun (401); and at a subsequent period, when the
senate hesitated to reject unceremoniously the humble entreaty of
the Samnites for peace (436). It is not till towards the close of
this epoch that we find a considerably extended intervention of the
-comitia tributa- in affairs of administration, particularly through
the practice of consulting it as to the conclusion of peace and of
alliances: this extension probably dates from the Hortensian law
of 467.
Decreasing Importance of the Burgess-Body
But notwithstanding these enlargements of the powers of the
burgess-assemblies, their practical influence on state affairs began,
particularly towards the close of this period, to wane. First of all,
the extension of the bounds of Rome deprived her primary assembly of
its true basis. As an assembly of the freeholders of the community,
it formerly might very well meet in sufficiently full numbers, and
might very well know its own wishes, even without discussion; but the
Roman burgess-body had now become less a civic community than a state.
The fact that those dwelling together voted also with each other, no
doubt, introduced into the Roman comitia, at least when the voting
was by tribes, a sort of inward connection and into the voting now
and then energy and independence; but under ordinary circumstances
the composition of the comitia and their decision were left dependent
on the person who presided or on accident, or were committed to the
hands of the burgesses domiciled in the capital. It is, therefore,
quite easy to understand how the assemblies of the burgesses, which
had great practical importance during the first two centuries of
the republic, gradually became a mere instrument in the hands of
the presiding magistrate, and in truth a very dangerous instrument,
because the magistrates called to preside were so numerous, and
every resolution of the community was regarded as the ultimate legal
expression of the will of the people. But the enlargement of the
constitutional rights of the burgesses was not of much moment,
inasmuch as these were less than formerly capable of a will and action
of their own, and there was as yet no demagogism, in the proper sense
of that term, in Rome. Had any such demagogic spirit existed, it
would have attempted not to extend the powers of the burgesses, but to
remove the restrictions on political debate in their presence; whereas
throughout this whole period there was undeviating acquiescence in the
old maxims, that the magistrate alone could convoke the burgesses,
and that he was entitled to exclude all debate and all proposal
of amendments. At the time this incipient breaking up of the
constitution made itself felt chiefly in the circumstance that
the primary assemblies assumed an essentially passive attitude,
and did not on the whole interfere in government either to help
or to hinder it.
The Magistrates. Partition and Weakening of the Consular Powers
As regards the power of the magistrates, its diminution, although not
the direct design of the struggles between the old and new burgesses,
was doubtless one of their most important results. At the beginning
of the struggle between the orders or, in other words, of the strife
for the possession of the consular power, the consulate was still
the one and indivisible, essentially regal, magistracy; and the
consul, like the king in former times, still had the appointment
of all subordinate functionaries left to his own free choice.
At the termination of that contest its most important functions
--jurisdiction, street-police, election of senators and equites,
the census and financial administration --were separated from the
consulship and transferred to magistrates, who like the consul
were nominated by the community and occupied a position far more
co-ordinate than subordinate. The consulate, formerly the single
ordinary magistracy of the state, was now no longer even absolutely
the first. In the new arrangement as to the ranking and usual order
of succession of the public offices the consulate stood indeed above
the praetorship, aedileship, and quaestorship, but beneath the
censorship, which--in addition to the most important financial duties
--was charged with the adjustment of the rolls of burgesses, equites,
and senators, and thereby wielded a wholly arbitrary moral control
over the entire community and every individual burgess, the humblest
as well as the most prominent. The conception of limited magisterial
power or special function, which seemed to the original Roman state-law
irreconcilable with the conception of supreme office, gradually
gained a footing and mutilated and destroyed the earlier idea of the
one and indivisible -imperium-. A first step was already taken in
this direction by the institution of the standing collateral offices,
particularly the quaestorship;(14) it was completely carried out by
the Licinian laws (387), which prescribed the functions of the three
supreme magistrates, and assigned administration and the conduct of
war to the two first, and the management of justice to the third. But
the change did not stop here. The consuls, although they were in law
wholly and everywhere co-ordinate, naturally from the earliest times
divided between them in practice the different departments of duty
(-provinciae-). Originally this was done simply by mutual concert, or
in default of it by casting lots; but by degrees the other constituent
authorities in the commonwealth interfered with this practical
definition of functions. It became usual for the senate to define
annually the spheres of duty; and, while it did not directly
distribute them among the co-ordinate magistrates, it exercised
decided influence on the personal distribution by advice and request.
In an extreme case the senate doubtless obtained a decree of the
community, definitively to settle the question of distribution;(15)
the government, however, very seldom employed this dangerous
expedient. Further, the most important affairs, such as the
concluding of peace, were withdrawn from the consuls, and they
were in such matters obliged to have recourse to the senate and
to act according to its instructions. Lastly, in cases of extremity
the senate could at any time suspend the consuls from office; for,
according to an usage never established by law but never violated
in practice, the creation of a dictatorship depended simply upon
the resolution of the senate, and the fixing of the person to be
nominated, although constitutionally vested in the nominating
consul, really under ordinary circumstances lay with the senate.
Limitation of the Dictatorship
The old unity and plenary legal power of the -imperium- were retained
longer in the case of the dictatorship than in that of the consulship.
Although of course as an extraordinary magistracy it had in reality
from the first its special functions, it had in law far less of a
special character than the consulate. But it also was gradually
affected by the new idea of definite powers and functions introduced
into the legal life of Rome. In 391 we first meet with a dictator
expressly nominated from theological scruples for the mere
accomplishment of a religious ceremony; and though that dictator
himself, doubtless in formal accordance with the constitution,
treated the restriction of his powers as null and took the command
of the army in spite of it, such an opposition on the part of the
magistrate was not repeated on occasion of the subsequent similarly
restricted nominations, which occurred in 403 and thenceforward very
frequently. On the contrary, the dictators thenceforth accounted
themselves bound by their powers as specially defined.
Restriction as to the Accumulation and the Reoccupation of Offices
Lastly, further seriously felt restrictions of the magistracy were
involved in the prohibition issued in 412 against the accumulation
of the ordinary curule offices, and in the enactment of the same date,
that the same person should not again administer the same office under
ordinary circumstances before an interval of ten years had elapsed, as
well as in the subsequent regulation that the office which practically
was the highest, the censorship, should not be held a second time
at all (489). But the government was still strong enough not to be
afraid of its instruments or to desist purposely on that account
from employing those who were the most serviceable. Brave officers
were very frequently released from these rules,(16) and cases still
occurred like those of Quintus Fabius Rullianus, who was five times
consul in twenty-eight years, and of Marcus Valerius Corvus (384-483)
who, after he had filled six consulships, the first in his twenty-third,
the last in his seventy-second year, and had been throughout three
generations the protector of his countrymen and the terror
of the foe, descended to the grave at the age of a hundred.