The History of Rome, Book III - Theodor Mommsen
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Thus this reform did not introduce a new principle into the
constitution, but only brought into general application the principle
that had long regulated the working of the practically more frequent
and more important form of the burgess-assemblies. Its democratic,
but by no means demagogic, tendency is clearly apparent in the
position which it took up towards the proper supports of every really
revolutionary party, the proletariate and the freedmen. For that
reason the practical significance of this alteration in the order of
voting regulating the primary assemblies must not be estimated too
highly. The new law of election did not prevent, and perhaps did
not even materially impede, the contemporary formation of a new
politically privileged order. It is certainly not owing to the mere
imperfection of tradition, defective as it undoubtedly is, that we are
nowhere able to point to a practical influence exercised by this much-
discussed reform on the course of political affairs. An intimate
connection, we may add, subsisted between this reform, and the
already-mentioned abolition of the Roman burgess-communities -sine
suffragio-, which were gradually merged in the community of full
burgesses. The levelling spirit of the party of progress suggested
the abolition of distinctions within the middle class, while the
chasm between burgesses and non-burgesses was at the same time
widened and deepened.
Results of the Efforts at Reform
Reviewing what the reform party of this age aimed at and obtained, we
find that it undoubtedly exerted itself with patriotism and energy to
check, and to a certain extent succeeded in checking, the spread of
decay--more especially the falling off of the farmer class and the
relaxation of the old strict and frugal habits--as well as the
preponderating political influence of the new nobility. But we fail
to discover any higher political aim. The discontent of the multitude
and the moral indignation of the better classes found doubtless in
this opposition their appropriate and powerful expression; but we do
not find either a clear insight into the sources of the evil, or any
definite and comprehensive plan of remedying it. A certain want of
thought pervades all these efforts otherwise so deserving of honour,
and the purely defensive attitude of the defenders forebodes little
good for the sequel. Whether the disease could be remedied at all by
human skill, remains fairly open to question; the Roman reformers of
this period seem to have been good citizens rather than good
statesmen, and to have conducted the great struggle between the
old civism and the new cosmopolitanism on their part after a somewhat
inadequate and narrow-minded fashion.
Demagogism
But, as this period witnessed the rise of a rabble by the side of the
burgesses, so it witnessed also the emergence of a demagogism that
flattered the populace alongside of the respectable and useful party
of opposition. Cato was already acquainted with men who made a trade
of demagogism; who had a morbid propensity for speechifying, as others
had for drinking or for sleeping; who hired listeners, if they could
find no willing audience otherwise; and whom people heard as they
heard the market-crier, without listening to their words or, in the
event of needing help, entrusting themselves to their hands. In his
caustic fashion the old man describes these fops formed after the
model of the Greek talkers of the agora, dealing in jests and
witticisms, singing and dancing, ready for anything; such an one was,
in his opinion, good for nothing but to exhibit himself as harlequin
in a procession and to bandy talk with the public--he would sell his
talk or his silence for a bit of bread. In reality these demagogues
were the worst enemies of reform. While the reformers insisted above
all things and in every direction on moral amendment, demagogism
preferred to insist on the limitation of the powers of the government
and the extension of those of the burgesses.
Abolition of the Dictatorship
Under the former head the most important innovation was the practical
abolition of the dictatorship. The crisis occasioned by Quintus
Fabius and his popular opponents in 537(61) gave the death-blow to
this all-along unpopular institution. Although the government once
afterwards, in 538, under the immediate impression produced by the
battle of Cannae, nominated a dictator invested with active command,
it could not again venture to do so in more peaceful times. On
several occasions subsequently (the last in 552), sometimes after
a previous indication by the burgesses of the person to be nominated,
a dictator was appointed for urban business; but the office, without
being formally abolished, fell practically into desuetude. Through
its abeyance the Roman constitutional system, so artificially
constructed, lost a corrective which was very desirable with reference
to its peculiar feature of collegiate magistrates;(62) and the
government, which was vested with the sole power of creating a
dictatorship or in other words of suspending the consuls, and
ordinarily designated also the person who was to be nominated as
dictator, lost one of its most important instruments. Its place
was but very imperfectly supplied by the power--which the senate
thenceforth claimed--of conferring in extraordinary emergencies,
particularly on the sudden outbreak of revolt or war, a quasi-
dictatorial power on the supreme magistrates for the time being, by
instructing them "to take measures for the safety of the commonwealth
at their discretion," and thus creating a state of things similar to
the modern martial law.
Election of Priests by the Community
Along with this change the formal powers of the people in the
nomination of magistrates as well as in questions of government,
administration, and finance, received a hazardous extension. The
priesthoods--particularly those politically most important, the
colleges of men of lore--according to ancient custom filled up the
vacancies in their own ranks, and nominated also their own presidents,
where these corporations had presidents at all; and in fact, for such
institutions destined to transmit the knowledge of divine things from
generation to generation, the only form of election in keeping with
their spirit was cooptation. It was therefore--although not of great
political importance--significant of the incipient disorganization of
the republican arrangements, that at this time (before 542), while
election into the colleges themselves was left on its former footing,
the designation of the presidents--the -curiones- and -pontifices-
--from the ranks of those corporations was transferred from the
colleges to the community. In this case, however, with a pious regard
for forms that is genuinely Roman, in order to avoid any error, only a
minority of the tribes, and therefore not the "people," completed the
act of election.
Interference of the Community in War and Administration
Of greater importance was the growing interference of the burgesses in
questions as to persons and things belonging to the sphere of military
administration and external policy. To this head belong the
transference of the nomination of the ordinary staff-officers from the
general to the burgesses, which has been already mentioned;(63) the
elections of the leaders of the opposition as commanders-in-chief
against Hannibal;(64) the unconstitutional and irrational decree of
the people in 537, which divided the supreme command between the
unpopular generalissimo and his popular lieutenant who opposed him in
the camp as well as at home;(65) the tribunician complaint laid before
the burgesses, charging an officer like Marcellus with injudicious and
dishonest management of the war (545), which even compelled him to
come from the camp to the capital and there demonstrate his military
capacity before the public; the still more scandalous attempts to
refuse by decree of the burgesses to the victor of Pydna his
triumph;(66) the investiture--suggested, it is true, by the senate--of
a private man with extraordinary consular authority (544;(67)); the
dangerous threat of Scipio that, if the senate should refuse him the
chief command in Africa, he would seek the sanction of the burgesses
(549;(68)); the attempt of a man half crazy with ambition to extort
from the burgesses, against the will of the government, a declaration
of war in every respect unwarranted against the Rhodians (587;(69));
and the new constitutional axiom, that every state-treaty acquired
validity only through the ratification of the people.
Interference of the Community with the Finances
This joint action of the burgesses in governing and in commanding was
fraught in a high degree with peril. But still more dangerous was
their interference with the finances of the state; not only because
any attack on the oldest and most important right of the government
--the exclusive administration of the public property--struck at the
root of the power of the senate, but because the placing of the most
important business of this nature--the distribution of the public
domains--in the hands of the primary assemblies of the burgesses
necessarily dug the grave of the republic. To allow the primary
assembly to decree the transference of public property without limit
to its own pocket is not only wrong, but is the beginning of the end;
it demoralizes the best-disposed citizens, and gives to the proposer
a power incompatible with a free commonwealth. Salutary as was the
distribution of the public land, and doubly blameable as was the
senate accordingly for omitting to cut off this most dangerous of all
weapons of agitation by voluntarily distributing the occupied lands,
yet Gaius Flaminius, when he came to the burgesses in 522 with the
proposal to distribute the domains of Picenum, undoubtedly injured the
commonwealth more by the means than he benefited it by the end.
Spurius Cassius had doubtless two hundred and fifty years earlier
proposed the same thing;(70) but the two measures, closely as they
coincided in the letter, were yet wholly different, inasmuch as
Cassius submitted a matter affecting the community to that community
while it was in vigour and self-governing, whereas Flaminius submitted
a question of state to the primary assembly of a great empire.
Nullity of the Comitia
Not the party of the government only, but the party of reform also,
very properly regarded the military, executive, and financial
government as the legitimate domain of the senate, and carefully
abstained from making full use of, to say nothing of augmenting, the
formal power vested in primary assemblies that were inwardly doomed to
inevitable dissolution. Never even in the most limited monarchy was a
part so completely null assigned to the monarch as was allotted to the
sovereign Roman people: this was no doubt in more than one respect to
be regretted, but it was, owing to the existing state of the comitial
machine, even in the view of the friends of reform a matter of
necessity. For this reason Cato and those who shared his views never
submitted to the burgesses a question, which trenched on government
strictly so called; and never, directly or indirectly, by decree of
the burgesses extorted from the senate the political or financial
measures which they wished, such as the declaration of war against
Carthage and the assignations of land. The government of the senate
might be bad; the primary assemblies could not govern at all. Not
that an evil-disposed majority predominated in them; on the contrary
the counsel of a man of standing, the loud call of honour, and the
louder call of necessity were still, as a rule, listened to in the
comitia, and averted the most injurious and disgraceful results.
The burgesses, before whom Marcellus pleaded his cause, ignominiously
dismissed his accuser, and elected the accused as consul for the
following year: they suffered themselves also to be persuaded of the
necessity of the war against Philip, terminated the war against
Perseus by the election of Paullus, and accorded to the latter his
well-deserved triumph. But in order to such elections and such
decrees there was needed some special stimulus; in general the mass
having no will of its own followed the first impulse, and folly or
accident dictated the decision.
Disorganisation of Government
In the state, as in every organism, an organ which no longer
discharges its functions is injurious. The nullity of the sovereign
assembly of the people involved no small danger. Any minority in the
senate might constitutionally appeal to the comitia against the
majority. To every individual, who possessed the easy art of
addressing untutored ears or of merely throwing away money, a path was
opened up for his acquiring a position or procuring a decree in his
favour, to which the magistrates and the government were formally
bound to do homage. Hence sprang those citizen-generals, accustomed
to sketch plans of battle on the tables of taverns and to look down on
the regular service with compassion by virtue of their inborn genius
for strategy: hence those staff-officers, who owed their command to
the canvassing intrigues of the capital and, whenever matters looked
serious, had at once to get leave of absence -en masse-; and hence
the battles on the Trasimene lake and at Cannae, and the disgraceful
management of the war with Perseus. At every step the government
was thwarted and led astray by those incalculable decrees of the
burgesses, and as was to be expected, most of all in the very
cases where it was most in the right.
But the weakening of the government and the weakening of the community
itself were among the lesser dangers that sprang from this demagogism.
Still more directly the factious violence of individual ambition
pushed itself forward under the aegis of the constitutional rights of
the burgesses. That which formally issued forth as the will of the
supreme authority in the state was in reality very often the mere
personal pleasure of the mover; and what was to be the fate of a
commonwealth in which war and peace, the nomination and deposition of
the general and his officers, the public chest and the public
property, were dependent on the caprices of the multitude and its
accidental leaders? The thunder-storm had not yet burst; but the
clouds were gathering in denser masses, and occasional peals of
thunder were already rolling through the sultry air. It was a
circumstance, moreover, fraught with double danger, that the
tendencies which were apparently most opposite met together at their
extremes both as regarded ends and as regarded means. Family policy
and demagogism carried on a similar and equally dangerous rivalry in
patronizing and worshipping the rabble. Gaius Flaminius was regarded
by the statesmen of the following generation as the initiator of that
course from which proceeded the reforms of the Gracchi and--we may
add--the democratico-monarchical revolution that ensued. But Publius
Scipio also, although setting the fashion to the nobility in
arrogance, title-hunting, and client-making, sought support for his
personal and almost dynastic policy of opposition to the senate in the
multitude, which he not only charmed by the dazzling effect of his
personal qualities, but also bribed by his largesses of grain; in the
legions, whose favour he courted by all means whether right or wrong;
and above all in the body of clients, high and low, that personally
adhered to him. Only the dreamy mysticism, on which the charm as well
as the weakness of that remarkable man so largely depended, never
suffered him to awake at all, or allowed him to awake but imperfectly,
out of the belief that he was nothing, and that he desired to be
nothing, but the first burgess of Rome.
To assert the possibility of a reform would be as rash as to deny it:
this much is certain, that a thorough amendment of the state in all
its departments was urgently required, and that in no quarter was any
serious attempt made to accomplish it. Various alterations in
details, no doubt, were made on the part of the senate as well as on
the part of the popular opposition. The majorities in each were still
well disposed, and still frequently, notwithstanding the chasm that
separated the parties, joined hands in a common endeavour to effect
the removal of the worst evils. But, while they did not stop the evil
at its source, it was to little purpose that the better-disposed
listened with anxiety to the dull murmur of the swelling flood and
worked at dikes and dams. Contenting themselves with palliatives,
and failing to apply even these--especially such as were the most
important, the improvement of justice, for instance, and the
distribution of the domains--in proper season and due measure, they
helped to prepare evil days for their posterity. By neglecting to
break up the field at the proper time, they allowed weeds even to
ripen which they had not sowed. To the later generations who survived
the storms of revolution the period after the Hannibalic war appeared
the golden age of Rome, and Cato seemed the model of the Roman
statesman. It was in reality the lull before the storm and the epoch
of political mediocrities, an age like that of the government of
Walpole in England; and no Chatham was found in Rome to infuse fresh
energy into the stagnant life of the nation. Wherever we cast our
eyes, chinks and rents are yawning in the old building; we see workmen
busy sometimes in filling them up, sometimes in enlarging them; but we
nowhere perceive any trace of preparations for thoroughly rebuilding
or renewing it, and the question is no longer whether, but simply
when, the structure will fall. During no epoch did the Roman
constitution remain formally so stable as in the period from the
Sicilian to the third Macedonian war and for a generation beyond it;
but the stability of the constitution was here, as everywhere, not a
sign of the health of the state, but a token of incipient sickness and
the harbinger of revolution.
Notes for Chapter XI
1. II. III. New Aristocracy
2. II. III. New Opposition
3. II. III. Military Tribunes with Consular Powers
4. All these insignia probably belonged on their first emergence only
to the nobility proper, i. e. to the agnate descendants of curule
magistrates; although, after the manner of such decorations, all of
them in course of time were extended to a wider circle. This can be
distinctly proved in the case of the gold finger-ring, which in the
fifth century was worn only by the nobility (Plin. H. N., xxxiii. i.
18), in the sixth by every senator and senator's son (Liv. xxvi. 36),
in the seventh by every one of equestrian rank, under the empire by
every one who was of free birth. So also with the silver trappings,
which still, in the second Punic war, formed a badge of the nobility
alone (Liv. xxvi. 37); and with the purple border of the boys' toga,
which at first was granted only to the sons of curule magistrates,
then to the sons of equites, afterwards to those of all free-born
persons, lastly--yet as early as the time of the second Punic war
--even to the sons of freedmen (Macrob. Sat. i. 6). The golden
amulet-case (-bulla-) was a badge of the children of senators in the
time of the second Punic war (Macrob. l. c.; Liv. xxvi. 36), in that
of Cicero as the badge of the children of the equestrian order (Cic.
Verr. i. 58, 152), whereas children of inferior rank wore the leathern
amulet (-lorum-). The purple stripe (-clavus-) on the tunic was a
badge of the senators (I. V. Prerogatives of the Senate) and of the
equites, so that at least in later times the former wore it broad, the
latter narrow; with the nobility the -clavus- had nothing to do.
5. II. III. Civic Equality
6. Plin. H. N. xxi. 3, 6. The right to appear crowned in public was
acquired by distinction in war (Polyb. vi. 39, 9; Liv. x. 47);
consequently, the wearing a crown without warrant was an offence
similar to the assumption, in the present day, of the badge of a
military order of merit without due title.
7. II. III. Praetorship
8. Thus there remained excluded the military tribunate with consular
powers (II. III. Throwing Open of Marriage and of Magistracies) the
proconsulship, the quaestorship, the tribunate of the people, and
several others. As to the censorship, it does not appear,
notwithstanding the curule chair of the censors (Liv. xl. 45; comp,
xxvii. 8), to have been reckoned a curule office; for the later
period, however, when only a man of consular standing could be made
censor, the question has no practical importance. The plebeian
aedileship certainly was not reckoned originally one of the curule
magistracies (Liv. xxiii. 23); it may, however, have been subsequently
included amongst them.
9. II. I. Government of the Patriciate
10. II. III. Censorship
11. II. III. The Senate
12. The current hypothesis, according to which the six centuries of
the nobility alone amounted to 1200, and the whole equestrian force
accordingly to 3600 horse, is not tenable. The method of determining
the number of the equites by the number of duplications specified by
the annalists is mistaken: in fact, each of these statements has
originated and is to be explained by itself. But there is no evidence
either for the first number, which is only found in the passage of
Cicero, De Rep. ii. 20, acknowledged as miswritten even by the
champions of this view, or for the second, which does not appear at
all in ancient authors. In favour, on the other hand, of the
hypothesis set forth in the text, we have, first of all, the number as
indicated not by authorities, but by the institutions themselves; for
it is certain that the century numbered 100 men, and there were
originally three (I. V. Burdens of the Burgesses), then six (I. Vi.
Amalgamation of the Palatine and Quirinal Cities), and lastly after
the Servian reform eighteen (I. VI. The Five Classes), equestrian
centuries. The deviations of the authorities from this view are only
apparent. The old self-consistent tradition, which Becker has
developed (ii. i, 243), reckons not the eighteen patricio-plebeian,
but the six patrician, centuries at 1800 men; and this has been
manifestly followed by Livy, i. 36 (according to the reading which
alone has manuscript authority, and which ought not to be corrected
from Livy's particular estimates), and by Cicero l. c. (according to
the only reading grammatically admissible, MDCCC.; see Becker, ii. i,
244). But Cicero at the same time indicates very plainly, that in
that statement he intended to describe the then existing amount of the
Roman equites in general. The number of the whole body has therefore
been transferred to the most prominent portion of it by a prolepsis,
such as is common in the case of the old annalists not too much given
to reflection: just in the same way 300 equites instead of 100 are
assigned to the parent-community, including, by anticipation, the
contingents of the Tities and the Luceres (Becker, ii. i, 238).
Lastly, the proposition of Cato (p. 66, Jordan), to raise the number
of the horses of the equites to 2200, is as distinct a confirmation of
the view proposed above, as it is a distinct refutation of the
opposite view. The closed number of the equites probably continued to
subsist down to Sulla's time, when with the -de facto- abeyance of the
censorship the basis of it fell away, and to all appearance in place
of the censorial bestowal of the equestrian horse came its acquisition
by hereditary right; thenceforth the senator's son was by birth an
-eques-. Alongside, however, of this closed equestrian body, the
-equites equo publico-, stood from an early period of the republic the
burgesses bound to render mounted service on their own horses, who are
nothing but the highest class of the census; they do not vote in the
equestrian centuries, but are regarded otherwise as equites, and lay
claim likewise to the honorary privileges of the equestrian order.
In the arrangement of Augustus the senatorial houses retained the
hereditary equestrian right; but by its side the censorial bestowal of
the equestrian horse is renewed as a prerogative of the emperor and
without restriction to a definite time, and thereby the designation of
equites for the first class of the census as such falls into abeyance.
13. II. III. Increasing Powers of the Burgesses
14. II. VIII. Officers
15. II. III. Restrictions As to the Accumulation and Reoccupation of
Offices
16. II. III. New Opposition
17. The stability of the Roman nobility may be clearly traced, more
especially in the case of the patrician -gentes-, by means of the
consular and aedilician Fasti. As is well known, the consulate was
held by one patrician and one plebeian in each year from 388 to 581
(with the exception of the years 399, 400, 401, 403, 405, 409, 411, in
which both consuls were patricians). Moreover, the colleges of curule
aediles were composed exclusively of patricians in the odd years of
the Varronian reckoning, at least down to the close of the sixth
century, and they are known for the sixteen years 541, 545, 547, 549,
551, 553, 555, 557, 561, 565, 567, 575, 585, 589, 591, 593. These
patrician consuls and aediles are, as respects their -gentes-,
distributed as follows:--