THE ROMAN ASSEMBLIES
[Illustration]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK. BOSTON. CHICAGO
ATLANTA. SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON. BOMBAY. CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
THE
ROMAN ASSEMBLIES
FROM THEIR ORIGIN TO THE END
OF THE REPUBLIC
BY
GEORGE WILLIS BOTSFORD
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
AUTHOR OF “THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ATHENIAN CONSTITUTION,”
“A HISTORY OF GREECE,” “A HISTORY OF ROME,”
“AN ANCIENT HISTORY,” ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1909
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1909,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1909.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
To MY WIFE
Οὐ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ γε κρεῖσσον καὶ ἄρειον,
Ἢ ὅθ’ ὁμοφρονέοντε νοήμασιν οἶκον ἔχητον
Ἀνὴρ ἠδὲ γυνή· πόλλ’ ἄλγεα δυσμενέεσσι,
Χάρματα δ’ εὐμενέτησι· μάλιστα δέ τ’ ἔκλυον αὐτοί.
PREFACE
This volume is the first to offer in monographic form a detailed
treatment of the popular assemblies of ancient Rome. Necessarily much of
the material in it may be found in earlier works; but recent progress
in the field, involving a reaction against certain theories of Niebuhr
and Mommsen affecting the comitia, justifies a systematic presentation
of existing knowledge of the subject. This task has required patient
labor extending through many years. The known sources and practically
all the modern authorities have been utilized. A determination to keep
free from conventional ideas, so as to look at the sources freshly and
with open mind, has brought views of the assemblies not found in other
books. The reader is earnestly requested not to reject an interpretation
because it seems new but to examine carefully the grounds on which it is
given. In general the aim has been to follow a conservative historical
method as opposed to the radical juristic, to build up generalizations on
facts rather than to estimate sources by the criterion of a preconceived
theory. The primary object of the volume, however, is not to defend a
point of view but to serve as a book of study and reference for those who
are interested in the history, law, and constitution of ancient Rome and
in comparative institutional research.
In the preparation of the volume, I have been generously aided by my
colleagues in Columbia University. To Professor William M. Sloane,
Head of the Department of History, I owe a great debt of gratitude for
kindly sympathy and encouragement in the work. It is an especial good
fortune that the proofs have been read by Professor James C. Egbert.
Many improvements are due to his scholarship and editorial experience.
Professor George N. Olcott has advised me on various numismatic matters,
and I am indebted to Dr. John L. Gerig for information on two or three
etymologies. The proofs have also been read and corrections made by Dr.
Richard R. Blews of Cornell University. It is a pleasure to remember
gratefully these able friends who have helped me with their special
knowledge, and to add the name of Mr. Frederic W. Erb of the Columbia
University Library, whose courtesy has facilitated the borrowing of books
for the study from other institutions.
Notwithstanding every effort to make the work accurate, mistakes and
inconsistencies will doubtless be found in it, and I shall thankfully
welcome suggestions from any reader for its further correction and
improvement.
GEORGE WILLIS BOTSFORD.
MOUNT VERNON, NEW YORK, June 7, 1909.
CONTENTS
PAGES
PART I
ELEMENTS OF THE COMITIAL CONSTITUTION 1-118
CHAPTER I
THE POPULUS AND ITS EARLIEST POLITICAL DIVISIONS 1-15
CHAPTER II
THE SOCIAL COMPOSITION OF THE PRIMITIVE POPULUS 16-47
CHAPTER III
THE THIRTY-FIVE TRIBES 48-65
CHAPTER IV
THE CENTURIES AND THE CLASSES 66-99
CHAPTER V
THE AUSPICES 100-118
PART II
THE ASSEMBLIES: ORGANIZATION, PROCEDURE, AND FUNCTIONS,
RESOLUTIONS, STATUTES, AND CASES 119-477
CHAPTER VI
COMITIA AND CONCILIUM 119-138
CHAPTER VII
THE CONTIO 139-151
CHAPTER VIII
THE CALATA COMITIA 152-167
CHAPTER IX
THE COMITIA CURIATA 168-200
CHAPTER X
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE COMITIA CENTURIATA 201-228
CHAPTER XI
THE FUNCTIONS OF THE COMITIA CENTURIATA 229-261
CHAPTER XII
THE COMITIA TRIBUTA AND THE RISE OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY,
TO 449 262-282
CHAPTER XIII
THE COMITIA TRIBUTA AND THE RISE OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY,
FROM 449 TO 287 283-316
CHAPTER XIV
THE JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE COMITIA TRIBUTA, FROM 287
TO THE END OF THE REPUBLIC 317-329
CHAPTER XV
COMITIAL LEGISLATION, FROM HORTENSIUS TO THE GRACCHI 330-362
CHAPTER XVI
COMITIAL LEGISLATION, FROM THE GRACCHI TO SULLA 363-411
CHAPTER XVII
COMITIAL LEGISLATION, FROM SULLA TO THE END OF THE REPUBLIC 412-461
CHAPTER XVIII
THE COMPOSITION AND PRESERVATION OF STATUTES, COMITIAL
PROCEDURE, AND COMITIAL DAYS 462-472
CHAPTER XIX
A SUMMARY OF COMITIAL HISTORY 473-477
BIBLIOGRAPHY 479-498
INDEX 499-521
THE ROMAN ASSEMBLIES
PART I
ELEMENTS OF THE COMITIAL CONSTITUTION
CHAPTER I
THE POPULUS AND ITS EARLIEST POLITICAL DIVISIONS
I. _The Populus_
The derivation of populus, “people,” “folk,” is unknown. Attempts have
been made to connect it with populari, “to devastate,” so as to give
it primarily a military signification—perhaps simply “the army.”[1]
In the opinion of others it is akin to plēnus, plēbes, πλῆθος, πολύς,
πίμπλημι,[2] in which case it would signify “multitude,” “mass,” with
the idea of collective strength, which might readily pass into “army” as
a secondary meaning.[3] Fundamentally personal, it included all those
individuals, not only the grown men but their families as well, who
collectively made up the state, whether Roman or foreign, monarchical or
republican.[4] Only in a transferred sense did it apply to territory.[5]
The ancient definition, “an association based on the common acceptance
of the same body of laws and on the general participation in public
benefits,”[6] is doubtless too abstract for the beginnings of Rome.
Citizenship—membership in the populus—with all that it involved is
elaborately defined by the Roman jurists;[7] but for the earlier period
it will serve the purpose of the present study to mention that the three
characteristic public functions of the citizen were military service,
participation in worship, and attendance at the assembly.[8] In a
narrower sense populus signifies “the people,” “masses,” in contrast with
the magistrates or with the senate, as in the well known phrase, senatus
populusque Romanus.
II. _The Three Primitive Tribes_
The Romans believed that the three tribes which composed the primitive
populus were created by one act in close relation with the founding
of the city.[9] For some unknown reason they were led to connect the
myth of Titus Tatius, the eponymous hero of the Tities,[10] with the
Quirinal,[11] and with the Sabines,[12] who were generally supposed to
have occupied that hill.[13] Consequently some of their historians felt
compelled to defer their account of the institution of the tribes till
they had told of the union of the Sabines with the Romans, which at the
same time gave them an opportunity to derive the names of the curiae from
those of the Sabine women. Varro,[14] however, who protests against this
derivation, refers the organization of the people in the three tribes to
an earlier date, connecting it immediately with the founding of Rome.
Though he affirmed that one tribe was named after Romulus, another after
Titus Tatius, and the third, less positively, after an Etruscan Lucumo,
Caeles Vibenna, who came to the aid of Romulus against Titus Tatius,[15]
neither he nor any other ancient writer identified the Tities with the
Sabines, whose quarter in the city was really unknown,[16] or the Luceres
with an Etruscan settlement under Caeles whether in the Vicus Tuscus[17]
or on the Caelian hill.[18] Since the Romans knew the tribe in no other
relation than as a part of the state, they could not have thought of
their city as consisting originally of a single tribe, to which a second
and afterward a third were added, or that any one of these three tribes
had ever been an independent community. These views are modern;[19] there
is no trace of them in the ancient writers.[20] Even if it could be
proved that they took this point of view, the question at issue would not
thereby be settled; for no genuine tradition regarding the origin of the
primitive tribes came down to the earliest annalists; the only possible
knowledge they possessed on this point was deduced from the names of the
tribes and from surviving institutions presumably connected with them
in the period of their existence.[21] Under these circumstances modern
speculations as to their independent character and diverse nationality
seem absurd. The proper method of solving the problem is to test and to
supplement the scant sources by a comparative study of the institution.
The low political vitality of the three primitive Roman tribes, as of the
corresponding Greek phylae,[22] when we first meet with them in history,
points to the artificiality of these groups—a condition indicated
further both by their number and by their occurrence in other Italian
states.[23] Far from being confined to Rome, the tripartite division of
the community belonged to many Greek and to most Italian peoples,[24]
and has entered largely into the organization of communities and nations
the world over.[25] A derivation of tribus, Umbrian trifu, accepted by
many scholars, connects it with the number three.[26] The wide use of
this conventional number, and more particularly the regular recurrence
of the same three Dorian tribes in many Dorian cities—as of the same
four Ionic tribes in many Ionic cities[27]—and of the same three Latin
(or Etruscan?) tribes in several old Latin cities, could not result from
chance combinations in all these places, but point unmistakably to the
systematic imitation of a common pattern. That pattern must be ultimately
sought in the pre-urban populus, ἔθνος, folk. If we assume that before
the rise of city-states the Ionian folk was organized in four tribes
(phylae) and the Dorian and Latin folks in three tribes, we shall have a
condition such as will satisfactorily explain the tribal organization of
the city-states which grew up within the areas occupied by these three
folks respectively. The thirty votes of the Latins may be best explained
by assuming a division of their populus into three tribes, subdivided
each into ten groups corresponding to the Roman curiae. Whereas in
Umbria the decay of the pre-urban populus allowed its tribes to become
independent,[28] in Latium a development in that direction was prevented
by the rise of city-states, which completely overshadowed the preëxisting
organization.
The Italian city-state grew not from a tribe or a combination of
tribes, but from the pagus,[29] “canton,” a district of the pre-urban
populus with definite consecrated boundaries,[30] usually centering
in an oppidum—a place of defence and refuge.[31] In the beginning the
latter enjoyed no superior right over the territory in which it was
situated.[32] A pagus became a populus at the point of time when it
asserted its political independence of the folk. The new state organized
itself in tribes and curiae after the pattern of the folk. In the main
this arrangement was artificial, yet it must have taken some account
of existing ties of blood.[33] At the same time the oppidum became an
urbs[34]—a city, the seat of government of the new populus. Thus arose
the city-state. In the case of Rome several oppida with parts of their
respective pagi[35] were merged in one urbs—that known as the city of the
four regions.[36] Urbs and ager excluded each other, just as the oppidani
contrasted with the pagani;[37] but both were included in the populus.
Most ancient writers represent the three tribes as primarily local,[38]
and the members as landowners from the founding of the city.[39] Although
their view may be a mere inference from the character of the so-called
Servian tribes, the continuity of name from the earlier to the later
institution points to some degree of similarity between them. It can be
easily understood, too, how in time the personal feature might have so
overcome the local as to make the old tribes appear to be based on birth
in contrast with the territorial aspect of the new.[40]
It was probably on the institution of the later tribes that the earlier
were dissolved. They left their names to the three double centuries of
patrician knights.[41] Their number appears also as a factor in the
number of curiae, of senators, and of members of the great sacerdotal
colleges. Other survivals may be found in the name “tribunus,” in the
tribuni militum, the tribuni celerum,[42] the ludus Troiae,[43] and less
certainly in the Sodales Titii.[44]
III. _The Curiae_
The curia as well as the tribe was a common Italian institution. We know
that it belonged to the Etruscans,[45] the Latins,[46] and several other
peoples of Italy.[47] There were ten curiae to the tribe, making thirty
in all.[48] The association was composed, not of gentes as many have
imagined, but of families.[49] For the performance of its social and
religious functions it had a house of assembly, also called curia,[50] in
which the members—curiales—gathered for religious festivals. The place
of meeting was a part of an edifice belonging to the collective curiae.
In historical time there were two such buildings—the Curiae Veteres[51]
on the northeast slope of the Palatine near the Arch of Constantine,
containing seven curial meeting-places, and the Novae Curiae[52] near the
Compitum Fabricium, containing the others. Their deities were Juno[53]
and Tellus;[54] and their chief festivals were the Fornacalia and the
Fordicidia.[55] As the worship was public, the expense was paid by the
state.[56] At the head of the curia stood the curio—who in historical
time was merely a priest[57]—assisted in his religious functions by
his wife and children,[58] by a lictor[59] and a flamen.[60] The fact
that the curio had these officials proves that he was originally a
magistrate.[61] One of the curiones the people elected curio maximus
to exercise general supervision over the worship and festivals of the
association.[62]
Another function of the curiae was political. The grown male members,
meeting in the comitium, constituted the earliest assembly organized in
voting divisions—the comitia curiata—in which each curia cast a single
vote.[63] Religious and political functions the curia continued to
exercise far down into historical time; and for that reason they have
never been doubted by the moderns. For the primitive period Dionysius[64]
ascribes to them military functions as well. His idea is that the three
original tribes furnished military divisions each under a tribune, and
the curiae as subdivisions of the tribe furnished companies, commanded
each by a curio chosen for his valor.[65] Doubtless the writer fairly
describes the military system which Rome employed before the introduction
of the phalanx,[66] and which corresponds closely with the system
prevalent among the early Greeks,[67] Germans,[68] and other European
peoples.[69] The military organization was everywhere a parallel of
the civil. The Roman army, however, was by no means identical with the
curiate assembly, for many belonged to the tribes and the curiae who for
various reasons were exempt from military service.[70]
It is probable, too, that the curiae, as well as the tribes,[71] were
territorial divisions. Not only have we the authority of Dionysius[72]
that each curia occupied a district of the state, but also two of the
seven known curial names—Foriensis and Veliensis[73]—are local. Though
the two mentioned refer to places within the city, the country people
were also included in the associations.[74]
* * * * *
Since Niebuhr the opinion has generally prevailed that the curia was
composed of gentes. A passage which at first glance seems to have a
bearing on the question is Dion. Hal. ii. 7. 4: “Romulus divided the
curiae into decades, each commanded by a leader, who in the language of
the country is called decurion.”[75] The word decurion proves, however,
that in speaking of decades Dionysius is thinking of the military
divisions called decuriae, each commanded by a decurion. In historical
times the troop of cavalry—turma—was divided into three decuriae of
ten each, as the word itself indicates. There were accordingly three
decurions to the turma, and ten turmae ordinarily went with the
legion.[76] From Varro[77] we learn that the three primitive tribes
furnished turmae and decuriae of cavalry, the decuriae commanded by
decurions. Dionysius accordingly refers to military companies—either
to the well known decuriae of cavalry or to corresponding companies of
footmen which probably existed before the adoption of the phalanx.[78]
Had he meant gentes, he would have used the corresponding Greek word
γένη. Niebuhr[79] inferred from this passage that each curia was divided
into ten gentes, making three hundred gentes for the entire state; but a
careful interpretation shows that no reference to the gentes is intended.
We cannot infer therefore from this citation that the curia was divided
into gentes.
The other passage relative to the question is Gellius xv. 27. 4,[80] in
which Laelius Felix states that the voting in the comitia curiata was by
genera hominum in contrast with the census et aetas of the centuriate
assembly and with the regiones et loca of the comitia tributa. Niebuhr
identifies genera with gentes.[81] It is clear, however, that in this
passage Laelius is not concretely defining the voting units of the
various assemblies, but is stating in a general way the principles
underlying their organization into voting units. In the comitia
centuriata the principle is wealth and age; census et aetas is not to
be identified with centuria or with any other group of individuals in
this assembly. In like manner regiones et loca expresses the principle
of organization of the tribal assembly; or if used concretely, it must
designate the tribes themselves, and not subdivisions of the tribes, for
none existed. Correspondingly genera hominum signifies that the principle
of organization of the curiate assembly is hereditary connection; but
so far as the expression is applied concretely, it must denote the
curiae themselves not subdivisions of these associations. The curia,
a religious, social, and political group based on birth, might well
be called genus hominum in contrast with the local tribe and with the
century, composed artificially of men of similar wealth and age. It is
well known, too, that voting within the curiae was not by gentes but by
heads.[82] As no other passage from the sources, besides these two, has
even the appearance of lending support to the proposition advanced by
Niebuhr, and favored by others, that the curia was a group of gentes, we
may conclude that this proposition is groundless. The result is that the
gens had no connection with the comitial organization.
I. THE POPULUS; the beginnings of Rome: Schwegler, A.,
_Römische Geschichte_, I. bk. viii; Peter, C., _Geschichte
Roms_, i. 17 ff.; Niese, B., _Grundriss der röm. Geschichte_,
16 ff., 28 ff.; Jordan, H., _Topographie der Stadt Rom im
Altertum_, I. i. 153 ff; iii. 34; Gilbert, O., _Geschichte
und Topographie der Stadt Rom im Altertum_, i, ii; Richter,
_Topographie der Stadt Rom_, 30 ff. (see review by H. Degering,
in _Berl. Philol. Woch._ 1903. 1645 f.); Platner, S. B.,
_Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome_, ch. iv; Schulze,
W., _Zur Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen_, 579-82; Pais,
E., _Ancient Legends of Roman History_, ch. xii; Nissen,
H., _Das Templum_, ch. v; _Italische Landeskunde_, ii. 488
ff.; Kornemann, E., _Polis und Urbs_, in _Klio_, v (1905).
72-92; Carter, J. B., _Roma Quadrata and the Septimontium_,
in _Am. Journ. of Archaeol._ xii (1908). 172-83; Deecke,
Wm., _Die Falisker_; Montelius, _Die frühesten zeiten Roms_,
in _Correspbl. d. deutsch. Gesellsch. f. Anthr. Ethn. u.
Urgesch._ xxxv (1904). 122; Pöhlmann, R., _Die Anfänge Roms_;
Schrader, O., _Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte_, bk. IV.
ch. xii; _Heer, König, Sippe, Stamm_ in _Reallexikon der
indogermanischen Altertumskunde_; Fustel de Coulanges, _Ancient
City_, bk. iii; Leist, _Graeco-italische Rechtsgeschichte_,
103 ff.; _Alt-arisches Jus Civile_, i. 319-36; Meyer, E.,
_Geschichte des Altertums_, ii. 510 ff.; Mommsen, _History
of Rome_, bk. I. chs. iii, iv; _Röm. Staatsrecht_, iii. 3
ff., 112-22; Marquardt, J., _Röm. Staatsverwaltung_, i. 3
ff.; Lange, L., _Röm. Altertümer_, i. 55-284; _Das röm.
Königtum_, in _Kleine Schriften_, i. 77-104; Herzog, E.,
_Geschichte und System der röm. Staatsverfassung_, i. 3-23,
969 ff.; Willems, P., _Droit public Romain_, 17 ff.; Karlowa,
O., _Röm. Rechtsgeschichte_, i. 30 ff.; Greenidge, A. H. J.,
_Roman Public Life_, ch. i; Bernhöft, F., _Staat und Recht
der röm. Königszeit_, 69 ff.; Genz, _Das patricische Röm_, 51
ff.; Morlot, E., _Les comices électoraux sous la république
Romaine_, ch. i.
II. THE PRIMITIVE TRIBES: Niebuhr, B. G., _Röm. Geschichte_,
i. 300-321; English, i. 149-58; Schwegler, ibid. I. bk. IX.
ch. xiv. § 2; Niese, ibid. 30 f.; De Sanctis, G., _Storia
dei Romani_, i. 249-55; Gilbert, ibid. ii. 329-79; Nissen,
_Templum_, 144-6; _Ital. Landesk._ ii. 7-15, 496 ff.; Jordan,
H., _Die Könige im alten Italien_, 35-7; controverted by
W. Soltau, in _Woch. f. Kl. Philol._ xxv (1908). 220-3;
Mommsen, _Röm. Staatsr._ iii. 95-100, 109-12; _Rom. Tribus_,
1 f.; Lange, _Rom. Alt._ i. 81-101; Herzog, ibid. i. 23 ff.;
Madvig, J. N., _Röm. Staat_, i. 95-8; Mispoulet, J. B., _Les
institutions politiques des Romains_, i. 3-6; Soltau, W.,
_Altröm. Volksversammlungen_, 46-51; Willems, P., _Le sénat
de la république Romaine_, I. ch. i; Bloch, G., _Les origines
du sénat Romain_, 1-16, 32-8; Bernhöft, ibid. 79 ff.; Genz,
ibid. 89-106; Meyer, ibid.; _Der Ursprung des Tribunats und
die Gemeinde der vier Tribus_, in _Hermes_, xxx (1895). 1-24;
controverted by Sp. Vassis, in _Athena_, ix (1897). 470-2;
Kubitschek, W., _De romanorum tribuum origine ac propagatione_
1 ff.; Volquardsen, C. A., _Die drei ältesten röm. Tribus_, in
_Rhein. Mus._ N. F. xxxiii (1878). 538-64; Bormann, E., _die
älteste Gliederung Roms_, in _Eranos Vindobonensis_, 345-58;
Holzapfel, L., _Die drei ältesten röm. Tribus_, in _Beiträge
zur alten Geschichte_, i (1902). 228-55; Bertolini, C. I., _I
celeres ed il tribunus celerum_; Zimmermann, A., _Zu Titus_,
etc., in _Rhein. Mus._ N. F. 1 (1895). 159 f.; Schlossmann,
S., _Tributum, tribuere, tribus_, in _Archiv f. lat. Lexicog._
xiv (1906). 25-40; Schulze, W., _Zur Gesch. lateinischer
Eigennamen_, see index, s. Ramnenses, etc.
III. THE CURIAE: POTT, A. F., _Etymologische Forschungen_,
ii. 373 ff.; Corssen, W., _Ausspr._ index, s. Curia; Vaniček,
A., _Etymologisches Wörterbuch der lat. Sprache_, 160;
_Griech.-lat. etym. Wörterbuch_, 1116; Niebuhr, ibid. i.
321-54; Schwegler, ibid. i. 610-12; Gilbert, ibid, index s.
Curia; Richter, ibid. index s. Curia; Mommsen, _Röm. Staatsr_.
iii. 89 ff.; Lange, ibid. i. 275-84, and index, s. Curia;
Willems, P., _Sén. Rom._ ibid.; Bloch, G., _Orig. d. sén._ 290
ff.; Mispoulet, J. B., ibid. i. 7-9; Fustel de Coulanges, ibid.
154-7; Karlowa, ibid.; Genz, ibid. 32-50; Hoffmeister, K.,
_Die Wirtschaftliche Entwickelung Roms_, 5 f.; Soltau, ibid.
46-67; Müller, J. J., _Studien zur röm. Verfassungsgeschichte_,
in _Philol._ xxxiv (1875). 96 ff.; Ihne, Wm., _History of
Rome_, i. 113 f.; Newman, F. W., _Dr. Ihne on the Early Roman
Constitution_, in _Classical Museum_, vi (1849). 15 ff.;
Hoffmann, E., _Patricische und plebeiische Curien_; Kübler and
Hülsen, _Curia_, in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ iv. 1815-26;
Pelham, H., _The Roman Curiae_, in (English) _Journal of
Philology_, ix (1880). 266-79.
IV. THE GENTES: Fustel de Coulanges, ibid. bk. ii; Leist,
_Graeco-ital. Rechtsgesch._ 11 ff.; _Alt-arisches Ius Gentium_;
_Alt-arisch. Jus Civ._ i. 461-76 (Irish Kin); Hirt, H.,
_Indogermanen_, ii. 409-56; Engels, F., _Der Ursprung der
Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats_, ch. v; Howard,
G. E., _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, I. pt. i;
Levison, W., _Die Beurkundung des Zivilstandes im Altertum_;
Wildebrandt, M., _Die politische und sociale Bedeutung der
attischen Geschlechter vor Solon_, in _Philologus_, Supplb.
vii (1899). 135-227; Kovalevsky, M., _La gens et le clan_,
in _Annales de l’institut international de sociologie_, vii
(1900). 57-100; Ruggiero, E., _La gens in Roma avanti la
formazione del comune_; Schwegler, ibid. i. 612-15; Lange,
ibid. i. 211-59, and see index, s. v.; Mommsen, _Röm. Forsch_,
i. 1-127; _Röm. Staatsr._ iii. 9-53, and see index s. v.;
Mispoulet, ibid. i. 9-14; Willems, _Sén. Rom._ i. chs. i-iii;
Müller, J. J., _Studien z. röm. Verfassungsgesch._ in _Philol._
xxxiv (1876). 96-104; Bloch, G., ibid. 102 ff.; _Recherches
sur quelques gentes patriciennes_, in _Mélanges d’archéologie
et d’histoire de l’école Française de Rome_, 1882. 241-76;
Soltau, ibid. 58-64, 652-5; Bernhöft, ibid.; Genz, ibid.
1-31; Bloch, L., _Die ständischen und sozialen Kämpfe in der
röm. Republik_; Holzapfel, L., _Il numero dei senatori Romani
durante il periodo dei rei_, in _Rivista di storia antica_,
ii. 2 (1897). 52-64; Marquardt, J., _Privatleben der Römer_,
1-26, 353 f.; Deecke, ibid. 275 ff. (on Italian names); Michel,
N. H., _Du droit de cité Romaine_; Köhm, J., _Altlateinische
Forschungen_, 1-21; Lécrivain, C., _Gens_, in Daremberg et
Saglio, _Dict._ ii. 1504-16; Ruggiero, E., _Diz. ep._ iii
(1906). 482-6; Casagrandi, V., _Le minores gentes ed i patres
minorum gentium_; Staaf, E., _De origine gentium patriciarum_;
Lieboldt, K., _Die Ansichten über die Entstehung und das Wesen
der Gentes patriciae aus der Zeit der Humanisten bis auf unsere
Tage_; Botsford, G. W., _Some Problems connected with the Roman
Gens_, in _Political Science Quarterly_, xxii (1907). 663-92.
CHAPTER II
THE SOCIAL COMPOSITION OF THE PRIMITIVE POPULUS
This chapter[83] is primarily an inquiry into the social composition
of the comitia curiata. At the same time it seeks to solve a problem
which is doubtless the most fundamental in the early political and
constitutional history of Rome. The result we reach will determine our
conception of the whole course of constitutional development, and of the
accompanying political struggles, to the complete equalization of the
social ranks. For if we believe, as do many of the moderns,[84] that
the primitive Roman state was made up exclusively of patricians, we are
forced to the conclusion that the constitutional development to the
passing of the Hortensian laws centred in the gradual admission of the
plebeians and the clients to citizenship—perhaps even in the amalgamation
of two distinct peoples. If on the other hand we take the ground that
from the beginning the plebeians and the clients were citizens and voted
in the comitia curiata, we must think of these inferior classes as
struggling through the early history of their country for the acquisition
not of citizenship but of various rights and privileges, social,
economic, religious, and political, formerly monopolized by a patrician
aristocracy. In attempting to solve the problem here proposed it will
be advantageous to consider (1) the ancient view, (2) the conventional
modern view, (3) the comparative-sociological view.
I. _The Ancient View_
The three social classes of freemen—plebeians, patricians, and
clients—were formed within the citizen body by official recognition of
existing distinctions not of nationality but of worth. The first step
in the process was the differentiation of the patricians from the
plebeians. According to Cicero, Romulus constituted a number of chief men
into a royal council, the senate, whose members he so highly esteemed as
to have them called patres, and their children patricians.[85] Cicero
thinks of the multitude as existing at first without a politically
recognized nobility, yet showing natural distinctions of worth. By
calling into the senate the ablest and best men, the state ennobled them
and their families.[86] Livy’s[87] view is similar: Romulus selected
from the multitude a hundred senators, whom he named patres, and whose
descendants were called patricians. They were chosen because of their
wisdom;[88] on that ground the state granted them nobility,[89] which
accordingly in Rome, as in every early community, was founded on personal
merit.[90] In the more detailed theory of Dionysius,[91] Romulus
“distinguished those who were eminent for their birth and celebrated
for their virtue, and whom he knew to be rich in the account of those
times and who had children, from the obscure and mean and poor. The
lower class he called plebeians, Greek δημοτικοί, and the higher patres,
either because they were older than the others, or had children, or
were of higher birth, or for all these reasons.... The most trustworthy
historians of the Roman constitution assert that owing to these facts
they were called patres and their descendants patricians.” According to
Plutarch,[92] “Romulus, after forming the army, employed the rest of the
people as the citizen body (δῆμος); the multitude he called populus, and
appointed a hundred nobles to be councillors, whom he called patricians,
and their assembly the senate.”[93]
There can be no doubt, therefore, as to the opinion of the ancient
writers. They believed that from the beginning social distinctions
existed naturally within the populus Romanus, and that these distinctions
were made the basis of an official division of the people into nobles and
commons, patricii and plebs, by the government. This view is not only
reasonable in itself, but is supported, as we shall see, by analogies
drawn from many other states.
All the sources make the patriciate depend upon connection with the
senate, Dionysius alone showing some inconsistency on this point.[94]
Why the senators were called patres the ancients give various reasons.
Cicero[95] thinks patres a term of endearment; Sallust[96] believes that
the name was applied either because of age or because of the similarity
of their duty; Livy[97] sets it down as a title of honor; Festus[98]
thinks chiefly of their age and wisdom; Paulus,[99] his epitomator,
suggests that they were so called because they divided their lands
among the poorer class as fathers among children; Dionysius[100] gives
three possible reasons, (1) greater age, (2) possession of children,
(3) family reputation. The sources generally agree in representing the
patres as men who in age, honor, authority and duty stood toward the
rest of the citizens as a father toward his children, and in identifying
these social-political patres with the senators.[101] An examination
of the word itself will tend to confirm the ancient view. It seems to
have originally signified “protector,” “keeper,” “nourisher,”[102] hence
“owner,” “master.” Pater familias is nourisher, protector, and master
of a household.[103] In late Roman law the term continued to refer not
necessarily to actual parentage but rather to the legal position of the
head of a household;[104] in fact it is only in a distantly derived sense
that pater comes to signify the male parent. Ideas early attaching to the
word, accordingly, are those of power or authority and age. The senate,
as this word indicates, was originally made up of elderly men, senatores,
maiores natu.[105] It would be natural to call them patres because of
their authority over the community or of their age. As a designation of
rank, pater, excepting in jest, is always plural—an indication that the
authority and dignity did not attach to the individual noble but to the
senators collectively; they were collectively patres of the community,
not individually patres of children, clients or gentes.[106] But when in
time a limited number of families monopolized the senate, the term could
easily be extended to the entire privileged circle, meaning those with
hereditary right to authority over the rest of the community.[107] Though
in the sources the patres are generally senators the word is sometimes
synonymous with patricii.[108]
Regarding patricius the Romans reasoned with somewhat less care. They
were right in deriving it from pater, but they made it signify “descended
from,” whereas in fact it means “belonging to,”[109] and designates
accordingly the families of the political patres. Probably it was
formed after patres began to be applied to the entire governing class—a
development which would tend to throw the latter word back to its earlier
and narrower sense.
Had the investigation of these words on the part of the ancients rested
at this point, all would have been well; but an unfortunate guess as to
the derivation of patricii by some unknown antiquarian has brought into
the study of the social ranks unutterable confusion lasting down to the
present day. This conjecture derives patricius from patrem ciere, making
it signify “one who can cite a father.” The attempted etymology, clearly
a failure, would perhaps have been harmless, had it not connected itself
with the ambiguous word ingenuus. Cincius[110] says, “Those used to be
called patricians who are now called ingenui.” Livy has the two ideas in
mind when he represents a plebeian orator as inquiring, “Have ye never
heard it said that those first created patricians were not beings sent
down from heaven, but such as could cite their fathers, that is, nothing
more than ingenui? I can now cite my father—a consul—and my son will be
able to cite a grandfather.”[111] There should be no doubt as to the
meaning of these passages; the antiquarian who conjectured that patricius
was derived from patrem ciere, and therefore defined patricii as those
who could cite their fathers, meant merely those who had distinguished
fathers, and hence were of respectable birth. Ordinarily in extant Latin
literature ingenui are simply the freeborn; and in making Appius Claudius
Crassus in 368 include in the term the whole body of citizens Livy[112]
dates this meaning back to the period before the Licinian-Sextian laws.
Elsewhere are indications that in early times ingenui connoted rather
respectable birth, and so applied especially to the patricians.[113] The
quotations from Cincius and the attempted derivation of patricius from
patrem ciere, accordingly, are sufficiently explained without resorting
to the strange hypothesis, held by some, that in primitive Rome the
patricians were the only men of free birth.
In summarizing the ancient view as to the origin and nature of the
patriciate, it will be enough to say that the king chose from the
people men who were eminent for the experience of age, for ability and
reputation, to sit in his council, the senate; the men so distinguished
were called patres, whereas the adjective patricius applied as well
to their families—the patricii being those who could cite illustrious
fathers.[114] From this point of view the Roman nobility did not differ
from that of most other countries.
The plebs,[115] then, were the mass of common freemen, from whom the
nobility was differentiated in the way described above. From the
ancient point of view they existed from the beginning, prior even to the
patriciate itself.
It is equally true that in the opinion of the ancients the plebs were
prior to the clients. Cicero[116] records that Romulus distributed the
plebs in clientage among the chief men; Dionysius[117] adds that he gave
the plebeians liberty to choose their patrons from among the patricians.
Thus far their view is in complete accord with modern sociology,
which teaches that such class distinctions first arise through the
differentiation of freemen. Although aware of the fact that clientage
existed in other states which were presumably older than Rome,[118] her
historians doubtless felt that the institution could have been legalized
in their own country by recognition only on the part of the government.
They did not, however, work out a consistent theory of the relation
between this class and the plebeians. Certain passages[119] hint, though
they do not expressly assert, that at one epoch all the plebeians were
in clientage, whereas in their accounts of political struggles the
ancient writers uniformly array clients against plebeians almost from
the beginning of the state.[120] The latter view is historically better
founded.
There must have been various origins of clientage, with corresponding
gradations of privilege. The libertini were citizens with straitly
limited rights; other clients, certainly the greater part of the class,
not only followed their patron to war[121] and to the forum,[122] but
also testified and brought accusations in the courts[123] and voted
in the assemblies;[124] and when the plebeians gained the right to
hold offices the clients were admitted along with them to the same
privilege.[125] In his relation with the state, therefore, the ordinary
client did not differ essentially from the plebeian.
From the preceding examination of the social ranks it at once becomes
evident that the ancients made the populus comprise both patricians and
plebeians; in further proof of their view may be cited the following
juristic definition: “Plebs differs from populus in that by the word
populus all the citizens are meant, including even the patricians,
whereas plebs signifies the rest of the citizens, excepting the
patricians.”[126] Since the sources generally consider the patricians
the descendants of the hundred original senators,[127] they cannot
help regarding the populus as composed chiefly of plebeians. In common
speech the term, like our word people, often applies to the lower class
as distinguished from the higher, in which sense it is interchangeable
with plebs; often, too, it signifies the people in contrast with the
senate.[128] It is clear, then, as Mommsen has pointed out,[129] that
if populus signifies first the whole body of citizens and secondly the
commons as distinguished from the nobles, it could not possibly have as
a third equivalent the patricians as distinguished from the plebeians.
In certain formulae found in addresses, wills, prayers, and oracles,
populus is so joined with plebs (populus plebesque or the like) as to
suggest the possible meaning patricians.[130] The combination of the
two words with senatus,[131] however, reveals at once the overlapping
of the terms so joined. In these passages reference is to the modes by
which an individual may approach the state; he may address the consuls,
praetors, or plebeian tribunes, and in the same way the senate, populus,
or plebs.[132] Hence in these formulae, merely representing groups of
institutions through which the state is accustomed to act, the word
populus does not apply solely to the patricians, and the same may be said
of its use in all other connections. We may conclude, therefore, that the
Latin language gives no hint of an exclusively patrician populus.
Regarding the populus as made up of patricians, plebeians, and clients,
our sources necessarily ascribe the same social composition to its
divisions, the three old tribes and the thirty curiae.[133] With perfect
consistency they mention repeated enlargements of the populus and of the
tribes and curiae, through the admission of masses of aliens, most of
whom must have remained plebeian. In fact the sources uniformly represent
all the kings as freely admitting conquered aliens without exception to
the citizenship and to the tribes and the curiae, even compelling some
forcibly to enter this condition.[134]
Might the plebeians and clients belong in a restricted sense to the
populus and curiae, and yet remain so far inferior to the patricians as
to be excluded from the political meetings of the curiae—the comitia
curiata? There can be no uncertainty as to the answer to this question,
for the ancient writers agree that the comitia curiata included plebeians
and clients as well as patricians.[135] Not only did the lower classes
attend this assembly, but they also voted in it, and constituted the
majority.[136]
II. THE CONVENTIONAL MODERN VIEW
The passages cited above suffice to prove that the ancient writers
thought of the populus, and consequently of the comitia curiata, as
composed from the earliest times of patricians, clients, and plebeians.
Another question, far more difficult, is whether the ancients were right
in their view.
As none of the authorities on whom we directly depend for our knowledge
of Roman affairs lived earlier than the last century of the republic,
they could have had no first-hand acquaintance with primitive Roman
conditions, but must have drawn their information concerning the
remote past from earlier writers—the annalists—now lost. Niebuhr, who
in the opening years of the last century introduced the modern method
of investigating Roman history, was convinced that writers of the
late republic and of the empire, lacking historical perspective and
interpreting their sources in the false light of existing or recent
conditions, came to wrong conclusions in regard to the primitive Roman
state. He believed he could point to instances of such misunderstanding,
and he thought it within the power of a well-equipped modern historian to
eliminate much of the error so as to come near to the standpoint of the
earlier and more trustworthy annalists.[137]
The position of Niebuhr has in the main proved untenable. Notwithstanding
all the source-sifting of modern times, pursued most zealously by the
Germans, we are obliged to admit that it is rarely possible with any
fair degree of certainty to discover the view of an annalist on a given
subject excepting in the few cases in which the citation is by name.
We must also admit that though Cicero and the Augustan writers might
misinterpret Fabius Pictor in minor details, it is inconceivable that
they should fail to understand his presentation of so fundamental a
subject as the character of the original populus or the composition of
the earliest assembly. Present scholarship accordingly insists that in
such weighty matters there was no essential difference of view between
earlier and later writers.[138]
These considerations have simplified but not solved the problem. Scholars
now agree that no contemporary account of the regal period—ending 509 (?)
B.C.—ever existed; and even if it be conceded that the earliest Roman
annalist—Fabius Pictor, born about 250 B.C.—had access to traditional
or documentary[139] information reaching back to the close of that
period, no historian will admit such a possibility for the beginnings of
Rome. It follows then that for the origin and character of her earliest
institutions Cicero, Livy, and Dionysius, or their sources, have relied
wholly on inference from later conditions, in so far as they have not
resorted to outright invention. Though with their abundant material
they were in a far better position for making such deductions than we
are, they lacked the experience and the acute critical method of the
moderns.[140] Of the three writers above mentioned—our main sources for
the subject under discussion—Cicero was essentially an orator, Dionysius
a rhetorician, and Livy, though historian in name, was in spirit
rhetorical and dramatic rather than critical. Naturally therefore they or
their sources, who on the whole were equally uncritical, made mistakes
in the difficult work of drawing inferences as to the history and
institutions of the regal period. Such is the view of historians today.
It was formerly argued that Dionysius, a rhetorician and a Greek, failed
in spite of his twenty-two years of preparation at Rome to understand
the spirit and character of the Roman constitution and has therefore
been an especial fountain of error;[141] but it is now clear that though
in his treatment of early Rome he shows far greater amplitude than Livy
and is for that reason proportionally more liable to error in detail, he
follows good Roman sources for institutions, and is in this field, with
the reservation here mentioned, not essentially inferior to the extant
native writers.[142]
Considering the sources untrustworthy and following certain clues which
he believed they afforded to a right understanding of the annalists,
Niebuhr came to his theory as to the composition of the primitive
Roman state. Although he asserts that it was made up of “patrons and
clients,”[143] he does not rest satisfied with this view, but proceeds to
trace clientage to the following origins, as though in his opinion this
institution did not exist from the beginning: (1) some native Siculians
perhaps, who were conquered by Latin invaders; (2) strangers settling on
Roman territory and choosing a Roman as protector; (3) inhabitants of
communities which were obliged to take refuge under Roman protection;
(4) manumitted slaves.[144] Logically he goes back to a state made up
exclusively of patricians.
He sought evidence for this hypothesis in the scheme of tribal
organization of Rome. The primitive city was divided into three tribes,
thirty curiae and, as he believed, three hundred gentes. As no one could
be a citizen without membership in a gens,[145] and as the patricians
alone were active members of the gentes,[146] it must follow that the
patricians alone were citizens. It is doubtful whether he would have
proposed this hypothesis had it not been for the analogy of the Attic
tribal scheme. An imperfect quotation from the lost part of Aristotle’s
_Constitution of Athens_[147] seems to signify that the Athenian state
was once divided into four tribes (φυλαί), twelve phratries and three
hundred and sixty gentes (γένη). On this authority Niebuhr supposes that
the phratry was a group of gentes, and he assumes further that both
phratries and gentes were composed exclusively of eupatrids.[148] But the
suppositions (1) that there were three hundred and sixty gentes, (2) that
the phratry was a group of gentes, (3) that both phratries and gentes
contained only eupatrids are contradicted by well known facts. From the
earliest times the Greek tribes and phratries included commons as well as
nobles. This is true of the Homeric Greeks,[149] and a law of Draco[150]
proves that the early Attic phratry comprised both nobles and commons.
In historical times all citizens belonged to the phratries; whereas but
few were members of the gentes.[151] Most of the gentes were in fact
composed of the old landed nobility, though a few, like the Chalkidae and
the Eupyridae, were apparently industrial guilds, which had received the
privileges of the gentes. So far therefore from supporting Niebuhr in his
peculiar view of the Roman gentes and curiae, the Attic analogy militates
in every way against him. As his assumption that the curia was a group of
ten gentes has already been disproved,[152] it remains only to consider
whether the gens was an exclusively patrician institution. From the
circumstance that patricianism is not given as an element of Scaevola’s
definition, quoted by Cicero,[153] we may at once conclude that in their
time plebeians, too, were gentiles. This conclusion is supported by a
variety of evidence.
Several plebeian gentes are mentioned, including the Minucia and the
Octavia,[154] the Lutatia,[155] the Calpurnia,[156] the Domitia,[157]
the Fonteia,[158] the Aurelia,[159] and the Licinia.[160] Some gentes
comprised both patrician and plebeian families, as the Cassia,[161] the
Claudia,[162] the Cornelia,[163] the Manlia,[164] the Papiria,[165] the
Publilia or Poplilia,[166] the Aebutia,[167] and the Servilia.[168] Not
only do the sources refer to several plebeian gentes by name, but they
clearly imply in other ways the existence of such associations. Livy[169]
expresses the patrician sentiment that “it would seem an affront to the
gods for honors to be vulgarized and for the distinction between gentes
to be confused at auspicated comitia” (by the election of plebeians to
the consular tribunate). “The distinction between gentes” can only mean
the distinction between patrician and plebeian gentes—an interpretation
confirmed by a similar statement of Cicero[170] to Clodius, who had
passed by arrogation from a patrician to a plebeian gens: “You have
disturbed the sacra and contaminated the gentes, both the one you have
deserted and the one you have defiled” (by your admission into it). To
our other proofs we may add the consideration that the very expression
gentes patriciae[171] implies the existence of plebeian gentes. It is
natural then that Varro[172] should make gentilitas a condition of men
in general. In asserting that there were a thousand gentile names the
same authority[173] must have included those of plebeians, for scarcely a
hundred belonging to patricians could have been known to him. By no means
the weakest argument in favor of the view here presented is the fact that
the laws of the Twelve Tables concerning inheritance, tutelage,[174]
etc.—which apply not to the patricians alone but to the whole citizen
body—assume that every citizen in full possession of his civil rights
belonged to a gens.
A passage often interpreted against the existence of plebeian gentes
is Livy x. 8. 9: “Vos solos gentem habere.” In this case a plebeian
speaker says the patricians claim that they alone have gens (not
gentes). The context shows clearly, however, that gens does not here
denote an association but is used in the sense of illustrious birth or
pedigree,[175] as is sometimes our word family.[176] Wherever a nobility
exists it necessarily lays greater stress on descent than do the people,
and in all countries the nobles are in a far better position to keep up
family connections than are the commons. Naturally therefore at Rome we
hear more of patrician than of plebeian gentes. But in view of all the
facts mentioned above there should be no doubt as to the existence of the
latter. The result of this discussion is that neither in the composition
of the gens nor in its position in the community can support be found for
Niebuhr’s assumption of a patrician state.[177]
Other evidence for his hypothesis Niebuhr thinks he finds in a statement
of Labeo,[178] that the curiate assembly was convoked by a lictor,
the centuriate by a horn-blower; while Dionysius[179] says that the
patricians were summoned by name through a messenger, the people by
the blowing of a horn. Thus Niebuhr maintains that Labeo and Dionysius
agree unequivocally in designating the curiae as the assembly of the
patricians. But in fact these two sources refer to the customs of the
historical age, when the curiate assembly was ordinarily attended
by only three augurs and thirty lictors. Horn-blowing under these
circumstances would have been absurd. The summoning of the patricians
by their own name and that of their father, on the other hand, proves
them too few to compose a popular assembly. These citations therefore
are far from supporting his hypothesis. His last and greatest proof is
the identification of the lex de imperio, passed by the curiae, with the
patrum auctoritas. If these are merely two terms for the same act, the
curiae must have been made up of patres. But by establishing the fact
that the patrum auctoritas belonged to the senate or to its patrician
members, Willems[180] and Mommsen[181] have deprived Niebuhr’s hypothesis
of its main prop.
Niebuhr evidently believed that the curiae continued exclusively
patrician through the whole republican period.[182] This idea, however,
must be dismissed for the following reasons: (1) Our sources agree that
in the early republic the plebeians and clients continued to vote in
the curiate assembly.[183] (2) The plebeians were in the curiae in 208
B.C., when the first curio maximus was chosen from the plebs.[184] (3) In
the time of Cicero thirty plebeian[185] lictors represented the comitia
curiata, and gave the votes.[186] (4) Arrogations by plebeians took place
in this assembly; in the well-known case of Clodius it must be borne in
mind that it was a plebeian who arrogated him. (5) The extinction of the
patriciate did not involve the downfall of the comitia curiata.[187]
(6) The confirmation by the curiae (lex de imperio) of elections in the
centuriate assembly was conceived as a second vote of the community.[188]
(7) The resolutions of the comitia curiata are always thought of as
resolutions of the populus, which Latin literature nowhere restricts to
the patrician body. (8) In all ancient literature there is nowhere the
slightest hint of a change in the social composition of the curiae or
of the comitia curiata in the whole course of their history. What the
ancients believed to be true of either institution at any particular
period will hold therefore for its entire history.[189]
Of the arguments in favor of Niebuhr’s hypothesis either added by
Schwegler[190] or brought by him into greater prominence, one only
demands attention. He reasons that if the plebs were in the curiate
assembly, it would be impossible to explain the political advance made
by the institution of the comitia centuriata; and the constitutional
history of Rome would be reduced to an insoluble riddle. Here we have
to deal with a subjective argument—the rejection of sources because
they do not agree with a preconceived theory. Arguments of the kind,
however, which may be easily invented for the support or overthrow
of every imaginable proposition, carry little weight. Besides it is
easy to show by analogies from the history of other peoples that the
presence of the commons in the primitive assembly does not make the
constitutional history of Rome a real enigma. In the primitive German
assembly, for instance, were included all the warriors; and yet in the
more developed German states were monarchies and aristocracies which gave
the people little or no voice in the management of public affairs.[191]
The Homeric Greek assembly included all freemen, who, however, had
little to do with the government in that period, and still less under
the aristocracy which followed.[192] In like manner, although the
plebeians attended the comitia curiata and had a majority of votes in
this assembly, they could not thereby control the government, for they
absolutely lacked initiative.[193] The comitia centuriata, a timocratic
institution, elevated the rich and degraded the poor. Here as elsewhere
the poor lost by the substitution of aristocracy for kingship; but a
real constitutional advance was made in the gradations of privilege,
which were based on wealth and which reached like a ladder from the
humblest member of the proletarian century to the patrician knight in the
sex suffragia.[194] These gradations prepared the way for an ultimate
equalization of rights. We conclude, then, that the presence of the
commons in the primitive assembly is perfectly compatible with a rational
view of constitutional development.
With Schwegler, who grants however reluctantly that the commons were
received into the curiae before 208,[195] the theory enters upon its
present phase; for the great majority of writers since his time have
accepted his view, yet with varying opinions as to the date of the
change. Mommsen,[196] who more than any one else has made it clear that,
so far back as our sources reach, the populus comprised both patricians
and commons, nevertheless assumes that the latter were originally
outside the populus but were admitted no later than the beginning of the
republic.[197] In his reconstruction of the primitive state he supposes
that the citizens were all patres, in so far as they, and they alone,
could be fathers; or adjectively patricii, in so far as they, and they
alone, had fathers.[198] Added to the citizens and their slaves was a
class of persons termed clients, half way between freedom and slavery—a
class made up from various origins but chiefly by the conquest of
neighbors.[199] These clients belonged, as dependents of the gentes, to
the curiae, but had no vote in the assembly.[200] Later the plebs were
formed from the clients as the bond which united the latter with their
patrons relaxed.[201] The plebs, who were free citizens of inferior
rank, came into being at the moment when the patricio-plebeian comitia
centuriata acquired the right to express the will of the community.[202]
Although Mommsen knows well the weakness of the evidence offered by
earlier writers, he adopts the hypothesis of an original patrician state,
without attempting a systematic defence. Here and there in his works,
however, he mentions some fact or condition which he would like to have
considered proof. The following are the chief passages of this kind:
(1) The lack of right to the auspicia[203] and to the imperium[204] on
the part of the plebeians proves that the patriciate was the original
citizenship.
But we could as reasonably say, with reference to the auspices, that
the two Attic gentes which furnished the sacred exegetes contained the
only Athenian citizens.[205] The auspicia, as Soltau[206] has noticed,
belonged to the ius honorum, as did also the imperium; hence they were
both privileges of the nobility. In brief Mommsen’s reasoning would make
a governing nobility everywhere impossible.
(2) The cavalry were patrician; therefore the infantry must have
been.[207]
With the same kind of reasoning we could conclude that because in the
Homeric age of Greece chariots were used in war by nobles only, the
infantry must also have been exclusively noble; whereas we know that the
rank and file were common men.[208] That the Roman army before Servius
was similarly composed is supported not only by this and many other
analogies, but also by the unanimous testimony of the sources. As in
other primitive states the warriors belonged to the assembly and were the
citizens.
(3) Of the sixteen local tribes named after gentes it can be proved that
ten have the names of patrician gentes, and not one name is known to be
plebeian. This is evident proof that from the beginning the patriciate
was not nobility but citizenship.[209]
His premises prove no more than that at the time when these tribes were
instituted the patricians were influential enough to give their names to
ten, probably to all sixteen. In all the three cases mentioned, Mommsen
reasons that because the patricians alone enjoyed the honors, privileges,
and influence usually considered appropriate to a nobility, they must
therefore have constituted not the nobility simply but the whole citizen
body.
(4) He identifies patres with gentiles and assumes that the primitive
state was an aggregate of gentes, thus making the patres the only members
of the state.[210]
These are not proofs but unsupported assumptions. The only connection of
patres with gentes given in Latin literature is in the well-known phrases
patres maiorum and minorum gentium; and Cicero[211] makes it clear that
these patres were senators. The phrase means senators from, or belonging
to, the greater or lesser gentes. Furthermore it has been proved (1) that
the patricians were not the only gentiles,[212] (2) that the curia, and
hence the state, was not an aggregation of gentes.[213]
(5) We are informed, says Mommsen, (a) that the body of full Roman
citizens consisted originally of a hundred families, whose fathers,
the patres, regarded more or less concretely as the ancestors of the
individual gentes, composed the senate, and together with them their
descendants, the patricians, made up the citizen body; or expressed
in other words (b) patrician originally meant just what was afterward
included under the term ingenuus.[214]
For (a) Mommsen cites those passages by which it has been shown[215]
that the Romans looked upon the original hundred senators as the
fathers neither of the “citizen body” nor of the “full citizens,” but
of the nobility. His statement of the case is directly contradicted
by the authorities he quotes. As regards (b) it has been sufficiently
proved[216] that ingenuus when made equivalent to patricius most
naturally signifies not “of free birth,” but “of respectable, noble
birth.”
Most scholars have wisely avoided bringing the myth of the asylum[217]
into the argument. Pellegrino,[218] however, identifies the refugees
at that place with the entire plebeian body. As the asylum was not
an Italian but a Greek institution,[219] the story connected with it
is doubtless a myth. It seems to have been invented by the Greeks of
southern Italy, most probably in the fourth century B.C. At that time
they began to view with alarm the southward advance of the Romans, and
to disparage them accordingly by falsifications representing their
origin as obscure and disreputable.[220] Similar calumnies against other
peoples were concocted by their Greek enemies.[221] Notwithstanding
the fact that the story had not even a kernel of historical truth the
Romans accepted it with more or less modification[222] and used it to
some extent for partisan objects.[223] They could not oppose the plebs to
patricians as foreigners to natives, however, for (1) they supposed that
plebeians as well as patricians participated in the original settlement
of Rome, (2) they derived patrician as well as plebeian families from
foreign sources.[224] We are warranted in concluding that in adopting the
Greek myth of the asylum they looked upon it as a cause of increase in
the plebeian population without finding in it the origin of the plebeian
class.
To the theory of an exclusively patrician populus the following
objections may be summarily urged: (1) It is opposed by the unanimous
testimony of the ancient authorities. (2) It rests upon a wrong
explanation of the words patres, patricii, as designations of the nobles.
(3) It is further propped up by reasons so feeble as to testify at once
to its weakness, the more substantial basis having been overthrown
partly by Mommsen himself. (4) The number of patricians is too small for
the theory.[225] (5) It ignores the meaning of the word plebs, which
evidently signifies “the masses,” in contrast with the few nobles, and
hence could not apply to a class gradually formed by the liberation
of clients, or by the admission of foreigners. No one who holds the
theory has attempted to show what these liberated clients were called
when they were but few compared with the patricians—before they became
“the multitude.” (6) It is contradicted by everything we know of Rome’s
attitude towards aliens. So far back as our knowledge reaches, she was
extremely liberal in bestowing the citizenship, even forcing it upon some
communities. Only when she acquired the rule over a considerable part of
Italy did she begin to show illiberality in this respect. Down to 353 the
citizenship thus freely extended included the right to vote.[226] (7) It
assumes the existence of a community politically far advanced yet showing
no inequalities of rank among the freemen—a condition outside the range
of human experience. It aims to explain the origin of the social classes
on purely Roman ground, ignoring the fact that distinctions of rank
are far older than the city, and exist, at least in germ, in the most
primitive communities of which we have knowledge.[227]
III. _The Comparative-Sociological View_
As social classes belong to all society,[228] they cannot be explained
by the peculiar conditions of any one community. The only scientific
approach to this subject is through comparative study; the inferences of
the ancient historians relative to primitive Rome are not to be displaced
by purely subjective theories, but are to be tested by comparison with
conditions in other communities of equal or less cultural advancement.
Distinctions of rank depend ultimately upon physical, mental, and moral
inequalities,[229] which differentiate the population of a community
into leaders and followers.[230] The exhibition of physical strength
and skill on the part of young men and of knowledge and wisdom on the
part of the elders are often “the foundation of leadership and of
that useful subordination in mutual aid which depends on voluntary
deference.”[231] In an age in which men were largely under the control of
religion the possession of an oracle or skill in divination or prophecy
might contribute as much to the elevation of an individual above his
fellows.[232] Leadership, once obtained, could display and strengthen
itself in various ways. In primitive society the strong, brave,
intelligent man was especially qualified to take command in war. Success
brought the chief not only renown but a large share of the booty and in
later time acquired land. The same result might be obtained by other
means than by war;[233] but in any case wealth and influence inherited
through several generations made nobility.[234] Primarily grounded on
ability, wealth, and renown, this preëminence was often heightened by a
claim to divine lineage or other close connection with the gods.[235]
There was evidently a stage of development—before the association of
the nobles into a class—in which chieftains alone held preëminence.
This condition is common in primitive society, as among the American
Indians.[236] Also among the Germans, who had advanced somewhat beyond
this stage, each chief or lord appears to have been noble “less with
reference to other noblemen than with reference to the other free
tribesmen comprised in the same group with himself.”[237] From Brehon law
we infer that the Irish lords were individually heads of their several
groups of kinsmen or of vassals;[238] and in Wales the nobles were a
hierarchy of chieftains.[239] As soon as leadership became hereditary
there arose noble families, in which the younger members were often
sub-chieftains;[240] and finally through intermarriage among these
families, as well as through the discovery of common interests, the
nobles associated themselves into a class.
Among the ancient Germans,[241] the Greeks of the Homeric age,[242]
and in some early Italian states[243] certain families had become
noble, and others were on the way to nobility. For ancient Ireland the
entire process can be followed. A common freeman enters the service of
some chief, from whom he receives permission to use large portions of
the tribe land.[244] By pasturing cattle, he grows wealthy, becomes a
bo-aire (cow-nobleman) and secures a band of dependents. Supported by
these followers, he preys upon his neighbors and, if successful, becomes
in time a powerful noble.[245] After “a certain number of generations”
he can no longer be distinguished from the blooded nobility.[246] Here
is an instance of a common freeman’s becoming noble through service to
a chief. In like manner among the Saxons who had conquered England the
ceorl who “thrived so that he had fully five hides of land,” or the
merchant who had “fared twice over the wide sea by his own means,” became
a thane; “and if the thane thrived, so that he became an eorl, then was
he henceforth worthy of eorl-right.”[247] “The thanes were the immediate
companions of the king—his comitatus—and from their first appearance
in English history they took rank above the earlier nobility of Saxon
eorls, who were descended from ancient tribal chiefs. Thus the thanes as
a nobility of newly rich corresponded to the cow-noblemen of an earlier
time.”[248] In the way just described many rose from the lower ranks to
nobility. In fact, eminent authorities assert that the inferior nobles,
especially of the middle age, were more often of servile than of free
origin, as the common freemen were inclined to think it degrading to be
seen among the comites of a chief.[249]
It has now been sufficiently established that even in the tribal
condition people were differentiated into social ranks. We have traced
the beginning of nobility to leadership and have found, in both
ancient and mediaeval society, new noble families forming by the side
of the old. Social distinctions were well developed long before the
founding of cities. When a community, whether a tribe or a city, is far
enough advanced to begin the conquest of neighbors, “it has already
differentiated into royal, noble, free, and servile families.”[250] This
was true of Sparta. In her “the conquerors nevertheless, notwithstanding
great differences among themselves, remain sharply separated in social
function from the conquered.... The conquerors became a religious,
military, and political class, and the conquered an industrial
class.”[251] Even in the case of Sparta, however, which is perhaps our
best example of the exclusiveness of a ruling city, there is evidence
of mingling between the conquering Spartans and the conquered Laconians
before the former became exclusive.[252] In like manner there was much
mixing of the invading “Aryans” with the natives of India—the more
intelligent of the natives rising to the higher classes and the less
gifted of the invaders sinking to the lower—before the crystallization
of the castes.[253] We find the same mingling of conquerors and
conquered in varying degrees in ancient Ireland,[254] in England under
the Normans,[255] and throughout the Roman empire in the period of
Germanic settlements.[256] It becomes doubtful, therefore, whether a
nobility was ever formed purely by the superposition of one community
upon another. The effect of conquest was rather to accentuate existing
class distinctions, and by a partial substitution of strangers in place
of native nobles to stir up antagonism between the classes. Even where
the differences between the social ranks seem to be racial, it would
be hazardous to resort to the race theory in explanation; for such a
condition could be produced in the course of generations by different
modes of life, education, nurture, and marriage regulations of the nobles
and commons respectively.[257]
The study pursued thus far will enable us to understand how there came
to be social classes at Rome before the beginning of conquest. But for
a long time after the Romans began to annex territory we may seek in
vain for a distinction between conquerors and conquered, like that which
we find in Laconia. We are forbidden to identify the plebs with the
conquered and the patricians with the conquerors by many considerations
mentioned above—for instance, by tradition,[258] by the derivation
of several patrician gentes from various foreign states,[259] by the
fewness of the patricians,[260] and by the fact that the latter show
no differentiations of rank, such as we find among the conquering
Spartans; they were not a folk but a nobility pure and simple. We are
to regard Rome’s early annexations of territory and of populations
not as subjugations, but as incorporations on terms of equality. The
people incorporated were of the same great folk, the Latins, or of a
closely related folk, the Sabines. Accordingly they were not reduced
to subjection, but were admitted to citizenship, to the tribes and
the curiae, and their nobles were granted the patriciate.[261] Only
communities of alien speech, like the Etruscan, or distant Italian
communities like the Campanian, were ordinarily given the inferior
civitas sine suffragio; and this restricted citizenship does not appear
in history before the middle of the fourth century B.C.
The analogies offered in this chapter, by proving that the conditions
they illustrate are possible for early Rome, tend to confirm the
authority of the sources. By similar comparative study it would be
practicable to illustrate in detail and to corroborate the statements
of ancient writers as to the organization of the plebs, as well as
of the patricians, in tribes and curiae, the participation of the
clients and plebeians in war and politics, and the deterioration of the
free commons through the strengthening of the nobility—all of which
are rejected by eminent modern historians, who merely imagine them
incompatible with primitive conditions or with a rational theory of
constitutional development. The inquiry has been pursued far enough,
however, to indicate that from a comparative-sociological point of view
the conception of early Rome handed down to us by the ancients is sound
and consistent, and that the method of subjective reconstruction of
history introduced by Niebuhr and still extensively employed by scholars
is unscientific.
I. ROMAN SOCIETY: Niebuhr, B. G., _Römische Geschichte_,
i. 321 ff.; English, 158 ff.; Schwegler, A., _Römische
Geschichte_, I. bk. xiv; Wigger, J., _Verteidigung der
nieburschen Ansicht über den Ursprung der röm. Plebs_; Peter,
C., _Geschichte Roms_, i. 31-3; _Verfassungsgeschichte der
röm. Republik_; _Studien zur röm. Geschichte mit besonderer
Beziehung auf Th. Mommsen_; Ihne, W., _History of Rome_,
i. 109 ff.; _Early Rome_, ch. ix; _Asylum of Romulus_, in
_Classical Museum_, iii (1846). 190-3; _Forschungen auf dem
Gebiete der röm. Verfassungsgeschichte_ (also translated into
English by Heywood); Lange, L., _Röm. Alt._ i. 414 ff., and
see indices s. Patres, Plebs, etc.; Mommsen, Th., _History
of Rome_, bk. 1. chs. v, vi; _Röm. Forschungen_, i. 131-284;
_Röm. Staatsrecht_, iii. 127 ff., and see indices s. Patres,
Plebs, etc.; _Abriss d. röm. Staatsrechts_, 3 ff.; Herzog,
E., _Geschichte und System der röm. Staatsverfassung_, i.
32 ff.; Meyer, E., _Geschichte des Altertums_, ii. 515-7,
521 f.; v. 141-3; _Plebs_, in _Handiwörterb. d. Staatswiss._
vi. 98-106; Niese, B., _Grundriss der röm. Geschichte_, 36
f.; Ampère, J. J., _Histoire Romaine à Rome_, i. 440 ff.;
ii. 15 ff.; Zöller, M., _Latium und Rom_, 163; Ridgeway,
W., _Early Age of Greece_, i. 254 ff.; Oberziner, G.,
_Origine della plebe Romana_; Conway, R. S., _I due strati
di populazione Indo-Europea del Lazio e dell’Italia antica_,
in _Rivista di storia antica_, vii (1903). 422-4; Hüllmann,
K. D., _Ursprünge der röm. Verfassung durch Vergleichungen
erläutert_; Mispoulet, J. B., _Institutions politiques des
Romains_, i. 14 ff.; Greenidge, A. H. J., _Roman Public Life_,
4 ff.; Abbott, F. F., _Roman Political Institutions_, 6 ff.;
Naudet, M., _De la noblesse et des récompenses d’honneur
chez les Romains_; Hoffmann, _Patricische und plebeiische
Curien_; Pelham, H., _Roman Curiae_, in (English) _Journal
of Philology_, ix (1880). 266-79; Soltau, W., _Altröm.
Volksversamml._ 58 ff., 625 ff.; Bernhöft, F., _Staat und Recht
der röm. Königsz._ 145 f.; Genz, H., _Das patricische Rom_;
Clason, D. O., _Kritische Erörterungen über den röm. Staat_;
Fustel de Coulanges, _Ancient City_, bk. iv; Pellegrino, D.,
_Andeutungen über den ursprünglichen Religionsunterschied
der röm. Patricier und Plebeier_; Hennebert, A., _Histoire
de la lutte entre les patriciens et les plébeiens à Rome_;
Bloch, L., _Die ständischen und sozialen Kämpfe in der röm.
Republik_; Wallinder, _De statu plebeiorum romanorum ante
primam in montem sacrum secessionem quaestiones_; Neumann,
K. J., _Grundherrschaft der röm. Republik, Bauernbefreiung
und Entstehung der servianischen Verfassung_; Holzapfel, L.,
_Die drei ältesten römischen Tribus_, in _Beiträge zur alten
Geschichte_, i (1902). 228-55; Heydenreich, E., _Livius und die
röm. Plebs_, in _Samml. gemeinverständlicher wissenschaftlicher
Vorträge_, xvii (1882). 581-628; Christensen, H., _Die
ursprüngliche Bedeutung der Patres_, in _Hermes_, ix (1875).
196-216; Staaf, E., _De origine gentium patriciarum commentatio
academica_; Terpstra, D., _Quaestiones literariae de populo_,
etc., ch. i; Köhm, J., _Altlateinische Forschungen_, ch. i;
Bröcker, L. O., _Untersuchungen über die Glaubwürdigkeit der
altröm. Verfassungsgeschichte_, 3 ff.; Botsford, G. W., _Social
Composition of the Primitive Roman Populus_, in _Political
Science Quarterly_, xxi (1906). 498-526 (the present chapter
is in the main a reproduction of this article); _Some Problems
connected with the Roman Gens_, ibid, xxii (1907). 663-92.
II. COMPARATIVE VIEW: Achelis, Th., _Moderne Völkerkunde,
deren Entwickelung und Aufgaben_, (Stuttgart, 1896) 406 ff.;
Ammon, O., _Die Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre natürlichen
Grundlagen_, (Jena, 1895) Teil i; D’Arbois de Jubainville,
_La civilisation des Celtes et celle de l’épopée Homerique_,
(Paris, 1899) ch. ii; Arnd, K., _Die materiellen Grundlagen und
sittlichen Forderungen der europäischen Kultur_, (Stuttgart,
1835) 444 f.; Barth, P., _Die Philosophie der Geschichte
als Sociologie_, i. (Leipzig, 1897) 382; Bastion, A., _Der
Mensch in der Geschichte_, iii. (Leipzig, 1860) 323-38;
_Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde_, ii. (Berlin, 1888)
138-54; _Rechtsverhältnisse bei verschiedenen Völkern der
Erde_, (Berlin, 1872) 8 ff.; Bluntschli, J. K., _Theory of
the State_, (2d ed. from the 6th German: Oxford 1892) bk.
II. chs. vi-xiii; Bordeau, L., _Le problème de la vie: Essai
de sociologie générale_, (Paris, 1901) 95; Brunner, H.,
_Grundzüge der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte_, i (Leipzig, 1901);
Bücher, C., _Industrial Evolution_, ch. ix; Buchholz, E.,
_Homerische Realien_, II. bk. i (Leipzig, 1881); Caspari, O.,
_Die Urgeschichte der Menschheit_, I. bk. ii. ch. 3 (Leipzig,
1877); Cherbuliez, A. E., _Simples notions de l’ordre social
à l’usage de tout le monde_, (Paris, 1881) ch. vi; Combes de
Lestrade, _Éléments de sociologie_, (Paris, 1896) bk. vi;
Cooley, C. H., _Human Nature and the Social Order_, (New York,
1902) ch. ix (analysis of leadership); Craig, J., _Elements
of Political Science_, i. (Edinburgh, 1814) 183-95; Duchesne,
L., _La conception du droit et les idées nouvelles_, (Paris,
1902) 36; Demolins, E., _Comment la route crée le type social_,
i (Paris); Farrand, L. F., _Basis of American History_, (New
York, 1904) see index s. Social organization; Featherman, A.,
_Social History of the Races of Mankind_, ii. (London, 1888)
see indices s. Classes; _Thoughts and Reflections on Modern
Society_, (London, 1894) 291-6; Frazer, J. G., _Lectures on
the Early History of the Kingship_ (New York, 1905); Freeman,
E. A., _History of the Norman Conquest of England_, iv (New
York, 1873); Frohschammer, J., _Ueber die Organisation und
Cultur der Menschlichen Gesellschaft_, (Munich, 1885) 84
f.; Funck-Brentano, Th., _Civilisation et ses lois, morale
sociale_, (Paris, 1876) chs. v-viii; Fustel de Coulanges,
_Ancient City_, bk. iv; _De l’inégalité du wergeld dans les
lois Franques_, in _Revue historique_, ii. (1876) 460-89;
Giddings, F. H., _Principles of Sociology_, (New York, 1896)
bk. III. chs. iii, iv; Ginnell, L., _Brehon Laws, a Legal
Handbook_, (London, 1894) chs. iv, v; Grave, J., _L’individu
et la société_, (3d ed. Paris, 1897) ch. ii; Gumplowicz, L.,
_Rassenkampf_ (Innsbruck, 1883); Harris, G., _Civilization
considered as a Science_, (new ed. New York, 1873) ch. vii;
Hellwald, Fr. von, _Culturgeschichte in ihrer natürlichen
Entwickelung bis zur Gegenwart_, 2 vols. (Augsburg, 1876);
Hirt, H., _Indogermanen_, 2 vols. (1905, 1907); Hittell, J. S.,
_History of the Mental Growth of Mankind in Ancient Times_,
(New York, 1893) i. 228 f.; ii. 37, 72; Hodgkin, _Italy and
her Invaders_, (2d ed. Oxford, 1892, 1896) ii, iii; Jenks,
E., _History of Politics_ (London, 1900); Kaufmann, G., _Die
Germanen der Urzeit_ (Leipzig, 1880); Krauss, F. S., _Sitte
und Brauch der Südslaven_ (Vienna, 1885); Lepelletier de la
Sarthe, _Du système social, ses applications pratiques à
l’individu, à la famille, à la société_, (Paris, 1855) i.
329 ff.; Letourneau, Ch., _Sociology based on Ethnography_,
(new ed. London, 1893) chs. vi-viii; Maine, H. S., _Lectures
on the Early History of Institutions_, (London, 1875) ch. v;
Mismer, Ch., _Principes sociologiques_, (2d ed. Paris, 1898)
63 ff.; Müller-Deecke, _Die Etrusker_, 2. vols. (Stuttgart,
1877); Rhys, J. and Brynmor-Jones, _The Welsh People_
(New York, 1900); Ridgeway, W., _Early Age of Greece_, i
(Cambridge, 1901); Ross, E. A., _Social Control_ (New York,
1901); Rossbach, J. J., _Geschichte der Gesellschaft_, 3
vols. (1868); Schrader, O., _Reallexikon der indogermanischen
Altertumskunde_, (Strassburg, 1901) 802-19; Schröder, R.,
_Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte_ (4th ed. Leipzig,
1902); Schurtz, H., _Urgeschichte der Kultur_, (Leipzig, 1900)
ch. ii; Seebohm, F., _Tribal System in Wales_ (New York, 1895);
_Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law_ (New York, 1902); Seeck,
O., _Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt_, I. (2d
ed. Berlin, 1897) bk. II. chs. i, iv; Seymour, _Life in the
Homeric Age_, (New York, 1907) 106 f; Skeat and Blagden, _Pagan
Races of the Malay Peninsula_, i (New York, 1906) 494-520;
Spencer, H., _Principles of Sociology_, II. (New York, 1883)
chs. iv-viii; Tarde, G., _Laws of Imitation_, trans. from
the French, (New York, 1903) 233 ff.; Traill, H. D., _Social
England_, i (New York, 1901); Tribhovandas, _Hindu Castes_,
in _Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay_, v
(1899-1901). 74-91; Vinogradoff, P., _Growth of the Manor_ (New
York, 1905); Waitz, Th., _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, ii.
(Leipzig, 1860) 126-67; iii. (1862) 119-28; v. (1870) 112 ff.
CHAPTER III
THE THIRTY-FIVE TRIBES
That among the Romans the conception of property first attached to
movable objects is attested by the words “pecunia” and “mancipatio.”[262]
There was probably a period during which the citizens cultivated the
lots of arable land assigned them by the state without regarding
these holdings as property either public or private. In view of the
well-established fact that the gens was a relatively late institution, we
should for this remote period exclude the idea of gentile tenure.[263]
The land was distributed among the families according to tribes and
curiae; and when the idea of ownership extended to the soil, it took the
form of family ownership of the ager privatus and state ownership of the
public domain.[264]
The condition of tenure anterior to the conception of property in
land left little trace of itself in the language and institutions and
absolutely none in tradition. The sources declare that family ownership
existed in Rome from her foundation as well as in her earliest colonies—a
view confirmed by the comparative study of language.[265] Each family,
they assume, held two iugera—the heredium[266]—or we may more correctly
say, at least two iugera.[267] This small lot has generally been
explained[268] as the private landed property of the individual, in
contrast with the public land and with the common land of the gens, and
thus it is taken as evidence of a condition prior to the extension of
private ownership to the arable fields. Should we grant this to be the
true explanation, we might still assume that public and gentile tenure
had developed into private ownership of arable land long before Servius,
or that Servius himself converted the fields into private holdings. For
the second alternative we could find apparent support in the sources,
which have much to say of the distribution of land among the citizens by
Servius.[269] For the continued absence of private ownership after the
Servian reforms not even the shadow of an authority can be found.
But the explanation of heredium given above is by no means necessary; in
fact the sources regard it not as the only private land, but rather as
the smallest share allotted to any citizen, the rich and noble possessing
more.[270] While accordingly the wealthy man owned many iugera, the
poor man, limited to his heredium, was obliged to earn part of his
living by labor as a tenant or as a wage-earner in the field of his rich
neighbor;[271] and in the early colonies the bina iugera were granted
on the same aristocratic principle. If this is the true explanation of
heredium, the strongest argument in support of the theory of public
ownership at Rome in the late regal period is taken away; we must either
abandon the theory or relegate it to a time far anterior to the Servian
reforms. Mommsen’s assumption[272] that the sixteen oldest rural tribes
were instituted some time after the city tribes by the division of
gentile lands is untenable on other grounds. The gens which gave its
name to the tribe could not have owned all the land in the tribe; for in
that case all but the sixteen gentes would have been landless. Again,
assuming, as he does, that all the land belonged to the gentes, which
he supposes to have been exclusively patrician, we should be forced to
conclude that the division left the plebeians landless. And further, if
we bear in mind that the gens developed from the family, we must also
believe that the undivided gentile land was once a family estate, which
according to Roman usage had to be registered in some tribe, even if the
land of the gens was not so registered. Mommsen’s theory proves therefore
not only to be unsupported by the sources but actually unthinkable. In
conclusion we may safely say that though some land remained public, and
though the gens after it had come into existence owned some common land,
individual, or at most family,[273] ownership was in full force in the
earliest times of which we have knowledge.
The clearest and most detailed account of the origin of the Servian
tribes is given by Dionysius iv. 14. 1 f.: “When Tullius had surrounded
the seven hills with one wall, he divided the city into four parts, and
giving to the parts the names of the hills—to one Palatina, to another
Suburana, to the third Collina, and to the fourth Esquilina—he made the
city to consist of four tribes, whereas up to that time it had comprised
but three.... And he ordained that the men who lived in each of the four
parts should not change their abode or give in their census elsewhere.
The enlistment of soldiers also and the collection of taxes, which they
were to pay individually to the treasury for military and other purposes,
were distributed no longer among the three gentile tribes but among the
four local tribes instituted by him.... [15. 1:] And the whole country
he divided, as Fabius says,[274] into twenty-six parts, also called
tribes, adding to them the four city tribes; but Venonius is authority
for thirty-one rural tribes, which with those of the city would complete
the thirty-five of our own time. Cato, however, who is more trustworthy
than either of these two, says that all the tribes in the time of Tullius
amounted to thirty, though he does not separate the number of parts”
(into urban and rural).
A great variety of opinion has arisen regarding the original number
of the Servian tribes. Niebuhr[275] believed that Servius created in
all thirty, afterward reduced by unfortunate war with the Etruscans to
twenty. This view found supporters but was refuted by Huschke.[276] Those
who rejected it generally agreed that Servius divided the city into four
tribes and the country into districts, regiones, pagi.[277] Mommsen[278]
gave a new phase to the theory of the subject by assuming that the four
so-called city tribes, which all the sources agree in ascribing to
Servius,[279] included the country as well as the city. According to
this hypothesis Alba[280] and Ostia,[281] for instance, belonged to the
Palatine tribe. His opinion has found wide acceptance.[282] Afterward
changing his mind, he asserted that the four urban tribes were confined
within the pomerium—a view which now seems to be established beyond
doubt.[283] With this final position of Mommsen the creation of theories
as to the number and limitations of the Servian tribes has not been
exhausted; for against the view that Servius instituted only the four
urban tribes may be placed that of Pais,[284] who assigns their origin to
the censors of the year 304. The theory of Pais implies that the sixteen
rural tribes which bore gentile names were far older than the four urban
tribes.
Light will be thrown on this obscure subject by an inquiry into the
relation of the sources to one another. It seems certain that Fabius
derived his information concerning the tribes and the entire centuriate
organization from the “discriptio centuriarum”—a document in the censors’
office. Though ascribed to Servius Tullius as author,[285] it set forth
the centuriate system as it existed in reality before the reform—that
is in the time of the first war with Carthage.[286] It was this late
form of the centuriate organization which Fabius had in mind. He must
have been prevented, however, from ascribing to Servius the institution
of all the thirty-three tribes then existing, by the recollection that
two tribes were added as recently as 299 from territory too far from
Rome to have formed a part of her domain under Servius; and perhaps
the curiate organization led him to favor the number thirty. He made
Servius the author of thirty tribes, accordingly, in spite of the fact
that this number was not reached till 318. His error is not more absurd
than the ascription to Servius of the whole centuriate organization as
it stood at the opening of the First Punic War, or the assumption that
in the first Servian census were enrolled eighty thousand men fit for
military service.[287] Cato, who also states the original number as
thirty, without separating them into rural and urban,[288] may have been
influenced by Fabius, though it is likely that he drew from the same
source. Vennonius in making Servius the author of all thirty-five tribes
but slightly exceeds the absurdity of earlier writers.[289] Evidently
Fabius and Cato were the sources for all future annalists. While
depending on them, Varro seems to have noticed the error of ascribing
twenty-six rural tribes to Servius, as there were but seventeen of this
class before 387. To avoid the difficulty and at the same time to retain
the Fabian number, he supposed that the country districts of Servius were
not yet tribes but the regiones from which the tribes were afterward
formed[290]—a superficial explanation in the true Varronian style.[291]
Following Varro, however, later authorities generally speak of the four
urban tribes of Servius without mentioning those of the country.[292] So
Dionysius, after referring to the four city tribes, proceeds to describe
their character and functions, as though these were all the tribes then
existing.[293] Thus far he depends upon Varro. Fortunately, however,
he gained from Fabius the information that there were also twenty-six
rural tribes, his description of which[294] is slightly troubled by the
Varronian notion that these country districts were not so much tribes as
regiones, πάγοι, but which served all the purposes of tribes including
the taking of the census.[295]
The various contradictory statements of the ancients regarding the
original number of Servian tribes can now be appreciated at their
respective values. In the course of the discussion it has become evident,
too, that Fabius and Cato, the sources of later annalists, had no tenable
ground for their assumption of thirty original tribes. Had they examined
the records, perhaps the succeeding parts of their own chronicles, they
would have found that before 387 there could have been only twenty-one
tribes in all.[296] A less certain indication of the admission of
one or possibly two tribes still earlier in the republic may have
existed;[297] but here we reach the extreme limit of their knowledge.
Any investigation of the number in the regal period, whether by the
ancients or by the moderns, must rest not upon contemporary records but
upon inference pure and simple. We may inquire, accordingly, whether
the view of Mommsen[298] and Meyer[299] that the four city tribes were
created first and existed for a time before the institution of the rural
tribes, having no trustworthy foundation in the sources, can be deduced
from our knowledge of the general conditions of the time. We must by all
means avoid the supposition of Mommsen[300] that in the time of Servius
there was no private property in land outside of the city.[301] If then
we bear in mind two points which Mommsen has himself established, (1)
that the local tribe was an aggregate of private estates,[302] (2) that
the four urban tribes of Servius were limited to the city,[303] we must
conclude that in the time of Servius the country estates were registered
in rural tribes—in other words that Servius instituted rural as well
as urban tribes.[304] The view of Meyer that all the citizens lived
in the city and the dependents in the country[305]—which would afford
a ground for assuming the urban tribes to have been earlier than the
rural—has no basis either in institutions or in tradition. If originally
the country was all-important,[306] and if at the dawn of history we
find the country and city politically equal, as is actually the case,
we have no motive for the insertion of an intermediate stage in which
the city was all-important. There was indeed a tendency toward the
concentration of political power within the city, but it did not advance
beyond the equalization of city and country.[307] To maintain Meyer’s
view we should be obliged to complicate the early history of Rome with
two revolutions—one by which the city gained supremacy over the country,
and the other in which the supremacy was lost. It is mainly to defend the
early history of the comitia, and of the constitution in general, against
this complication that the present discussion of the early land tenure
and of the origin of the Servian tribes is offered.
The original number of tribes, as has been stated, is unknown. It was
increased by the acquisition of territory. Possibly the annalists found
an obscure trace of the admission of the sixteenth rural tribe—the
Claudia—in 504. To that year Livy assigns the coming of Attius Clausus
with his host of clients, who were formed into the Claudian tribe.[308]
Wissowa[309] suggests that the immigration of the Claudian gens, the date
of which did not appear in the original tradition,[310] was arbitrarily
assigned to the year in which was recorded the admission of the tribe.
This conjecture is supported by the situation of the Claudia, which would
place it among the latest of the twenty.
With more confidence we may assign the admission of the seventeenth rural
tribe—the twenty-first in the entire list—to 495.[311] It must have been
the Clustumina.[312] We are certain that there were only twenty-one
till 387, when four new tribes were formed, bringing the number up to
twenty-five.[313] The twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh were admitted in
358,[314] the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth in 332,[315] the thirtieth
and thirty-first in 318,[316] the thirty-second and thirty-third in
300[317], the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth in 241.[318] To the year
90 that number is known to have remained unchanged, and the evidence of
a temporary increase during the Social War is obscure. On this point
Appian[319] states that “the Romans did not enroll the newly admitted
citizens in the existing thirty-five tribes for fear that, being more
numerous, they might outvote the old citizens in the comitia; but by
dividing them into ten parts (?) they made new tribes, in which the new
citizens voted last.” This view of an increase in number is confirmed by
a statement of Sisenna[320] as to the creation of two new tribes at about
that time. Velleius[321] however informs us that the new citizens were
enrolled in eight tribes. In the object of the arrangement he agrees with
Appian. Next he mentions the promise of Cinna to enroll the Italians in
all the tribes. From the connection we should naturally infer that in
the opinion of Velleius the new citizens were enrolled before Cinna in
eight old tribes; and yet it is difficult to understand how the assembly
could be persuaded to visit any group of rural tribes with this disgrace
and political disability.[322] As the authority of Sisenna, if not that
of Appian, compels us to accept the fact of new tribes, it is better to
interpret Velleius in that light.[323] We may suppose then that the
eight tribes which he mentions were provided for by the Julian law of 90;
and we must accept the statement of Sisenna that in 89 the Calpurnian
law “ex senati consulto” created two other new tribes, in which were to
be enrolled the citizens admitted under this law. Thus we could account
for the ten (?) new tribes mentioned by Appian. As regards the Lucanians
and the Samnites, who held out obstinately against Rome, the same
historian[324] states that they were respectively enrolled in tribes, as
in the former instances. He does not inform us, however, that for this
purpose other new tribes were instituted. At all events there seems to be
no essential disagreement among our sources; and we have no reasonable
ground for doubting an increase, though we may remain uncertain as to the
number added.[325]
The arrangement was only temporary. In 88 Sulpicius, tribune of the
plebs, carried a law containing a provision for the distribution of the
new citizens and the libertini among all the thirty-five tribes.[326]
His plebiscite was annulled by the senate on the ground that it had
been passed by violence;[327] but the provisions contained in it were
afterward legalized by a senatus consultum, and it was finally carried
into effect by Cinna as consul in 84.[328] This settlement of the
question was approved by Sulla[329] for all the Italians excepting
the Marsians and the Paelignians, who were enrolled in one tribe—the
Sergia.[330]
The nature of the tribes may be inferred from their object. The
intention of the organizer was to introduce the Greek military system,
comprising heavy and light infantry, in which the kind of service to be
performed depended upon financial ability to provide equipments.[331]
Seeing that a classification of citizens with respect to property was
necessary for this purpose, Servius instituted the tribes as a basis
for the census. That they contained the ager privatus only is indicated
by the exclusion from them of the Capitoline and Aventine hills.[332]
Their local character is established by the concurrent testimony of
ancient writers.[333] Yet even in the beginning they could but roughly
be described as districts, for they excluded all public land and all
waters and waste places claimed neither by individuals nor by the
government. They retained the approximate character of districts so long
only as the territory of annexed communities continued to be formed
into new tribes. The process came to an end in 241; and it was as early
at least as this date that the Roman colonies, not originally in the
tribes, were incorporated in them.[334] Thereafter the annexation of
new territory tended more and more to render the tribes geographically
indeterminate.[335] The process was far advanced by the admission (90-84)
of the Latins and Italians with their lands to the existing tribes,[336]
which were further enlarged in the imperial period by the incorporation
of provincial communities.[337] As consisting of lands, though no longer
necessarily adjacent, they were still considered local.[338]
The tribe was also a group of persons; in fact the word applies far more
frequently to persons than to territory.[339] During the early republic
a considerable degree of harmony was maintained between the two aspects
of the institution (1) possibly by a restriction on the transfer of
residence,[340] (2) by the change in membership from tribe to tribe,
through the censors, on the basis of a transfer of domicile, (3) by the
assignment of new citizens to the tribe in or near which they had their
homes, (4) by the creation of new tribes for new citizens who did not
live in or near the existing tribes. This harmony experienced its first
serious disturbance through the enrolment of the landless, irrespective
of domicile, in the urban tribes in 304,[341] but continued to such
a degree that a hundred years later the rural voters generally still
resided in their own tribes.[342] In the last century of the republic
the personal tribe, emancipated from the local, depended solely on
inheritance and the will of the censors.[343]
The original composition of the personal tribe is determined by its
purely military object. It comprised accordingly those only who were
liable to service in war. From the early Roman point of view those
citizens were qualified who found their livelihood in agriculture.[344]
Not all landowners were enrolled in the tribes; for Latin residents,[345]
freedmen,[346] widows and orphans,[347] all of whom might possess land,
lacked membership. Those proprietors, too, were excluded whom the
censors assigned to the aerarii as a punishment. Tribesmen were all the
other landowners—adsidui[348] et locupletes[349]—together with the male
descendants of military age under their potestas.[350]
Another object of the tribes, referred to Servius by our sources,
was the collection of taxes.[351] We know that they afterward served
this purpose; and the ancient writers, who could have had no direct
knowledge of the intentions of Servius but who assigned to him without
hesitation all the later developments of his organization, were in
this case especially misled by their false derivation of tributum from
tribus or _vice versa_.[352] A brief study of the facts in the case will
prove their inference to be wrong. The most obvious consideration is
that had Servius intended the tribes for the levy of taxes as well as
for military purposes, he would have included all who were subject to
taxation as well as all who were liable to service in the army, whereas
in fact he admitted those only who were to serve. It is to be noted
that primitive Rome imposed no regular direct taxes on the citizens in
general. Every man equipped himself for war even after the introduction
of the phalanx;[353] doubtless at first the knights provided their
own horses;[354] and in short campaigns the soldiers carried their
provisions from their own farms.[355] Fortifications and public buildings
were erected by forced task-work. The king supported himself partly by
gifts from his subjects and partly from the public property, including
land.[356] Other early sources of revenue were tolls levied for the
use of harbors, boundaries, temples, bridges, roads, sewers, and salt
works.[357] In time the idea arose, too, that the person who did not
perform military service should help with his property in the defence of
the country. The estates of widows and orphans were accordingly taxed
to support the horses of the knights.[358] Those men, also, who were
exempt from service because they possessed no land[359] and yet had other
property were required to pay on it a regular tax. From this connection
with the public treasury (aerarium) they were termed aerarii. This class
comprised shopkeepers and merchants. Sometimes the censors assigned to
it as a punishment men who owned land. The fact that such persons were
at the same time removed from their tribes is sufficient proof that the
aerarii were originally outside these associations.[360] The cives sine
suffragio, or Caerites, after this class had come into existence in 353,
were like the aerarii in (1) that they did not belong to the tribes, (2)
that they paid a regular tax, (3) that men were placed on their list as
a punishment. They may accordingly be regarded as a special class of
aerarii, enrolled as they were in a distinct list.[361] Whereas the
cives sine suffragio either wholly lacked the franchise, as the phrase
implies, or at most had but the right of the Latins,[362] the other
aerarii must have voted in the proletarian century.[363]
The ordinary taxes sufficed for the usual light expenses; but in case of
especial need an extraordinary tax was imposed upon the citizens. It was
called tributum from tribuere, “to apportion,” because it was distributed
among the citizens in proportion to their ratable property.[364] We hear
of such a tax levied for ransoming the city from the Gauls[365] and
another for the building of a wall;[366] but the most common use was for
the payment of soldiers, hence the tributum was thought of primarily as
a war tax.[367] For this reason tributum came to be correlative with
stipendium.[368] It was not often imposed before the introduction of pay
in 406.[369] Even then it was not levied every year; it was sometimes
refunded when the condition of the treasury permitted; and it fell into
disuse after 167.[370] As it was imposed on those only who were liable
to military duty,[371] the tribe lists were followed in its collection,
and in this sense we may say that it was collected tributim.[372] The
work was done by state functionaries, as the tribe, so far as we know,
had neither fiscal officers[373] nor a treasury; and possessing no
property, it could not be held financially responsible.
An epoch in the history of the tribes was made in 312 by Appius Claudius
Caecus the censor, who enrolled the landless citizens, proletarians
as well as aerarii, in the existing thirty-three tribes without
discrimination.[374] Cives sine suffragio were alone excepted.[375]
By giving the landless the upper hand in the assemblies this measure
roused the animosity of the proprietors, and thus endangered the peace
of the state. In order to soothe the excited feelings of the better
class, Q. Fabius Rullianus, censor in 304, supported by his colleague
Decius, removed the landless from the rural tribes; but not to deprive
them wholly of tribal privileges, he registered them in the four urban
tribes. Hence his measure is spoken of as a compromise. Thereafter the
landholding and hence more respectable citizens were preferably enrolled
in the rural tribes,[376] whereas the landless were confined to those of
the city.[377] It was a permanent gain that henceforth tribal membership
was a test of perfect citizenship. The censors still had the power to
transfer a man from one tribe to another, for instance, from a rural to
an urban tribe; but they could not exclude him wholly from the tribes,
for that would be tantamount to depriving him of the citizenship.[378]
There were still aerarii; individuals and sometimes large groups of
citizens were still assigned as a punishment to this class, which,
however, was henceforth included in the tribes of the city.[379]
Although the ordinary urban tribesmen were usually exempt from military
duty, the aerarii were required to serve, at times under especially
hard conditions,[380] and were not disqualified for office.[381] In
registering them in the tribes Claudius made them, like the landowners,
liable to military service and to the tributum according to their means.
To effect this object he necessarily assessed their personal property on
a money valuation; and in order to treat all tribesmen alike, he must
have changed the terms of valuation of the landholders’ estates from
iugera to money.[382]
Niebuhr, B. G., _Römische Geschichte_, i. 422-50, Eng. 200-12;
Schwegler, _Römische Geschichte_, I. bk. xvii; Huschke, Ph.
E., _Verfassung des Königs Servius Tullius_, ch. iii; Ihne,
W., _History of Rome_, i. 62, 114; Nissen, H., _Templum_,
144 ff.; _Italische Landeskunde_, ii. 503 f.; Beloch, J.,
_Italischer Bund unter Roms Hegemonie_, ch. ii; Soltau, W.,
_Altröm. Volksversammlungen_, 375-548; Meyer, E., _Ursprung
des Tribunats und die Gemeinde der vier Tribus_, in _Hermes_,
xxx (1895). 1-24; controverted by Sp. Vassis, in _Athena_,
ix (1897). 470-2; Neumann, K. J., _Grundherrschaft der röm.
Republik_; Siebert, W., _Ueber Appius Claudius Caecus_;
Mommsen, Th., _History of Rome_, bk. I. ch. vi; _Röm.
Tribus_; _Röm. Staatsrecht_, iii. 161-98; _Abriss des röm.
Staatsrechts_, 28-36; Marquardt, J., _Röm. Staatsv._ ii.
149-80; Willems, P., _Droit public Romain_, 40 ff., 98 ff.;
Mispoulet, J. B., _Institutions politiques des Romains_, i.
37-42; _Études d’institutions Romaines_, 3-48; Lange, L., _Röm.
Altertümer_, i. 501-22, and see index s. Tribus; Madvig, J. N.,
_Verfassung und Verwaltung des röm. Staates_, i. 100-8; Herzog,
E., _Geschichte und System der röm. Staatsverfassung_, i. 39,
101 ff., 1016-31; Grotefend, C. L., _Imperium romanum tributim
descriptum_; Kubitschek, J. W., _De romanorum tribuum origine
ac propogatione_; _Imperium romanum tributim discriptum_;
Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ i. 674-6: Aerarius (Kubitschek);
682-4: Aes equestre (idem); 780-93: Ager (idem); iii. 1281-3:
Caere (Hülsen); 2650 f.: Claudia (Wissowa); iv. 117 f.:
Clustumina (Kubitschek); Daremberg et Saglio, _Dict._ i. 125:
Aes equestre and hordearium (Humbert).
CHAPTER IV
THE CENTURIES AND THE CLASSES
The ancient authorities represent Servius Tullius as the founder of
an organization at once military and political—on the one hand the
army composed of classes and centuries, and on the other the comitia
centuriata. According to Livy[383]—
“From those whose rating was 100,000 asses or more he made 80
centuries, 40 of seniors and 40 of juniors, and termed them all
the _first_ class. The seniors were to be ready for guarding
the city and the juniors were to serve in the field. The arms
required of them were a helmet, round shield, greaves, and
cuirass,—all bronze,—for the protection of the body. Their
offensive weapons were a spear and a sword. To this class were
added two centuries of sappers who were to serve without arms.
Their duty was to convey the engines of war. The _second_
class was made up of those whose rating was between 75,000 and
100,000 asses, 20 centuries of seniors and juniors together.
They were equipped with an oblong shield (scutum) instead of
a round one, and they lacked the cuirass, but in all other
respects their arms were the same. The minimal rating of the
_third_ class was 50,000 asses, and the number of centuries
was the same with the same distinction of age, and there was
no change in arms excepting that greaves were not required. In
the _fourth_ were those appraised at 25,000 asses. They had the
same number of centuries but their arms were changed, nothing
being assigned them but a spear and a long javelin. The _fifth_
class was larger, composed of 30 centuries. They carried
slings and stones for throwing. Among them were counted the
accensi, the hornblowers, and the trumpeters, 3 centuries. This
class was appraised at 11,000 asses. Those whose rating was
less formed one century exempt from military service. Having
thus armed and organized the infantry, he levied 12 centuries
of equites from among the chief men of the state. Also the
3 centuries instituted by Romulus he made into 6 others of
the same names as those under which the three had originally
been inaugurated.” Afterward Livy speaks of the votes of the
centuries in the comitia.
The ultimate source of this description, as well as of the similar
account given by Dionysius, is the censorial document already
mentioned,[384] sometimes termed the “discriptio centuriarum,”[385]
sometimes “Commentarii Servi Tullii”[386] on the supposition that Servius
was the author. In reality it belonged to the Censoriae Tabulae[387]
of the period immediately following 269.[388] The document gave a list
of the classes, centuries, and ratings, and furnished directions for
holding the centuriate assembly. As the military divisions and equipments
mentioned by Livy in the passage above had been discarded long before
this date,[389] they could not have been described in the document.
The account of them found in our sources must, therefore, have been
supplied by antiquarian study.[390] The annalist who first used these
Tabulae in the censorial archives was Fabius Pictor.[391] Whether Livy
and Dionysius derived their account directly from him or through a later
annalist cannot be determined.[392] Though Cicero’s source may ultimately
have been the same, he seems to have depended largely on his memory and
is chronologically, though not in substance, less exact. In assigning
seventy rather than eighty centuries to the first class he most probably
has in mind a stage of transition from the earlier to the reformed
organization.[393]
A brief analysis of this description, as presented by Livy or Dionysius,
will prove that it could not apply at the same time to an army and a
political assembly: (1) The century of proletarians, which formed a part
of the comitia, and which according to Dionysius was larger than all the
rest together, was exempt from military service.[394] (2) The unarmed
supernumeraries termed accensi velati must in their military function
have lacked the centuriate organization, as will hereafter be made
clear.[395] (3) The musicians and the skilled workmen who accompanied
the army must also be eliminated from the centuriate organization of
the army.[396] (4) The seniors, too, lacked the centuriate military
organization.[397] (5) Thus the only pedites in the original centuriate
system were the juniors. Even the military century of juniors was not
in the beginning strictly identical with a voting century; and as
time progressed, the one group diverged more and more widely from the
other.[398]
Chiefly from these facts, which will become clear in the course of
this study, we are warranted in concluding that the army was at no
time identical with the comitia centuriata. As one was necessarily an
outgrowth of the other, the military organization must have been the
earlier. If therefore the original form of the centuriate system is to
be referred to Servius Tullius, he will be considered the organizer
of the phalanx, which the military centuries constituted,[399] not of
the comitia.[400] This result harmonizes with the view of the ancient
writers that the comitia centuriata exercised no functions—hence we have
a right to infer that it had no existence—before the beginning of the
republic.[401]
The following sketch of the development of the Roman military system from
the earliest times to the institution of the manipular legion includes
those features only which are essential to an understanding of the origin
and early character of the centuriate assembly. The view maintained
in this volume is, as suggested in the preceding paragraph, that the
comitia centuriata in the form described by Livy and Dionysius developed
from the early republican military organization, which was itself the
result of a gradual growth. Reference is made to equipments chiefly for
the purpose of throwing light on the relation of the Roman to the Greek
organization and of the various Roman military divisions to one another.
I. _The Primitive Graeco-Italic Army and the Origin of the Phalanx_
Recent research has brought to light a period of Italian history during
which the military system of the Latins and Etruscans closely resembled
that of the Mycenaeans, the former doubtless being derived in large
part from the latter.[402] The nobleman,[403] equipped in heavy armor,
rode forth in his chariot[404] to challenge his peer among the enemy to
personal combat. The mass of common footmen were probably grouped in
tribes and curiae (Greek phratries, brotherhoods),[405] as in Homeric
Greece[406] and among the early Europeans[407] before the development of
an organization based on a numerical system. The arms of the footmen must
have been lighter, and probably varied with the individual’s financial
resources. These common troops could have had no special training or
discipline, as they counted for little in war.[408] Yet in the Homeric
age of Greece some attempt was made to keep the fighters in line, and to
prevent the champions from advancing beyond it to single combat.[409]
A similar tendency to even, rhythmic movement may be inferred for
the Latin army.[410] The great innovators in this direction were the
Lacedaemonians, to whom the honor of inventing the phalanx is chiefly
due.[411] This improvement, which made an epoch in European warfare,
could not have been later than the eighth century B.C. The phalanx was a
line, several ranks deep, of heavy-armed warriors, who moved as a unit
to the sound of music.[412] The depth varied as the occasion demanded;
it was not necessarily uniform throughout the line, but for Lacedaemon
eight may be considered normal.[413] The heavy-armed trooper carried
a large shield, which covered the entire body, a helmet, and greaves;
his offensive weapons were sword and spear.[414] Tyrtaeus mentions also
a coat of mail though not as an essential part of the equipment.[415]
The metal of their defensive armor was mostly bronze; their swords and
spear-points were probably iron, which the mines of Laconia abundantly
supplied.[416] Although it is well known that the phalanx was composed
of smaller units, the original organization can only be conjectured. It
is not unlikely that in the beginning there were tribal regiments,[417]
divided into companies of fifty or perhaps a hundred,[418] which were
made up of still smaller groups. The military age extended from the
twentieth to the sixtieth year.[419]
The phalanx was readily adopted by other Greek states, which modified it
to suit their several conditions. In Athens and probably elsewhere the
army had a tribal organization,[420] but a census was introduced in order
to determine who possessed sufficient wealth for service on horseback, in
the heavy infantry, and in the light infantry; and when once the census
classes were adopted, it was easy to extend them to political uses. In
this way the four property classes at Athens, probably instituted about
the middle of the seventh century B.C.,[421] became under Solon if not
earlier a basis for the distribution of offices and other political
privileges. Naturally the Greeks of Sicily and Italy adopted the phalanx,
and it is reasonable to suppose that the Romans derived it, through the
Etruscans,[422] from one of these neighbors.
II. _The Servian Army_
As the heavy troops of the Greek line were all armed alike, the Romans
probably at first composed their phalanx in a similar way, without
gradations of equipment. The complex system of census groupings in the
army as we find it immediately before the institution of the manipular
legion could only have resulted from a long development. The statement
last made finds justification in the fact that the term classis[423] was
originally limited to the first or highest census group, all the rest
being “infra classem.”[424]
Not only was the organization like that of the Greeks, but the arms, too,
were in the main Greek. The soldiers of the classis were equipped with
helmet, shield, greaves, spear, and sword; as they wore a cuirass, they
used a large round Etruscan buckler[425] instead of the man-covering
Dorian shield. They were grouped in centuries,[426] forty of which
composed the classis in the fully developed phalanx.[427] The age of
service of the juniors, who alone fought in the field, extended from the
completed seventeenth to the completed forty-sixth year,[428] whereas the
seniors from the forty-seventh to the sixtieth year formed a reserve.
A still nearer connection can be found between the Roman and the Greek
horsemen. As is proved by archaeology, the earliest Greek knights had
no specialized weapons or armor and were not accustomed to fight on
horseback, but were heavy infantry who used their horses simply as
conveyance.[429] The same is true of the earliest Roman equites, whose
equipment closely resembled that of the Greek horsemen. On account of
their swiftness they were primitively called celeres.[430] Although these
mounted footmen are generally known as equites, which in this sense may
but loosely be translated knights, the Romans did not institute a true
cavalry till the period of the Samnite wars.[431] It is a curious fact
that some horsemen, Roman as well as Greek, were provided each with two
horses,[432] one for the warrior and the other for his squire,[433]
and that the mounted soldiers of Etruria were in these respects the
same.[434] A further resemblance between the earliest Greek and Roman
horsemen lies in the fact that they were noble.[435]
In their account of the growth of the mounted service during the regal
period the ancient authorities show great inconsistencies. It seems
probable that the early annalists pictured the increase in the knights
in a way analogous to that of the senate: at first Romulus formed a
troop, or century, from the Ramnes; afterward a second was added from
the Tities; and still later the Luceres furnished a third.[436] Then
Tarquinius Priscus doubled the number, making six in all, and Servius
finally increased it to eighteen centuries. This simple development,
itself a reconstruction, was complicated by the desire of the historians
to make the number of knights under Servius agree with the number
under Augustus, given by Dionysius[437] at about 5000; hence the
assumption of 200 or even 300 knights to the century as early as the
reign of Romulus.[438] It is possible by clearing away these evident
misconceptions to discover the approximate truth.
When the chariot gave way to the horseback rider is not definitely
known; at all events the change seems to have taken place under
Hellenic influence, and could hardly therefore have been earlier than
the beginning of the seventh century B.C.[439] The idea of the sources
is that there came to be three troops of horsemen, furnished by the
tribes,[440] as well as three regiments of foot, that before Servius
the number of troops of horse was doubled, and that the six troops thus
formed were named accordingly after the tribes Ramnenses, Titienses,
and Lucerenses priores and posteriores respectively.[441] The priores
had each two horses, the posteriores one.[442] Hence the essential
difference between these divisions was in rank and wealth rather than in
the relative time of their institution. Long after Servius both divisions
continued to be patrician.[443] As the centuriate organization of Servius
applied to the infantry, the cavalry remained little affected by it. The
six troops with their old names survived, and eventually became a part
of the comitia centuriata. In the military sphere, however, the troop no
longer retained its identity; but the whole body was divided into twenty
turmae, each composed of three decuries commanded by decurions.[444]
When with the institution of the republic the phalanx was split into
two legions, ten turmae of cavalry were assigned to each legion.[445]
As in historical time the number of horsemen to a legion did not exceed
300,[446] and as we have no reason to suppose that at an earlier period
this arm of the service was proportionally stronger, we may conclude that
in the Servian phalanx, or double legion, the number did not exceed 600.
From the foregoing discussion it appears clear that the Servian military
system rested upon a division of the citizens into four groups, closely
corresponding to the Athenian census divisions: (1) the equites
priores, like the pentacosiomedimni, (2) the equites posteriores, like
the hippeis,[447] (3) the classis, like the zeugitae, (4) the light
troops infra classem, like the thetes. The distinction between priores
and posteriores rested not upon an assessment but upon a less precise
difference in wealth, whether determined by the individual concerned
or by the state we cannot know; it represented, too, a gradation of
nobility. The distinction between the knights and the classici was one of
rank; that between the classis and the soldiers infra classem was alone
determined by the census.
III. _The Development of the Five Post-Servian Military Divisions on the
Basis of Census Ratings_
This arrangement was by no means final. Further changes were made in both
foot and horse which were to have a bearing on the organization of the
comitia centuriata. After a time[448] two additions of men less heavily
armed than the classici were made to the phalanx, whether simultaneously
or successively cannot be determined. There were now forty centuries of
classici, and the additions comprised ten centuries each, the second
less heavily armed than the first, though they may both be considered
heavy in contrast with the light troops. Perhaps the state according to
its ability made up the deficiency in the equipment, so as to render
the entire phalanx as evenly armed as possible.[449] It numbered sixty
centuries of heavy infantry, composed of three grades which depended
upon the census rating.[450] The light troops were also grouped in two
divisions on the same principle. The first comprised ten centuries;
originally the second may have contained the same number, in which
case four were afterward added to make the fourteen known to exist in
the fully developed system.[451] There were five divisions of infantry
amounting to eighty-four centuries of a hundred men each. Undoubtedly the
growth of the army to this degree of strength was gradual, though the
successive steps cannot be more minutely traced.[452]
In making the levy the military tribunes selected the soldiers from
the lists of tribesmen, taking one tribe after another as the lot
determined.[453] The early Romans must have striven to distribute the
population as equally as possible among the tribes in order to render
them approximately equal in capacity for military service. As long as
this equality continued, the officials could constitute the army of
an equal number of men from each tribe. These considerations explain
the close relation in early time between the number of tribes and of
centuries as well as the suggestions offered by our sources as to an
early connection between the centuries and the tribes.[454] While there
were but twenty tribes we may suppose that the legion comprised but 4000
men, which was raised to 4200 when the twenty-first tribe was added. In
this way can we account for the number of centuries to the legion. If
but half the available military strength was required, the magistrates
might draw by lot ten tribes from which to make the levy.[455] It was an
easy matter as long as the heavy troops were limited to the classis;[456]
but when two other ratings were added, and when meantime the tribes
must have grown unlike in population, it became practically impossible
to maintain for each rating a just proportion from the tribes;[457] and
perhaps this was the chief reason for the modification in the method of
recruiting. When therefore the tribes were increased to twenty-five, and
it was deemed inexpedient to make a corresponding enlargement of the
legion,[458] a new principle was adopted for the levy: after determining
the ratio between the number of men needed and the whole number
available, the officers drew from each tribe a number proportionate
to its capacity.[459] It would agree well with all the known facts to
suppose that the addition of the second and third ratings, followed by
a more thorough organization of the light troops, belongs to the early
republic (509-387),[460] when Rome needed all her strength in her life
and death struggle with hostile neighbors. At the same time the purchase
of armor and the increased burden of military duty would help account
for the desperate economic condition of the poorer peasants of that epoch.
The proportions of the five ratings—20-15-10-5-2½ or 2—to be discussed
hereafter,[461] suggest an explanation of their origin. It would be
reasonable to assume that the normal holding of the well-to-do citizen
was a twenty-iugera lot and that the Servian phalanx was composed
of possessors of that amount, the light-armed being their sons and
others distinctly inferior in wealth. In course of a few generations
as the population grew, with no corresponding territorial expansion
or colonization or industrial development, and with only a limited
conversion of waste to arable land, many of the lots became divided
and subdivided. The result was a weakening of the phalanx at a time
when the state was in the most pressing need of military resources.
The institution of the five ratings as a basis for the reorganization
of the army was a temporary expedient for meeting the crisis, to be
superseded not long afterward by a better system founded on military
pay. In all probability the introduction of the five ratings, or at
least the beginning of the movement in that direction, should be closely
connected with the institution of the censorship in 443 or 435.[462] The
supposition would give us a sufficient reason for the creation of this
new office at that time, and the strengthening of the army would explain
the success of the Romans in the wars immediately following.
How the five ratings were arrayed in battle is unknown. If the front
counted a thousand men (milites),[463] the classis comprised four
ranks (4000), the second and third ratings one rank each, making in
all six ranks of heavy troops (6000).[464] Twenty centuries could be
drawn from the two ratings of light troops to complete the eight ranks
when needed.[465] But the Romans undoubtedly exercised the same good
judgment as the Lacedaemonians in varying their formation to suit the
emergency;[466] and for that reason it is wrong to assume the same depth
for all occasions or an even depth for any one occasion. The management
of long lines one-man deep must have been extremely difficult, if not
impossible.[467] The explanation already suggested, that the state
supplied the deficiency in equipment,[468] would greatly simplify the
case, for there would then exist no need of arraying the census groups in
successive lines. Whatever may have been the tactic arrangement, it did
not continue long, for soon after the introduction of regular pay, about
400 B.C.,[469] the distinction between the ratings ceased to have an
importance for military affairs.
IV. _The Question as to the Connection of the Supernumeraries and the
Seniors with the Military Centuries_
A number of supernumeraries termed accensi velati accompanied the army.
The epithet accensi proves them to have been outside the five ratings,
while velati describes them as wearing civilian dress. We are informed
by the sources that they carried water and weapons to the fighting men,
stepped into the places of the dead and wounded, and acted as servants
to the lower officers.[470] These men could not have been organized
in centuries,[471] for they were drawn up in the rear behind the
light troops; they extended along the entire breadth of the army,[472]
and must have greatly exceeded one hundred or even two hundred. The
musicians,[473] too, who accompanied the army were not grouped in two
centuries, for they were distributed throughout the army.[474] There is
no reason for assuming exactly two hundred musicians[475] or exactly
two hundred workmen,[476] or for supposing that any of the men of this
description were organized in centuries in the army. Reasoning in a
similar way in regard to the seniors, we conclude that their organization
in centuries could not have belonged to the original Servian system. A
military century, as the name indicates, must have contained a hundred
men.[477] But in any static population there are three times as many men
between seventeen and forty-six as between forty-six and sixty[478]—in
Rome there were three times as many juniors as seniors; and as the
number of junior and senior centuries was equal, the latter could have
contained only about thirty-three each, on the supposition that the whole
male population between seventeen and forty-six years was organized in
centuries.
The mere fact that the senior century contained so few men suggests that
it was not a military institution. This impression is confirmed by the
information that the seniors were reserved for the defence of the city,
while the juniors took the field in active service.[479] When we reflect
that even in the early republic the seniors could not often have been
called on for defence, as the juniors were ordinarily sufficient for the
purpose,[480] that the manning of the walls did not necessarily require a
division into companies or an equipment like that for field service, and
that when it was thought expedient for the seniors to serve in centuries
or cohorts, their enrolment in these companies is especially mentioned,
our conviction that the senior centuries did not belong to the original
Servian organization grows into a certainty.[481]
V. _Conclusions as to the Servian and Early Republican Organizations;
Transition to the Manipular Legion_
In our search for the Servian and post-Servian schemes of military
organization we found it necessary to eliminate from the discriptio
centuriarum all the centuries of pedites with the exception of the
juniors. But even a military century of juniors could not have remained
identical with a voting century; for the former comprised a fixed number
and the same for all ratings, whereas in the comitia of historical time
the centuries varied greatly in size, many of them containing far more
than a hundred men each. In the four lower classes each century contained
as many men as the entire first class;[482] and individuals constantly
shifted from one class to another as their several properties increased
or diminished.[483] It is a mistake, therefore, to think of the army as
identical with even the junior centuries of the comitia.[484] Doubtless
when the Servian army was first introduced, its organization was made
to fit actual conditions, so that all who were liable to service found
their place in it; but as the political assembly of centuries was
instituted many years afterward, the army with its various enlargements
could have kept meanwhile no more than approximate pace with the changing
population, and at no time could it include the physically disqualified,
who nevertheless had a right to vote in the junior centuries of the
political assembly. On the other hand there were soldiers in the army too
young to be in the comitia centuriata.[485]
The conclusion as to the strength of the army in the first years of the
republic, before the latter had acquired any considerable accession of
territory, corresponds closely with a moderate estimate of the population
under the conditions then existing. The area of the state was about 983
square kilometers (equivalent to 379.5 sq. mi. or 242,899 acres).[486]
Estimating the population of this agricultural community at its maximum
of sixty to the square kilometer, we should have less than 60,000 for the
entire area.[487] The number of men from seventeen to sixty, the Roman
military age, should be about thirty per cent of the population[488]—less
therefore than 18,000. If the ratio of juniors to seniors was about three
to one,[489] we should have about 13,000 juniors to 5000 seniors. But a
deduction must be made for slaves and for the physically incapacitated,
leaving perhaps 9000 or 10,000 juniors and 3000 or 4000 seniors. These
results are not unreasonable. Making allowance for several hundred
supernumeraries,[490] we should then have no more than enough juniors to
fill the eighty-four centuries of foot and the six troops of horse. It is
clear, therefore, that all available forces were included in the army and
that the junior centuries could not have contained more than a hundred
men each.
Even before the phalanx had thus been brought to perfection,
modifications were being made in the equipment under the influence of the
Gallic invasion.[491] The introduction of pay, about 400 B.C., as has
been said,[492] broke down the distinction of equipment based on degree
of wealth, and not long afterward, probably in the time of the Samnite
wars, the phalanx gave way to the manipular legion, which reached its
full development in the Punic wars.[493]
VI. _The Five Classes and their Ratings_
Though originally denoting the men of the first rating, who possessed the
fullest equipment,[494] the term classis with an explanatory adjective
came to apply to the entire army[495] or to its component parts.[496] The
plural “classes” came finally to mean the five census groups, represented
by the five timocratic gradations of the comitia centuriata. What had
formerly been the classis then came to be known as classis prima, and the
“infra classem” ratings were numbered downward second, third, fourth,
and fifth. Probably this extension in the use of the word was not made
till after the disappearance of the ratings from the army—how much later
we do not know. In a speech delivered in 169 in favor of the lex Voconia
the elder Cato more than once examined into the meaning of classicus
and infra classem.[497] A hasty inference would be that at this late
date classis was still strictly limited to the first rating. It is to
be noted, however, that the early meaning might be retained in a legal
formula long after it had disappeared from general use, that classicus
certainly preserved its original meaning notwithstanding the new
development of the noun from which it is derived, and especially that the
early sense of the terms classicus and infra classem was not generally
known in 169, else Cato would not have taken such pains to define them.
We know that the ratings were termed classes in 111,[498] and from
what has just been said on the Voconian law it seems probable that the
development took place long before 169. The circumstance that in their
“discriptio centuriarum” Livy and Dionysius make no reference to the
distinction between classis and infra classem would favor the supposition
that they found no such distinction in their common source—ultimately
Fabius Pictor. Hence it is not unlikely that classis was used in its
historical meaning of property class in the censorial document from which
Fabius derived his knowledge of the fully developed comitia centuriata,
and which belonged to the period immediately following 269.[499]
Before the censorship of Appius Claudius Caecus, 312, military service
within the census ratings was based on the possession of land, and
the gradations of equipment, while they lasted, must therefore have
been determined by the size of the estate reckoned in iugera.[500]
Huschke[501] rightly inferred that the number of iugera marking the
lower limit of each division must have been proportioned to the later
money ratings, and assumed accordingly 20, 15, 10, 5, 2½ or 2 iugera
as the respective minimal holdings of the five divisions. Although
absolute certainty is unattainable, most scholars accept his conclusions
as probable.[502] Before the change was made in the appraisements
from amount of land to money, the census gradations ceased to serve a
military purpose. In the further discussion of these groups reference is
therefore solely to their political character, especially as expressed
in the organization of the comitia centuriata. Till the time of Marius,
however, the soldiers were ordinarily recruited from the classes—that is,
from the citizens who possessed at least the qualification of the lowest
group.[503]
The money ratings of 312 are not recorded; we know those only of the
time following 269. The ratings of the earlier date must have been in
the nominally libral asses then current. For a long time, probably down
to 312, the _as_ remained at eleven to nine ounces in weight, then sank
rapidly to four, three, and two ounces, reaching the last-mentioned
weight in or shortly before 269. In this year or the following was
legally adopted the lighter _as_, weighing two ounces, or a sixth of a
pound, and hence termed sextantarian, and the heavier asses still in
circulation were henceforth reckoned as sesterces, which now became
the unit of value.[504] Two and a half sextantarian asses made a
sesterce, and four sesterces made a denarius.[505] The _as_ continued
to be copper, whereas the sesterce and the denarius were silver. In
consequence of the use of the sextantarian _as_ the ratings must have
been elevated to correspond with the decline of the standard; and the
result of this change is the well-known series, 100,000, 75,000, 50,000,
25,000, 11,000.[506] There can be no doubt that under the standard used
in 312 the ratings were lower than those given. It is incredible that
the classis should ever have been appraised so high as 100,000 asses of
ten-ounce weight or even of the value of sesterces (5 oz.).[507] But
the ratings of 312 have not been definitely ascertained. Assuming but
one elevation between the two dates and in the proportion of 4:10::
sextantarian _as_: heavy _as_ or sesterce, Mommsen[508] concludes that
the appraisements of 312 were 40,000, 30,000, 20,000, 10,000, and 4400
asses respectively for the five classes. The adjustment however may have
been gradual, as was the decline of the standard, and the former need not
have corresponded exactly with the latter. But in so far as the Romans
failed to bring about this adjustment, the censors must have found it
necessary continually to advance the citizens from the lower to the
higher divisions.
The ratings mentioned above as established on the basis of the
sextantarian standard, namely 100,000, 75,000, 50,000, 25,000, and 11,000
asses for the five classes respectively, are those given by Livy.[509]
Several variations affecting the highest and lowest classes are offered
by other writers. Dionysius[510] states the appraisement of the fifth
class at 12½ minae, which would be 12,500 asses. The usual explanation is
that he is dealing in round numbers without especial regard to accuracy,
for which reason Livy should be given the preference. It is doubtful
however whether Dionysius was so inexact. More probably his estimate
depended ultimately on the idea that the minimal number of iugera of the
highest class was twenty-five,[511] taken in connection with the decimal
ratio between the extreme classes—an interpretation which would help
explain variations in the rating of the highest class to be mentioned
hereafter; or with less reason we might assume that the statements of
Dionysius and Livy represent earlier and later conditions.[512] The
limit of 400 drachmas given by Polybius[513] proves a lowering of the
minimal rating between 269 and the publication of his history.[514] It
may have been made in 217, when the money system was again changed. As
Polybius probably considered the drachma, or denarius, to be worth ten
asses,[515] the limit which he mentions would be 4000 asses. Cicero
states the minimal limit at 1500 asses,[516] and a still lower sum of
375, mentioned by Gellius,[517] marked the line of division between the
taxable proletarians and the capite censi, who were exempt from taxation.
As the differentiation between the two groups last named must have been
effected before 167, when the Romans were relieved of the tributum,[518]
the rating given by Cicero could not have been later than that vouched
for by Polybius. The limit of 4000 asses, accordingly, had reference
merely to military service, whereas 1500 marked at once the political
and tributary line of separation between the fifth class and the taxable
proletarians.[519] The limit of 375 asses, on the other hand, was far
below the fifth class, and had nothing to do with it.[520] The relation
of these numbers to one another may be summarized as follows: Those
assessed at 4000 or more asses belonged to the fifth class, enjoyed the
political rights of that class, and were subject to military service
as well as to taxation (tributum); those rated at 1500-4000 asses also
belonged to the fifth class, enjoyed the political rights of that class,
and were subject to taxation but exempt from military service; those
rated at 375-1500 asses were proletarians, below the fifth class but
subject to taxation; those rated below 375 asses, the capite censi, were
exempt from taxation.
As regards the rating of the highest class, the elder Pliny[521] states
it at 110,000 asses, which may be a copyist’s error for 100,000 or
for 120,000; the estimate of Paulus Diaconus[522] is 120,000 and of
Gellius[523] 125,000. If the manuscripts have correctly preserved these
numbers, they may represent computations based on a varying number of
iugera, from twenty-two to twenty-five[524] at the rate of 5000 asses a
iugerum—a valuation which may have been given in the original annalistic
source (Fabius Pictor). From the fact that Pliny assigns this rating to
Servius as author, and that Gellius speaks of it in the past, we must
infer that it was not due to a relatively late change. Indeed the rating
must have remained unaltered to the time of Polybius,[525] who states
that those appraised at 10,000 drachmas wore the cuirass—according to
Livy[526] and Dionysius,[527] the distinctive equipment of the first
class.[528] In the same age the Voconian law, 169, provided that a
man registered by the censors as worth 100,000 asses or more should
not bequeath his property to a woman.[529] While speaking in favor
of the measure the elder Cato expounded the distinction between the
classici and those who were “infra classem.”[530] Strictly following
Cato’s definition, Gellius[531] explains the classici as those of the
first class in contrast with the members of the lower classes, who are
infra classem. Evidently the classici are to be identified with those
rated at 100,000 asses, as given by Gaius.[532] The sum of 100,000
sesterces, in place of asses, represented by later writers[533] as
the one fixed by this law, is due either to a late interpretation or
to an amendment.[534] The minimal qualification of the first class
must therefore have continued unchanged from 269 to the passing of the
Voconian law, 169, and the composition of the _History_ of Polybius.[535]
From the latter event to the tribuneship of Tiberius Gracchus little
time was left for an increase, which certainly the Gracchi and their
successors would take no interest in bringing about. Further depreciation
in the weight of the _as_, by the reduction to a half ounce through the
Papirian law of 89,[536] had no effect on the valuation, as the standard
was the silver sesterce, the _as_ having merely the fiduciary value of a
quarter sesterce. Apart from the accounts of Livy and Dionysius already
considered, no reference is made to the valuation of the intermediate
classes, unless it be a passage in Livy[537] to the effect that freedmen
possessing country estates worth at least 30,000 sesterces were enrolled
in the rural tribes by the censors of 169, which is interpreted by
Mommsen[538] to refer to the qualification of the second class. This is
true if, as has been assumed above, the censors still reckoned two and a
half asses to the sesterce.[539]
VII. _Belot’s Theory as to the Ratings_
Notice must be taken of a theory proposed by Belot,[540] that at the time
of the First Punic War, owing to an economic revolution which enhanced
prices, and to the decrease in the weight of the _as_, the five ratings
as stated by Dionysius for the earlier period were multiplied by ten,
giving for the future 1,000,000, 750,000, 500,000, 250,000, 125,000 asses
for the five classes respectively.[541] The theory is supported with
remarkable learning and skill. There can be no doubt as to the lowering
of the weight of the _as_ or of the economic revolution which increased
prices. Large valuations of estates such as he mentions are found in the
sources. For example in 214 the government ordered[542] that—
Those rated at 50,000- 100,000 asses should furnish one sailor.
Those rated at 100,000- 300,000 asses should furnish three sailors.
Those rated at 300,000-1,000,000 asses should furnish five sailors.
Those rated at above 1,000,000 asses should furnish seven sailors.
Senators should furnish eight sailors.
Belot’s attempt to identify the highest of these appraisements with the
rating of the first class is unsuccessful, as will immediately appear.
The object of the order issued by the government in 214 was to provide
crews for the fleet of that year. Although the hundred and fifty ships
to be manned[543] seem to have been triremes, we may consider them
quinqueremes so as not to underestimate the number of men necessary.
Reckoning 375 men to the ship,[544] we should have 56,250 men for the
entire fleet. But according to Belot[545] there were 22,000 knights at
this time, whose census rating was 1,000,000 asses, and who accordingly
would have to furnish seven men each for the navy, which would amount to
154,000, or more than enough to man three such fleets as that of the year
under consideration. But as the knights constituted only a twelfth of the
total number of registered citizens of that period,[546] most if not all
of whom must according to Belot have been assessed at 50,000 or above,
we shall be obliged at least to double the 154,000 sailors furnished by
the knights to obtain the whole number demanded by the government. The
absurdity of the result condemns the premises. The minimal census of the
knight could not have been materially if at all above 100,000 asses,[547]
and the great mass of citizens must have been rated below that sum. Other
features of his theory need not be considered here. The truth is that
the great accumulation of wealth benefited but few; and notwithstanding
the advance in the money value of property, the mass of people remained
so poor that the state could not disturb the census ratings, however
out of harmony with the new conditions they seem to have become. No
suspicion should be thrown on the continuance of these small valuations
by the circumstance that occasionally the state compelled the wealthy to
contribute to the burden of war according to their ability, as in 214,
and increased the penalties for the crimes and misdemeanors which the
rich and powerful were wont to commit.[548]
VIII. _The Post-Servian Equites_
The classes, as developed after Servius, have now been considered
sufficiently for an appreciation of their relation to the comitia
centuriata. It remains to discuss from the same point of view the
post-Servian alterations in the equestrian organization.
In the earliest period when the warriors in general equipped themselves
at their own expense,[549] the equites provided their own horses. But
in time as the patricians ceased to be the only wealthy class in the
community, and as they began to lose their political advantages, their
duty of keeping one or two horses came to be felt as onerous, and some
means of lightening it was sought for. The only private property which
was free from the burden of supporting military service was that of
widows and orphans. The government determined accordingly to levy a
regular contribution on this class of estates in the interest of the
equites. The eques was allowed ten thousand asses, or one thousand
denarii (aes equestre), with which to purchase his horse or horses for
the ten years of service and two thousand asses (aes hordearium) annually
for maintenance.[550] He was not paid the money in advance, but was given
security for the required sums,[551] which were gradually to be made
good from the special kind of tax here described. When these equestrian
funds were first granted cannot be absolutely determined. Cicero[552]
assigns their institution to Tarquinius Priscus, Livy[553] to Servius,
Plutarch[554] to Camillus in the year of his censorship, 377. For obvious
reasons the earlier dates are suspicious, whereas the last has the
advantage of connecting the institution of these funds with the general
movement for the public support of military service. When in the war with
Veii regular military pay was introduced, the eques on account of his
more burdensome duty, perhaps too because of his higher rank, was allowed
three times the pay of the legionary.[555] It was afterward decided to
deduct the aes hordearium, probably also the aes equestre, from his
pay.[556] Meanwhile as wars were waged on an ever increasing scale, the
patricians, who were dwindling in number, could not furnish all the
cavalry needed. This want was especially felt in the struggle with Veii,
whereupon wealthy plebeian youths[557] came forward and offered to serve
with their own horses.[558] This is the first known instance of voluntary
equestrian duty, doubtless often repeated at crises during the remainder
of the republican period. In the first case at least the state provided
for the keep of the horses. The volunteers were of the same grade of
wealth as the conscripts; they were held in equal honor,[559] and most
probably their years of voluntary service were counted in with their
regular duty in making up the required number.[560] Service equo privato
could also be imposed as a punishment. The only known instance, however,
was that required by the censors of 209 of the equites who had disgraced
themselves at Cannae. Their horses were taken from them, their campaigns
equo publico were not counted to their credit, but they were required
to serve ten years equis privatis.[561] These are the only instances
of service with private horses mentioned in history. In all ancient
literature is no suggestion that the equites equo privato formed a rank
by themselves or were an institution.[562] It should also be said that
the injustice of furnishing some with horses and of compelling others to
go to war at their own expense, unless by way of punishment, was contrary
to the spirit of the constitution. This conclusion is supported by the
elder Pliny’s[563] definition of the military equites, which makes the
public horse an essential. From the time therefore when the state began
to support the mounted service in the way described above, the equites
equis publicis continued to be the only regular citizen horsemen.
The number of equites with public horses is approximately determined for
any time by the number of legions then enrolled. The Servian phalanx,
as has been noted,[564] consisted of two legions, which remained the
normal number through the fifth century. But in the wars with Samnium
and Pyrrhus Rome was able regularly to support four legions.[565] The
military force could not have been doubled before the incorporation of
the Veientan territory early in the fourth century;[566] most probably
the enlargement belongs to still later time. The increase in the
infantry required a corresponding enlargement of the mounted service. At
least twelve hundred equites were henceforth required for active duty.
Making allowance for reserves and ineffectives, the government raised
the number of equites equo publico to eighteen hundred. The twelve new
centuries were open alike to patricians and plebeians, whereas the old
six remained for a time exclusively patrician. This seems to have been
the condition at the opening of the first war with Carthage. During the
Punic wars the number varied greatly, sometimes reaching a total of
more than five thousand in the field, not counting reserves.[567] After
the war with Hannibal the state, drained of men and money, allowed the
cavalry to dwindle.[568] Viewing this condition with alarm, the elder
Cato[569] urged that the number should be increased, and that a minimal
limit be fixed at 2200. Probably at the same time he proposed that the
legion should be strengthened. His measure must have been adopted, for
after his censorship we find the legion regularly consisting of 5200
foot and 300 horse.[570] Under Augustus there were times when 5000
equites[571] equo publico took part in the parade which he revived.[572]
As no reason can be found why Augustus should suddenly increase this
class, we must conclude that there were probably about 5000 equites equo
publico in the late republic.
As long as the cavalry remained exclusively patrician, a census
qualification was precluded. Though Cicero and Livy refer the equestrian
census to Servius Tullius, their vagueness on this point shows that they
lacked definite information.[573] It must have been introduced at the
time when the patriciate ceased to be an essential qualification, when
the levy came to be made on the basis of wealth rather than of blood.
This change should be assigned to the early part of the fourth century
B.C.[574] For a time the census was that of the first class.[575] In
214 it was still 100,000 asses, or not much above, as has already been
proved.[576] In the late republic and under the emperors the minimal
rating was 400,000 sesterces.[577] When it was raised to this amount is
unknown.
I. THE EARLY GRAECO-ITALIAN PHALANX: Busolt, _Griechische
Geschichte_, i, ii (see Contents); Bauer, A., _Griechische
Kriegsaltertümer_; Droysen, H., _Kriegsalterthümer der
Griechen_, in Hermann’s _Lehrb. der griech. Antiquitäten_,
ii. 1-74; Gilbert, _Constitutional Antiquities of Sparta and
Athens_ (see Index and Contents); Lammert, E., _Geschichtliche
Entwickelung der griech. Taktik_, in _N. Jahrb. f. kl. Alt._
iii (1899). 1-29; _Die neuesten Forschungen auf antiken
Schlachtfeldern im Griechenland_, in _N. Jahrb. f. d. kl.
Philol._ xiii (1904). 195-212, 252-79, contains some matters
of interest for the present subject, though it treats mainly
of the time after Alexander; Fröhlich, F., _Beiträge zur
Kriegsführung und Kriegskunst der Römer zur Zeit der Republik_;
Schiller, _Röm. Kriegsaltertümer_, in Müller’s _Hdb. d. kl.
Altwiss._ iv. 707 ff.; on earlier literature, 714 f., 728 f.,
733, 737, 741, 744; Leinveber, A., _Die Legion von Livius_, in
_Philol._ lxi. N. F. xv (1902). 32-41, a specialist in military
science; Nitzsch, K. W., _Das Verhältniss von Heer und Staat in
der röm. Republik_, in _Hist. Zeitschr._ vii (1862). 133-58;
Liers, H., _Kriegswesen der Alten_; Delbrück, _Geschichte
der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der politischen Geschichte_, bks.
i, iv, best authority; _Die römische Manipulartaktik_, in
_Hist. Zeitschr._ N. F. xv (1884). 239-64; Niese, B., _Ueber
Wehrverfassung, Dienstpflicht, und Heerwesen Griechenlands_,
ibid, xcviii (1907). 263-301, 473-506; Arnim, H., _Ineditum
Vaticanum_, in _Hermes_, xxvii (1892). 118-30, the portion of
Greek text used is on p. 121; Wendling, E., _Zu Posidonius und
Varro_, in _Hermes_, xxviii (1893). 335-53, on the source of
the _Ined Vat._; Bruncke, H., in _N. Philol. Rundschau_ (1888)
40-4; Müller-Deecke, _Etrusker_, i. 364-72; Müller, J. J.,
_Studien zur röm. Verfassungsgeschichte_, in _Philol._ xxxiv
(1876). 96-136; Helbig, _Sur les attributs des saliens_, in
_Mémoires de l’académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres_,
xxxvii² (1905). 205-76; on the same subject, in _Comptes rendus
de l’acad._ etc. 1904. ii. 206-12.
II. THE MILITARY AND POLITICAL CENTURIES AND CLASSES: Niebuhr,
B. G., _Röm. Geschichte_, i. 451-511, Eng. 197-236; Schwegler,
_Röm. Geschichte_, I. bk. xvii; Huschke, Ph. E., _Verfassung
des Königs Servius Tullius_, especially chs. iv, vii, viii;
Peter, C., _Epochen der Verfassungsgeschichte der röm.
Republik; Studien zur röm. Geschichte_, controverts Mommsen’s
view as to the military character of the Servian institutions;
Mommsen, _History of Rome_, bk. I. ch. vi; _De apparitoribus
magistratuum romanorum_, in _Rhein. Mus._ N. F. vi (1846).
1-57, includes some account of the accensi; _Röm. Tribus_,
59-72, 121-143, 160 ff.; _Röm. Staatsr._ iii. 240 ff.; _Röm.
Forschungen_, i. 134-40; Willems, P., _Droit public Rom._
40, 43, 84-92; Mispoulet, J. B., _Institutions politiques
des Romains_, i. 203-7; Lange, L., _Röm. Altertümer_, i.
522-66; _Cicero über die servianische Centurienverfassung_,
in _Kleine Schriften_, i. 227-234; Herzog, _Geschichte und
System der röm. Staatsverfassung_, i. 37-43, 1066 f.; Ihne,
W., _History of Rome_, bk. I. ch. vii; _Early Rome_, 51-4,
79, 132-9; _Entstehung der servianischen Verfassung_, in
_Symbola Philologorum Bonnensium_ (1864-1867). 629-44; Breda,
_Die Centurienverfassung des Servius Tullius_; Genz, H.,
_Servianische Centurien-Verfassung_; Soltau, W., _Altröm.
Volksversammlungen_, 229-96; Ullrich, J., _Centuriatcomitien_;
Le Tellier, M., _L’Organisation centuriate et les comices par
centuries_, ch. i; Hallays, A., _Les comices à Rome_; Morlot,
É., _Les comices électoraux_, ch. iii; Moye, M., _Élections
politiques sous la république Rom._ chs. iii, iv, vii; Müller,
ibid.; Neumann, K. J., _Grundherrschaft der röm. Republik,
die Bauernbefreiung, und die Entstehung der servianischen
Verfassung_, speculative but very suggestive; Greenidge, A. H.
J., _Roman Public Life_, 65-76; _Legal Procedure of Cicero’s
Time_, 307 ff.; Schott, P. O., _Röm. Geschichte im Lichte
der neuesten Forschungen_; Smith, F., _Röm. Timokratie_;
Pardon, _De aerariis_; Maue, H., _Der praefectus fabrum_;
Bloch, A., _Le praefectus Fabrum_, pt. ii, in _Musée Belge_,
ix (1905). 352-78; Babelon, E., _Monnaies de la république
Rom._ I. pts. i, ii; _Traité des monnaies Grecq. et Rom._
i; _Origines de la monnaie_; Samwer-Bahrfeldt, _Geschichte
des alten röm. Münzwesens_; Hill, G. F., _Greek and Roman
Coins_, 45-9; Regling, _Zum älteren röm. und ital. Münzen_,
in _Klio_, vi (1906). 489-524; Belot, É., _De la révolution
économique et monétaire ... à Rome_; articles in Pauly-Wissowa,
_Real-Encycl.: Accensi_, i. 135-7 (Kubitschek); _Adscriptivi_,
i. 422 (Cichorius); _Adsiduus_, i. 426 (Kubitschek);
_Aerarius_, i. 674-6 (idem); _As_, ii. 1499-1513 (idem);
_Capite censi_, iii. 1521-3 (Kübler); _Census_, iii. 1914-24
(Kubitschek); _Centuria_, iii. 1952-62 (Kübler, Domazewski,
Kubitschek); _Classis_, iii. 2630-32 (Kübler); _Collegium_,
iv. 380-480 (Kornemann); _Comitia_, iv. 679-715 (Liebenam);
_Cornicines_, iv. 1602 f. (Fiebiger); _Denarius_, v. 202-15
(Hultsch); articles in Daremberg et Saglio, _Dict.: Accensus_,
i. 16 ff. (Humbert and others); _As_, i. 454-64 (Lenormant);
_Census_, ii. 1003-17 (Humbert); _Centuria_, ii. 1017 (idem);
_Classis_, i. 1224 f. (idem); _Comices centuriates_, s.
_Comitia_, ii. 1378 ff. (idem); articles in Ruggiero, E.,
_Dizionario epigrafico: Accensus_, i. 18-21; _Aerarius_, i.
311-3; _Aes_, i. 313 f.; _Centuria_, ii. 183-9; _Censor_,
ii. 157 ff.; _Census_, ii. 174-7; _Cornicines_, ii. 1213-6;
_Fabri_, iii. 4-18 (Libenam); Olcott, _Thes. ling. lat. ep._ i.
51: Accensus; Pais, E., _Ancient Legends of Roman History_, ch.
vii.
III. THE EQUITES: Niebuhr, ibid. i. 415-22, Eng. 197-200;
Schwegler, ibid. i. 756-60; Lange, _Röm. Alt._ i. 444-7, 523,
547-51; _Recension über K. Niemeyer, De equitibus romanis
commentatio historica_, in _Kleine Schriften_, i. 113-37;
Mommsen, _Röm. Staatsr._ ii. 397-400; iii. 106-9, 253-62;
Madvig, J. N., _Verfassung und Verwaltung des röm. Staates_,
i. 155-82; Mispoulet, J. B., _Études d’institutions Rom._
151-226; Bloch, G., _Origines du sénat Rom._ 46-95; Marquardt,
J., _Historiae equitum romanorum libri iv_; Gomont, M. H.,
_Chevaliers Rom. depuis Romulus jusqu’à Galba_; Niemeyer, K.,
_De equitibus romanis commentatio historica_; Rubino, J.,
_Ueber das Verhältniss der VI Suffragia zur röm. Ritterschaft_,
in _Zeitschr. f. d. Altertumswiss._ iv (1846). 212-39;
Bertolini, C. I., _I celeres ed il tribunus celerum_; Belot,
É., _Histoire des chevaliers Rom._ 2 vols.; Gerathewohl,
H., _Die Reiter und die Rittercenturien zur Zeit der röm.
Republik_, valuable; Kubitschek, J. W., _Aes equestre_, in
Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ i. 682-4; Kübler, _Equites
Romani_, ibid. vi. 272-312; Martin, A., _Equites_ (Greek), in
Daremberg et Saglio, _Dict._ ii. 752-71; Cagnat, R., _Equites_
(Roman), ibid. ii. 771-89; Helbig, W., _Observations sur
les ἱππεῖς Athéniens_, in _Comptes rendus de l’académie des
inscriptions et belles-lettres_, 1900. 516-22; _Les ἱππεῖς
Athéniens_, in _Mémoires de l’acad._ etc. xxxvii¹ (1904).
157-264; _Die ἱππεῖς und ihre Knappen_, in _Jahreshefte des
österr. archäol instituts_, viii. 2. 185-202; Peterson, E., _Zu
Helbigs ἱππεῖς_, etc., ibid., 125 f.; Helbig, _Zur Geschichte
des röm. Equitatus, A. Die Equites als berittene Hopliten_, in
_Abhdl. d. bayer. Akad. d. Wiss._ xxiii (1905). 267-317; _Die
Castores als Schutzgötter des röm. Equitatus_, in _Hermes_, xl
(1905). 101-15; _Contribution à l’histoire de l’equitatus_, in
_Comptes rendus de l’acad. des inscriptions et belles-lettres_,
1904. ii. 190-201; Pellegrini, G., _Fregi arcaici etruschi
in terracotta_, etc., in Milani, L. A., _Studi e materiali
archeol. e numis._ i. 87-118.
CHAPTER V
THE AUSPICES
I. _Auspicia Privata_
Auspices (auspicia) were signs sent by the gods through which they
declared their will to men. Those given in answer to prayer were
impetrativa (or impetrita), those sent unasked oblativa. The first were
necessarily favorable; the second might be either favorable or the
contrary.[578] To take or to hold auspices was to seek such signs in due
form. Auspicia, or the singular auspicium, also designated the right or
the power to perform the function. They were not a means of prophecy of
future events but of ascertaining whether the deity approved a proposed
action.[579] With reference to their object and to the persons qualified
to take them, they were of two kinds, private and public. Whereas the
public auspices, taken in behalf of the state, belonged exclusively
to magistrates, the private were open to all;[580] and in early
times a Roman always resorted to them before beginning any important
business.[581] Though it was permissible to consult any deity,[582] the
greatest weight attached to the approval of the supreme god Jupiter.[583]
The plebeians, who as long as they were excluded from the magistracies
were necessarily debarred from the auspicia publica, enjoyed equally with
the patricians all private rights of religion; in fact if the nobles
had wished, they possessed no legal means of preventing the holding of
auspices or the performance of any other sacred rite in private plebeian
houses. Not only is it stated that all had a right to auspicate,[584]
but the formula for summoning troops given by Cincius[585] implies that
the soldiers, who were mainly plebeian, were accustomed to perform the
rite. We find accordingly the elder Cato, a plebeian, attending to the
ceremony in his own home.[586] The patricians, however, who believed
themselves to be nearer and dearer to the gods than were the plebeians,
and who in their struggle to keep themselves a closed caste and the
offices barred against the lower social class, declared that conubium
if granted would disturb the private as well as public auspices.[587]
But this assertion need not signify that the plebeians had no private
auspices, it might indicate merely a difference between the plebeian
and patrician ceremonies, naturally implying the superiority of the
latter. Again when on a certain occasion according to Livy a tribune
of the plebs inquired of a patrician why a plebeian could not be made
consul, the reply was that no plebeian had the auspices, reiterating that
the decemvirs had forbidden conubium to prevent the disturbance of the
ceremony by uncertainty of birth.[588] Reference might here be simply
to the auspicia publica, with which alone the consul was concerned.
However this may be, the patrician claim was indignantly repudiated
by the plebeians, and the historian can say no more than that it was
“perhaps true.” Another passage from Livy usually interpreted in support
of the theory that the patricians alone had private auspices represents
them, before the opening of the offices to the commons, as saying, “So
peculiar to us are the auspices that not only the patrician magistrates
whom the people choose are elected under the auspices, but we ourselves
under the sanction of the same rite without a vote of the people appoint
the interrex, and we as private persons hold auspices, which they do not
hold even as magistrates.”[589] This passage is perfectly intelligible
to one who bears in mind that in the late republic private auspices had
disappeared,[590] and that therefore when the word auspicia is used
without qualification by a late republican or imperial writer, it always
has reference to the public ceremonies.[591] In the quotation just given,
accordingly, nothing more is meant than that the patricians, who have the
exclusive right to the offices, are alone competent to perform the public
religious ceremonies which belong to the magistrates. Reference in the
quotation to the auspices of private persons signifies that when there
was no magistrate competent to hold the election of consuls, the public
auspices returned to the senate, the patrician members of which proceeded
under auspication to appoint an interrex for holding the elections. In
this case the senatorial patricians, it was asserted, attended to the
ceremony not as magistrates but as private persons, though the rites were
themselves public. As distinguished from magistrates, the senators were
privati. It was not, then, as mere citizens but as patrician members of
the senate that they performed the rite. Further light is thrown on this
subject by the fact that in the agitation for the opening of the augural
and pontifical colleges to the plebeians in 300, the patricians repeated
the assertion that with them alone were auspices, they alone had family
(gens), they alone possessed true imperium and auspicium in peace and
war.[592] This claim they had the effrontery to make despite the fact
that plebeian consuls had been taking public auspices for more than
sixty years. In the pride of their blood they claimed that theirs alone
were strictly legal (iustum). Notwithstanding such partisan assertions
the facts thus far adduced lead unmistakably to the conclusion that
the plebeians equally with the patricians enjoyed the right to private
auspices.[593]
II. _Auspicia Publica Impetrativa_
The right to public auspices belonged primarily to patrician
magistracies[594]—those which in the early republic were filled only by
patricians, but which continued to be called patrician after they were
open to plebeians. All elections and appointments to such offices were
auspicated;[595] and their incumbents were expected to seek the previous
approval of Jupiter for every important act of their administration.[596]
The king, interrex, dictator, consuls, praetors, and censors had the
auspicia maxima; the others the minora.[597] The praetor, as colleague
of the consuls, was elected under the same auspices with them, that is,
in the same meeting of the assembly, whereas the censors, not being
colleagues of the consuls, were elected under different auspices.
Between magistrates who were not colleagues there could be no collision
in the auspicia impetrativa; those of the censors neither strengthened
nor vitiated those of the consuls or praetors, nor were strengthened
or vitiated by them. In case of a conflict between colleagues, the
greater auspices annulled the lesser, and equal auspices annulled each
other.[598] For the exercise of a function properly belonging to a
magistracy, the incumbent performed the ceremony at his own will and
pleasure, unless expressly forbidden by a superior;[599] but one who
undertook a deputed duty had to ask the auspicium of a magistrate who
was competent to perform the duty in his own right. Thus the quaestor,
who was not qualified by right of his office to call the comitia
centuriata, found it necessary to do so in his capital prosecutions.
In such a case he asked of the praetor or consul the right to hold
auspices for summoning this assembly.[600] Whether the pontifex maximus
held auspices in his own name, or was obliged, like the quaestor, to
apply for them to a higher secular official, is unknown; at all events
it was necessary for him to auspicate the comitia calata, over which he
presided.[601] It seems probable that the tribunes originally did not
have the right as they were not magistrates; but when they came to be
so considered, they acquired the auspicium. All magistrates—necessarily
including the tribunes—who convoked the senate had previously to perform
the ceremony;[602] Cicero[603] seems to include the tribunes among
the magistrates who had the auspicium; and as further proof the very
expression “patriciorum (magistratuum) auspicia”[604] used by Messala
implies the existence of “plebeiorum magistratuum auspicia.” It was not
the custom of the tribunes, however, to auspicate their assemblies of the
plebs.[605]
For assistance in auspication the magistrate summoned any person he
pleased, who was rarely if ever a public augur.[606] An augur,[607]
whether private or official, was a person who knew how to hold and to
interpret auspices.[608] A college of public augurs[609] for the service
of the state was established in the most primitive times. Probably
comprising three members, one from each tribe, it was gradually increased
till under Sulla it reached fifteen.[610] The members of the college were
neither magistrates[611] nor prophets. They were rather the wise,[612]
experienced[613] keepers and expounders of a sacred science and
art[614]—the “interpreters of Jupiter All-Great and Good.”[615] Having
to do with religion, they were sacerdotes, like the pontiffs, though not
offerers of sacrifice (flamines).[616] The functions which they exercised
independently of the magistrates included the inauguration of religious
officials (inaugurare sacerdotes), the blessing of fields twice a year,
and of the people after the close of a war.[617] In attending to such
duties (auguria) only did they exercise their right to the auspices.[618]
In a dependent though far more influential position they acted as the
professionally skilled advisers and assistants of the magistrates in
all matters of peace and war.[619] If a magistrate was not himself an
augur,[620] it was of the utmost importance to have their service;
for the science of discovering and interpreting the divine omens was
intricate, mistakes were easy, and the slightest oversight might vitiate
the whole business in hand. When in doubt as to the validity of the
ceremony, either the magistrate to whom it belonged or the senate could
refer the case to the college of augurs, which thereupon gave an opinion
in the form of a decree. The senate then acted on the matter according
to its judgment.[621] In case a law had been passed, a magistrate
elected, or any public act performed against its wishes, it could
inquire of the college of augurs whether the election or other act had
been duly auspicated; and should a defect be alleged, the senate could
annul the act or request the magistrate to resign. It required unusual
courage in a man to keep himself in office in defiance of the authority
of the senate and of the religious feeling of the whole people.[622]
These considerations account for the great importance attaching to the
presence of augurs in the comitia—a subject to be treated in another
connection.[623]
The service of augurs was most needed in establishing the terrestrial
templum[624]—a carefully marked out, oriented spot which the magistrate
occupied while performing the rite.[625] Whereas the commander of an
army generally made use of chicken auspices (signa ex tripudiis), which
did not require their assistance,[626] they were doubtless always
called upon to institute templa in or near the city.[627] For the
exercise of their art they divided the world, so far as known to them,
into augural districts. The central district was the city, limited
by the pomerium,[628] beyond which, probably extending to the first
milestone,[629] lay a zone termed ager effatus,[630] whose boundaries
were marked by cippi.[631] The rest of the world within their sphere
of knowledge they divided into ager Romanus, which in its larger sense
included the two districts above mentioned, Gabinus, peregrinus,
hosticus, and incertus.[632] For the comitia the two inner regions
were alone important: (1) the auspication of assemblies held in the
city had to be performed within the pomerium; (2) as often as the
magistrate in passing from the city to the Campus Martius to hold the
comitia centuriata crossed the pomerium,[633] or more strictly the brook
Petronia,[634] he was obliged to take the special auspices of crossing.
Beyond the ager effatus assemblies were not ordinarily held.
Originally the most common form of divination must have been the
watching of the flight of birds, for it is from this ceremony that
the word auspicium is derived.[635] Legend accordingly asserts that
Romulus founded the city on the Palatine under the auspices of twelve
vultures.[636] Before the end of the republic, however, all other
forms of public auspicia impetrativa in the city had given way to the
caelestia, especially the lightning and thunder.[637] The reason is that
the heavenly signs could be most easily understood and carried greatest
weight; whereas other auspices had to be held for each individual act,
the celestial omens of the morning served the magistrate for all his
undertakings during the entire day.[638] The effect of heavenly signs on
assemblies of the people, however, was peculiar. Not only were comitia
and contiones interrupted by storms;[639] not only was it impious to hold
an assembly while it was lightning or thundering,[640] but even while the
magistrate was auspicating at daybreak, if a flash of lightning appeared
on the left—a sign favorable for every other undertaking—he dared not
hold the assembly on that day.[641] Some favorable comitial sign the
magistrate was supposed to perceive,[642] but what it was we do not know.
The general rule that the auspices should be taken for an act on the very
spot on which the magistrate intended to perform the act applied to the
comitial auspices. For meetings on the Capitoline Hill they probably used
the temple of Jupiter, dedicated for all time;[643] for assemblies in the
comitium the rostra, also a templum;[644] and for the comitia centuriata
the president’s platform in the Campus Martius.[645] Not only patrician
magistrates but also tribunes of the plebs occupied templa in transacting
business with the people.[646]
Between midnight and morning[647] on the day of assembly the magistrate
repaired to the templum.[648] There, placing himself on a solid[649] seat
at the door, usually facing eastward, he watched the heavens (spectio).
Meanwhile he first asked the attendant, who always sat near,[650]
whether there was silence.[651] If the answer was affirmative, he
prayed Jupiter for a sign, which he described in a formula termed legum
dictio,[652] whereupon the attendant declared he saw it.[653] In case
of non-appearance of the sign or of a disturbance of the observation,
the auspication was deferred to another morning.[654] Before the time
of Cicero, however, the ceremony had been so reduced to a pretence as
practically to eliminate the possibility of failure.[655]
Both curiate[656] and centuriate[657] assemblies were auspicated.
Although for the tribal assemblies the question is more difficult, it
seems reasonably certain that whereas a patrician magistrate took the
auspices for the comitia tributa,[658] plebeian magistrates (tribunes and
aediles of the plebs) did not.[659]
As to whether contiones were auspicated we are not clearly informed. The
question concerns those only which were held by patrician magistrates.
The auspication of comitia necessarily extended to the contio immediately
preceding.[660] It is known, too, that the censors auspicated the
lustral gathering of the centuries,[661] hence we may infer that
magistrates and sacerdotes were accustomed to take auspices for formal
religious assemblies.[662] With these exceptions contiones were doubtless
held without auspices by patrician as well as by plebeian magistrates.
III. _Auspicia Publica Oblativa_
If Jupiter had approved the holding of an assembly, the magistrate
was not for that reason necessarily done with auspices. Though the
impetrativa may have favored, prohibitive oblativa were still possible,
for circumstances might cause the god to change his mind so as to forbid
what he had previously sanctioned; and the warning omen might come at
any time before the act was completed. Sometimes the magistrate himself
discovered, or for the accomplishment of his purpose pretended to
discover, the evil omen. When for instance Pompey was holding an assembly
for the election of praetors, and Cato, a political opponent, offered
himself as a candidate, Pompey, seeing the assembly unanimous for this
man, declared that he heard a clap of thunder, and thus by an adjournment
succeeded in preventing the election.[663] Sometimes the magistrate
was informed of the omen by (1) a private person, (2) an augur, or
(3) another magistrate. In the first two cases the report was termed
nuntiatio, in the third obnuntiatio.[664] Information received from a
private citizen the president could credit or not as he saw fit, or he
could declare it irrelevant;[665] but the law compelled him to accept the
nuntiatio of an augur or the obnuntiatio of another magistrate.
Prohibitive auspicia oblativa included evil omens of all kinds. When
in 310 the dictator called the curiae for passing the lex de imperio,
it chanced that the Curia Faucia was the first to vote (principium).
Now this curia was ill omened because on two earlier occasions it had
happened to be principium at a time of great national disaster. The
dictator accordingly adjourned the meeting till the following day, when
he again summoned it after renewing the auspicia impetrativa.[666] A
case of epilepsy, by vitiating the business of the assembly, required
an adjournment; and for that reason the malady was called the comitial
sickness.[667] In the later republic the chief oblativa had come to be
caelestia; and it could happen that the auspicia impetrativa of any
magistrate might as oblativa vitiate the comitia of another. For this
reason when a higher magistrate was about to hold an assembly, he forbade
the taking of auspices by all inferior to him, for fear they might annul
his proceedings.[668]
Although the augurs had neither the auspicia impetrativa nor the right
to watch the sky for unfavorable omens,[669] they were competent to
report (nuntiatio) unexpected oblativa to the magistrates.[670] Their
object in attending the comitia accordingly was not only to assist the
president with their special knowledge,[671] but also to witness the
religious legality of the proceeding. In the latter function the augur
derived great influence[672] from the possibility of an investigation
into such legality by the augural college and the senate, which might
result in the annulment of the act.[673] For this reason witnessing
augurs were granted the privilege of adjourning the assembly in case they
perceived unfavorable omens.[674] Cicero[675] describes in detail such an
adjournment of an electoral assembly of centuries: “Behold the day for
the election of Dolabella! The prerogative century is drawn by lot, he
(the augur) remains quiet. The vote is announced, he is silent. The first
class is called and the announcement made. Then as usual the suffragia
(of the equites?) were summoned; then the second class is called. All
this happened more quickly than I have told it.
“When the business is over, that excellent augur says, ‘We adjourn to
another day.’ O remarkable impudence! What (omen) had you seen? What had
you felt? What had you heard?” Antony, who was both consul and augur,
presiding over the electoral assembly, allowed the voting to continue
till a majority was nearly reached in favor of Dolabella, when, making
use of the augural formula, he adjourned the meeting. This procedure was
in itself legal; but Antony had from the beginning of the year boasted
of his intention to prevent through augury this man’s election. As
only magistrates, through their right to the spectio, to be explained
hereafter, could with certainty predict an evil omen,[676] it was evident
that Antony, acting merely as augur, made a fictitious report.
Augurs were always present at meetings of the curiae,[677] of the
centuries,[678] and of the tribes under the presidency of a patrician
magistrate.[679] That they attended the meetings of the plebs as well
and had the same relation to the plebeian as to the other assemblies
is necessarily implied in Cicero’s[680] question, “What shows greater
religious power than to be able to grant or refuse to grant the right to
transact business with the people or with the plebs?”
If the person who reported the evil omen was not an augur but a
magistrate, the president was equally bound to heed it and to dismiss
the assembly;[681] and the force of the obnuntiatio was not in any way
affected by the relative official rank of the two persons concerned.
When accordingly a higher magistrate had set a day for an assembly,
he forbade all inferior magistrates not only to take the auspicia
impetrativa,[682] but also to watch the sky—de caelo servare—for any
purpose on that day, for fear that some omen unfavorable to the comitia
might be seen.[683] A consul for instance could prevent a quaestor from
scanning the heavens on any particular day; and the senate on the rare
occasions when it felt itself sufficiently strong, suspended for a
particular act of the assembly the right of all magistrates to receive
and to announce unfavorable omens.[684] In the absence of senatorial
interference it remained possible for any higher magistrate to scan the
heavens—de caelo servare—on an assembly day appointed by another, and to
vitiate the comitia by reporting an unfavorable omen. We find accordingly
a consul obnuntiating against a colleague[685] and against the pontifex
maximus,[686] a praetor against a tribune of the plebs,[687] and a
tribune against a consul[688] or a censor,[689] as well as against a
colleague.[690]
So certain was it that a magistrate who looked for a bad omen would
see one that the expression “to watch the sky” became equivalent to
discovering an unpropitious sign. The rule was therefore formulated
that “religion forbade the transaction of any business with the people
when it was known that the sky was watched.”[691] If accordingly a
magistrate announced that he intended to scan the heavens on the day
appointed for an assembly, this declaration was in itself sufficient in
the ordinary course of events to compel a postponement. In the year 57
Milo, a tribune of the plebs, pushed the custom to extremes by declaring
his intention to observe the sky on all comitial days.[692] Strictly the
observation had to be made and reported before the assembly met. “Can
any one divine beforehand,” Cicero[693] asks, “what defect there will be
in the auspices, except the man who has already determined to watch the
heavens? This in the first place the law forbids to be done in the time
of an assembly; and if any one has been observing the sky, he is bound
to give notice of it, not after the comitia are assembled, but before
they meet.” In the case belonging to the year 57 referred to above,
Milo, the tribune, came into the Campus Martius before midnight in order
to anticipate the arrival of the consul Metellus, who wished to hold
the elections. The assembly ordinarily met at sunrise, and could not
convene after midday. Milo accordingly remained on that day till noon,
without seeing the consul. Then Metellus demanded that for the future the
obnuntiatio should be served on him in the Forum; it was unnecessary,
he said, to go to the Campus before daybreak; he promised to be in the
comitium at the first hour of the day. As Milo was coming into the Forum
before sunrise on the next comitial day, he discovered Metellus stealing
hurriedly to the Campus by an unusual route. The tribune came upon him
and served the notice.[694]
The consul’s announcement of intention to watch the sky might be
strengthened by a proclamation declaring certain or all comitial days for
the remainder of the year to be holidays, on which the people could not
legally transact business in assembly.[695]
Although the obnuntiatio doubtless originated in the early republic,
it played no considerable part in political strife till after the
Gracchi. A great impetus to the abuse of the power was given by the
Aelian and Fufian laws, which were probably two plebiscites[696] passed
about 150.[697] What features of these statutes were new has not been
precisely determined. It is certain, however, that they made possible
the condition in which we find the spectio and obnuntiatio before the
legislation of Clodius on the subject in 58. As the tribune did not
originally have the obnuntiatio, we may infer that in all probability
these laws granted him the right to exercise it against patrician
magistrates in the way described above. Similarly from the fact that
the plebeian tribal assembly was not originally subject to religious
obstruction on the part of the government, it is reasonable to conclude
that the Aelian and Fufian statutes gave the patrician magistrates the
obnuntiatio against that body.[698] It was equivalent to a power of veto,
which the aristocracy could now exercise upon tribunician legislation,
hence Cicero[699] regards the two statutes as most holy[700] means of
“weakening and repressing the fury of the tribunes,” and as the “surest
protection of the commonwealth.”[701] Notwithstanding the opinion of
Lange,[702] that the obnuntiatio was restricted to legislation, it
seems clear from the words of Cicero,[703] as well as from the lack of
reference in the sources to such a limitation, that it applied equally
to elections. So long, however, as the nobility could depend for support
upon the tribunes, it had little need of such a power. But in the last
years of the republic, after the tribunician veto had been undermined by
Ti. Gracchus and Appuleius Saturninus, and the tribunes were again acting
independently of the senate as in the early history of their office,
optimates and populares, taking full advantage of the Aelian and Fufian
laws, alike exploited the auspices recklessly for partisan objects. Their
behavior was a sign of both religious and political disintegration.
Vatinius, tribune of the plebs in 59, had the boldness utterly to
disregard these statutes;[704] and in 58 the tribune Clodius repealed
them in so far as they affected legislation,[705] whereas for elections
the obnuntiatio still remained in force.[706] The misuse of auspices for
political purposes dates back, according to Livy,[707] to the beginning
of the Samnite wars. Although this may be an anticipation of later
conditions, there can be no doubt as to the attitude of statesmen toward
the custom in the closing years of the Punic wars.[708] In the time of
Clodius and Cicero, while some maintained a sincere belief in these
ceremonies, doubtless the great majority of public men saw in their
use nothing more than political chicanery calculated, by deceiving the
multitude, to keep the real power in the hands of a few.[709]
Rubino, J., _Untersuchungen über röm. Verfassung und
Geschichte_, 34-106; Nissen, H., _Das Templum_; Mommsen,
_Röm. Staatsrecht_, i. 76-116; Marquardt, J., _Röm.
Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 397-415; Lange, L., _Röm. Altertümer_,
3 vols, index s. Augures, Auspicia, Inauguratio, etc.; _De
legibus Aelia et Fufia commentatio_, in _Kleine Schriften_,
i. 274-341; Herzog, E., _Geschichte und System der röm.
Staatsverfassung_, 621-30, see also index s. Augures,
Auspicien; Müller-Deecke, _Etrusker_, ii. 114-27; Gilbert,
O., _Geschichte und Topographie der Stadt Rom im Altertum_, 3
vols., index s. Auguraculum, Augures; Wissowa, G., _Religion
und Kultus der Römer_, 450-60; _Augures_, in Pauly-Wissowa,
_Real-Encycl._ ii. 2313-44; _Auspicium_, ibid. ii. 2580-7;
Aust, E., _Religion der Römer_, index s. Auguraculum,
Augurn, Auspicia, etc.; _Iuppiter Elicius_, in Roscher,
_Ausführliches Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie_, ii.
656-61; Bouché-Leclerq, A., _Histoire de la Divination dans
Antiquité_, iv. 134-285 (sources and modern literature, p. 180
f.); _Augures_, in Daremberg et Saglio, _Dict._ i. 550-60;
_Auspicia_, ibid. i. 580-5; Spinazzola, V., _Augures_, in
Ruggiero, _Dizionario epigrafico_, i. 778-810; Ruggiero,
ibid. i. 950 f.; De Marchi, A., _Il Culto privato di Roma
antica_, i. 152 ff., 232 ff.; Valeton, I. M. J., _De modis
auspicandi Romanorum_, in _Mnemosyne_, N. S. xvii (1889).
275-325, 418-52; xviii. 208-64, 406-56; _De iure obnuntiandi
comitiis et conciliis_, ibid. xix (1891). 75-113, 229-70; _De
templis Romanis_, ibid. xx (1892). 338-90; xxi. 62-91, 397-440;
xxiii. 15-79; xxv. 93-144, 361-85; xxvi. 1-93 (papers in the
last two vols. are on the pomerium); Luterbacher, F., _Der
Prodigienglaube und Prodigienstil der Römer_, 2 ed.; Wülker,
L., _Die geschichtliche Entwickelung des Prodigienswesens bei
den Römern_; Willoughby, W. W., _Political Theories of the
Ancient World_, ch. xv.
PART II
THE ASSEMBLIES
ORGANIZATION, PROCEDURE, AND FUNCTIONS, RESOLUTIONS, STATUTES, AND CASES