THE HISTORY OF ROME AND THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY
Heroic society in the period of youthful vigour above described
contains within itself, rigorously repressed, and in fact made into a
support, the element of opposition; the slaves, clients or vassals,
that is to say the plebs. But this element little by little succeeds in
detaching itself from and opposing itself to the society, engaging it
in a continual and undisguised conflict, so as by degrees to overthrow
this old society and give life and form to a new society of which it
is itself the material: a democratic society, the popular republic.
Vico believes this process to be uniform in all peoples; but since
references to histories other than that of Rome are either absent or
very vague (he hardly mentions the origin of the Athenian democracy)
the description of this process appears in the pages of the New Science
as a fragment of Roman history, or as we should nowadays call it the
social history of Rome.
Vico's guesses about the population and primitive culture of Italy are
of no great importance. The subject belongs rather to archaeology and
ethnography than to history, and Vico did not make a special study
of it. In the _De antiquissima sapientia Italorum_ he had provided
the origins of Rome with a basis in an Italian civilisation of high
antiquity, earlier than the Greek and derived from Egypt, which
the Romans absorbed in a manner agreeing with their character; by
rejecting, that is to say, its theoretical hypotheses while taking over
their practical results, just as they adopted from the Etruscans their
tragic religion and their art of tactics, and as they later adopted
laws from Athens and Sparta. In this way their ignorance and savagery
remained unchanged, and hence they spoke the language of philosophers
without being philosophical. In his later writings Vico still for a
time maintained the priority and independence of the earliest Italian
civilisation as regards that of Greece, and considered Pythagoras less
as the founder than as the student of Italian wisdom. Finally, however,
he seems to have given up this view, just as he definitely abandoned
that which explained the origins of Roman religion, language, customs
and law by the imitation of foreign peoples and "frankly confessed that
he had been in error here" owing to the example of Plato's _Cratylus._
What conditions brought about the rise of Rome Vico does not precisely
say. He is certain that if Rome and the world did not begin together,
at least the foundation of Rome was a new beginning. The point of
departure which he assumes is the asylum of Romulus, consisting of
the "families" of fathers who gave their hospitality to wanderers
and made them into _famuli._ There was no Trojan colonisation; Vico
knows Bochart's treatise (1663) criticising the legend of Aeneas's
arrival in Italy and accepts its conclusions, which only confirm the
doubts already entertained by certain ancient historians. For Vico,
the Trojan origin of Rome is a legend sprung from the union of two
different examples of national arrogance: that of the Greeks, who made
such a noise about the Trojan war and forced their Aeneas into the
history of Rome, and that of the Romans, who accepted him in order to
boast of a distinguished foreign origin. The legend moreover could
not have arisen much before the time of the war with Pyrrhus, when
Rome began to acquire a taste for things Greek. In order to explain
the infusion of Greek names and myths into the story of primitive Rome
and the similarity of the Roman alphabet to the ancient Greek, Vico
would incline rather to the hypothesis that early in their history the
Romans conquered and destroyed some Greek colony on the Latin coast, of
which all trace has since been lost in the mists of antiquity; and that
through receiving its inhabitants in Rome as refugees and allies, they
came under the influence of several Hellenic traditions and customs.
Vico does not spend much time over the historical events of the royal
period. Here in fact lay one of the chief differences between his
criticism and that which had already been originated and was continued
after his time dealing with the first centuries of Roman history. Vico
aims not at substituting historical for legendary anecdotes but at
understanding the essence of institutions and the ways in which they
change. He uses two guiding principles, as we have seen in considering
the royal period: first, that it was a period not of monarchy but
of aristocracy and that therefore the type of heroic society or the
patriarchal republic is applicable to it: secondly, that the names
of the kings are symbols or "poetic characters" for the institutions
of this society. In Vico's judgment, as we have had occasion to
observe, the constitution of Servius Tullius should not be considered
the basis of popular liberty, as the later Romans considered it; it
was really the basis of the liberty of the feudal lords, since by it
the patricians granted to the plebeians the bonitary tenure of their
land together with the duty of paying rent to and serving at their
own expense in war themselves, the patricians. And Junius Brutus, in
driving out the Tarquins and replacing them by two consuls or annual
aristocratic kings, restored to the Roman republic its primitive form;
that is to say, he delivered the lords from the domination of their
tyrants but left the people under the domination of their lords.
The patricians' oppression of the plebeians after the restoration
of Junius Brutus and the struggles and resistance caused by it
constitute the soul of the new development and contain the secret of
the greatness of Rome, the "key to universal Roman history," _clavis
historiae Romanae universae._ Polybius's explanation of this greatness
is too vague. He describes it as due to the virtue or the religion
of the patricians and relates the facts of this virtue rather than
their cause. Vico also criticises Machiavelli, at one time because he
adduces certain civil and military institutions as the cause of Rome's
greatness without investigating the cause of those institutions, that
is to say the character of Roman society: at another time for adducing
what was only a partial cause, the high spirit of the plebeians. He
thinks Plutarch worst of all, since envy of the virtue and wisdom
of Rome leads him to ascribe her greatness to fortune. The fact was
that Rome subjugated the other cities of Latium and then Italy and
the world because her heroism was still young, while among the other
Latin peoples it had begun to decay. Thanks to this youthful vigour
the patricians were strong enough to preserve their order and the
religion which formed its foundation and safeguard (the nobles, Vico
observes at this point, were always and everywhere religious, so that
the first sign of contempt for religion among them is a symptom of
national decadence); the plebeians were spirited enough to demand a
share in religion, auspices and all civil rights; the lawyers, lastly,
were wise enough to interpret the old laws and apply them to any new
case that might arise, and strove with all their might to alter the
text of these laws as little and as slowly as possible. These were the
chief causes of the growth and permanence of the Roman empire; for
in all its political changes it contrived to remain faithful to its
principles. Prowess in war was another result of the rivalry of the
orders; since the nobles were naturally consecrated to the safety of
their country, as the only means of preserving the civil privileges of
their order, and the plebeians accomplished brilliant deeds in order
to prove themselves worthy of patrician honours. And when the Romans
extended their conquests and their victories over the whole world, they
made use of four rules which they had already applied to the plebeians
within Rome itself. They reduced barbarian provinces to the position of
clients by planting colonies in them: they granted civilised provinces
bonitary tenure of their land: to Italy they gave the quiritary tenure:
and to the municipia, the towns which had earned better treatment, they
accorded the same equality with themselves which the plebs had finally
won.
The result of the first struggles, in which the point at issue was
according to Vico the bonitary possession of land (a right already
recognised in the constitution of Servius, but cancelled by the
nobles in return for arrears of rent), is seen in the tribunate, and
later, when the plebeians claimed the right of quiritary tenure, in
the laws of the Twelve Tables, ratifying this plebeian victory. But
the law of the Twelve Tables represented at the same time the victory
of written law, the end of the secrecy with which the laws had been
fenced round by the patricians, who alone knew, understood, interpreted
and therefore applied them as they thought fit. This publication and
codification of a written law cannot have been benevolently granted by
the patricians out of that anxiety "not to despise the wishes of the
plebs" of which Livy speaks; rather they must have resisted it with
all the stubbornness which Dionysius of Halicarnassus describes and
expresses in the phrase "_mores patrios servandos, leges ferri non
oportere_" (our fathers' customs must be preserved, and laws must not
be passed).
Later historians decorated the origin of the Twelve Tables with
various legends. They told, among other things, of the mission sent
by the decemvirs to Athens to bring back new laws: a tale given by
Livy and Dionysius, but unknown to Polybius and discredited by Cicero.
How, in the savage aloofness of primitive nations, between whom oral
communication could only have been instituted by the necessities of
warfare, alliances and commerce, could the fame of Solon's wisdom have
crossed the seas from distant Attica to Rome? How could the Romans of
that time have possessed such accurate knowledge of the quality of
Athenian law as to believe it capable of setting at rest the strife
between their plebeians and their nobles? How could ambassadors have
travelled between Greece and those Romans whom seventy-two years later
the Greeks of Tarentum could still maltreat as strangers? And what
shall we say of ambassadors who returned carrying with them the Greek
laws from Athens but without knowing what they meant; so that but
for the coincidence by which Hermodorus the pupil of Heraclitus, an
exile from his country, happened to be in Rome, the Romans would have
been unable to make any use of this unintelligible and inaccessible
treasure? Again, how could Hermodorus have translated the laws into
Latin of such purity that Diodorus Siculus pronounced it devoid of the
slightest taint of Hellenism, and with a perfection unattained by any
subsequent writer of any period in a translation from the Greek? How
did he contrive to clothe Greek ideas in Latin words so appropriate
(for instance, _auctoritas_) that Greeks, Dio Cassius among them,
declare that their own language has no corresponding words by which
to explain them? Heraclitus's letter to Hermodorus must have been
conveyed by the same mail that served Pythagoras in his distant
voyages up and down the world: it is, in fact, an imposture of the
first quality, and the whole story of the Athenian origin of these laws
is due to the arrogance of scholars, who derived them first from the
other Latin peoples (such as the Aequi), then from the Greek cities
of Italy, then from Sparta and finally from Athens, with whose name,
thanks to the renown of the Athenian philosophers, they were at last
satisfied. No doubt, the laws of the Twelve Tables present resemblances
not only to Athenian or Spartan laws but to those of various nations,
the Mosaic code among others; but this is due to the uniformity of
national history. No doubt, the decemvirs were in antiquity supposed
to have originated laws bearing clear traces of Greek influence, such
as that prohibiting the Greek style of mourning at funerals: but this
is because as we have seen the decemviral legislation, like the names
of the various kings, became a "poetic character," and to it were
referred all laws later recorded in the public archives which tended
to the equalisation of liberty. But the original law of the Twelve
Tables, with its primitive rudeness, inhumanity, cruelty and ferocity,
which agrees so ill with the period of highly-developed civilisation at
Athens, is a document of the greatest value for the ancient natural law
of the Latin peoples, and the customs which had existed among them from
the age of Saturn.
Quiritary tenure of land and a written code of law once gained, the
struggle recommenced over the question of the right of marriage. The
true meaning of this contest has been lost among the absurdities
written on the subject by the ancient historians themselves, in the
belief that its basis was the desire on the part of the plebeians (who
were little more than wretched and common slaves) to be allowed to form
connexions with the nobles. This error has made Roman history even less
credible than the legendary history of Greece; for if we do not know
the meaning of the latter, the former is in opposition to the true
order of human desires. It shows us a plebs aspiring first to nobility,
secondly to offices and magistracies, and finally to wealth: whereas
men desire first of all wealth, then offices in the state, and lastly
nobility. What the Roman plebs really claimed was not _"connubio, cum
patribus"_ but _"connubio, patrum"_: not the right of connexion by
marriage with the nobles--a claim which they would not have wished
to make, and was at bottom unimportant--but the right of contracting
solemn marriages as the nobles did. For without such solemn marriages,
without privilege of the auspices, the plebeians were in fact unable
to enjoy the quiritary tenure of land and to transmit it to their
families, deprived as they were of descent, kindred and relatives. The
demand for _connubio_ was, in a word, simply equivalent to a demand for
the rights of citizens, and it was satisfied by the Canuleian law.
The next demand of the plebeians was for privileges depending on
public rights. Of these they gained first the _imperium_ together
with the consulship, and lastly the offices of priest and pontifex,
which carried with them knowledge of the law. In this way the system
of seigneurial liberty planned by Servius Tullius grew into a system
of popular liberty, and the census, which was originally paid to the
patricians, was paid hereafter into the public treasury, out of which
the expenses of the plebeians in war were paid. The tribunes now
proceeded to demand the power of legislation; for the previous laws,
the Horatian and Hortensian, had not made plebiscites binding on the
whole people, except upon the two special occasions which led to the
secession of the plebs to the Aventine and Janiculum respectively.
This new victory, which established the superiority of the plebs and
transformed the aristocratic into a popular republic, was the Publilian
law due to the Dictator Publilius Philo and decreeing that plebiscites
should "be binding on all the Quirites" (_omnes quirites tenerent_).
The authority of the senate came out of the struggle somewhat
impaired, for while formerly the fathers had acted as "_auctores_"
for the deliberations of the people, they were now the proposers of
law to the people, which the latter then approved according to the
formula submitted to them by the senate, or else "antiquated" the
proposal (_antiquo,_ to vote against a measure) and decided to make no
innovation. Besides this, the plebs won the last office to be conceded
to them, that of censor. The Petelian law, a few years later, abolished
the last remnant of feudalism, the bond (_nexus_) which made the
plebeians the bondmen of the nobles for debt and often compelled them
to spend their lives working in their private prisons.
Some time later, when the division between patriciate and plebs with
the corresponding _comitia curiata_ and _tributa_ was replaced by
Fabius Maximus's division according to the property of citizens, who
were now grouped into three classes of senators, knights and plebeians,
the order of the nobles disappeared entirely: "senator" and "knight"
were no longer synonymous with "patrician," nor "plebeian" with
"base-born." The Senate however preserved sovereign dominion over the
finances of the Roman Empire, though the Empire itself had passed to
the plebeians; and thanks to the so-called "_senatusconsultum ultimum_"
it maintained this dominion by force of arms as long as Rome remained
a popular republic. Whenever the people attempted to take it into
their own hands, the Senate armed the Consuls, who forthwith declared
traitors and put to death plebeian tribunes who had originated these
attempts. This may be explained as a right of feudal sovereignty
subject to a higher sovereign, a view confirmed by the language of
Scipio Nasica when he armed the people against Tiberius Gracchus:
"whoever wishes for the safety of the republic, let him follow the
consul" (_qui rempublicam salvam velit, consulem sequatur_). And
indeed, once the road to office was opened by law to the multitude
which rules in a popular republic, there was nothing left in time of
peace but to contest its rule not by laws but by force of arms, and
for those in power to pass laws for self-enrichment like the Gracchan
agrarian measures, resulting at once in civil wars at home and unjust
wars abroad.
With the triumph of the plebs and the change of constitution from
aristocratic to popular, the whole face of society changed. In the
first place, the aspect of the family changed. Here, during the rule
of the patriciate, testamentary succession was admitted only at a late
date and was easily cancelled, in order to keep wealth in patrician
hands: kindred even in the seventh degree excluded the emancipated son
from the paternal heritage: emancipation had the effect of a penalty:
legitimising was not allowed: and it is doubtful whether a woman could
inherit. But in the democratic society, since for the plebs wealth,
strength and power all depended on the number of their children, family
feeling began to grow up, and the praetors began to consider its claims
and to satisfy them by means of the _"honorum possessiones,"_ thus
remedying the faults or shortcomings of wills and facilitating the
diffusion of wealth, the only thing desired by the common people.
A change took place, again, in the meaning of the institutions of
property. The civil tenure was no longer a matter of public right,
but was dispersed among the various private tenures of the citizens
now forming the body of the popular state. "Eminent" tenure no longer
signifies the strongest kind of tenure, unencumbered by any actual
charge, even a public charge, but applies simply to an estate free
from any private charge. Quiritary tenure is no longer that of which
the noble was feudal lord and under the obligation to aid his client,
the plebeian, if ousted from it: it has become a private civil tenure,
capable of being defended by a civil suit as opposed to the bonitary
which could be maintained by possession only.
The forms of legal process were pruned of the luxurious growth
of fictions, solemn formulae and symbolic acts, simplified and
rationalised: the intellect, the thought of the legislator was
brought into play and the citizens conformed to an idea of a common
rational utility, understood as spiritual in value. Causes, which were
originally formulae safeguarded by accurate and precise language,
became affairs or negotiations solemnised by agreement and, in the
case of transference of tenure, by natural tradition; and it was only
in contracts said to be completed by word of mouth, that is to say
in stipulations, that the safeguards remained "causes" in the strict
ancient meaning of the word. Thus the certitude of the law, when the
human reason was fully developed, passed into the truth of ideas
determined by the circumstances of fact, a "formula devoid of any
particular form" (_formula naturae,_ as Varro calls it) which, like
a light, informs in all the minutest details of their surface the
details of fact over which it extends. In popular republics the ruling
principle is the _aequum bonum,_ natural equity.
The harsh punishments of the periods of domestic monarchy and heroic
society (the laws of the Twelve Tables condemned those who set fire
to another's crops to be burnt alive, perjurers to be thrown from the
Tarpeian rock, and insolvent debtors to be cut in pieces while living)
were replaced by milder penalties, since the multitude, whose members
are weak, is naturally disposed to clemency.
Laws, which under the aristocracy were few, inflexible and religiously
observed, multiplied under the democracy and became liable to change
and modification. The Spartans, who preserved their aristocracy,
said that at Athens they had many laws and wrote them; at Sparta few,
but they obeyed them. The Roman plebs, like the Athenian, passed new
laws every day, and the attempt by Sulla, the leader of the noble
party, to reduce them by the institution of "_quaestiones perpetuae_"
or permanent courts was in vain, for after his time laws were again
multiplied.
War itself, which was under the aristocratic republics very cruel
and resulted in the destruction of conquered towns and the reduction
of the vanquished to the condition of labourers scattered over the
country-side and cultivating it on behalf of the victors, was mitigated
by the popular republics, which while they deprived the conquered of
the rights of heroic society left them in possession of the natural
rights of the human race. Empires grew, since a popular republic is
much more adapted to conquest than an aristocratic, and a monarchy most
of all.
But with all this humanisation of customs, the power of wise rule,
political virtue, diminished. The ancient patricians enforced a rigid
respect for law; and each, possessing a large share of the public
utility, set his own minor personal interests below this greater
particular interest, guaranteed as it was by the state. Hence all
courageously defended and wisely consulted for the good of the state.
In a popular state on the other hand since the citizens controlled
the state property by dividing it among themselves into as many small
portions as there were citizens in the body of the people, and through
the causes which produced that form of state, ease, paternal affection,
conjugal love and desire of life, men were led to consider the smallest
details favourable to their own private interest; that is to regard
nothing but the _aequum bonum,_ the only interest of which a multitude
is capable.
At this point arises spontaneously a new form of government, which has
long been preparing and has now become inevitable, namely monarchy.
The ordinary political writers make monarchy originate, without any of
the numerous and complex causes which are necessary to produce it, at
the very outset of human history, "as a frog," says Vico, "is born of a
summer shower." Still less did it originate artificially by the royal
law which Tribonian believes to have deprived the Roman people of its
free and sovereign power and conferred it upon Octavius Augustus. The
law which brought monarchy into being was a natural law whose formula
of eternal validity is as follows: when in a popular republic every one
seeks his private interest only and presses the public forces into its
service at risk of destruction to the state, to preserve the latter
from ruin a man must arise, as Augustus did at Rome (who as Tacitus
says "received under his sovereign power the whole state, worn out with
civil wars, taking the title of Princeps": _qui cuncta bellis civilibus
fessa nomine principis sub imperium accepit):_ a single man, who by
force of arms takes in hand all the affairs of the state and leaves his
subjects to look after their own affairs or after any public business
he may entrust to them; surrounding himself with a small number of
statesmen as a cabinet to discuss public questions or principles of
civil equity. Such a monarch is welcomed by nobles and plebeians alike:
by the nobles, who after having been already humiliated by their
subjection to plebeian rule abandon their ancient aristocratic claim
to sovereignty and think only of securing a comfortable life; and by
the plebeians, who after an experiment in anarchy or unbridled demagogy
(than which no tyranny is worse, since it produces as many tyrants as
there are bold and dissolute men in the state) are led by their own
misfortunes to welcome peace and protection.
Monarchy is then a new form of popular government. In order that a
powerful man may become sovereign, it is necessary that the people
shall take his side, and that he should rule in a popular manner;
making all his subjects equal, humiliating the great to protect the
multitude against their oppression, keeping the people satisfied
and content as regards the necessaries of life and the enjoyment of
natural liberty, and employing a well-balanced system of concessions
and privileges granted sometimes to whole classes (in which case they
are called "privileges of liberty") sometimes to particular persons,
by promoting into a higher class men of unusual merit and exceptional
virtues.
In monarchy, a "humane" government no less than democracy, the
process of humanisation or softening of customs and laws, already
begun under popular republics, still continues. The rigid bonds of
the patriarchal family and kinship relax further. The Emperors, who
tended to be overshadowed by the splendours of the nobility, made
efforts to promote the rights of human nature common to nobles and
plebeians. Augustus strove to safeguard the trusteeships by which
formerly property had passed to persons incapable of inheritance thanks
only to the conscientiousness of the injured heir; he transformed
such understandings from a right into a necessity, by obliging heirs
to execute them. A number of senatusconsulta followed which placed
_cognati_ (relations generally) on a level with _agnati_ (relations
through the father). Finally, Justinian abolished the difference
between property inherited and property in the hands of trustees,
confused the Falcidian quarter with the Trebellian and put _cognati_
and _agnati_ on precisely the same footing as regards inheritance
_"ab intestato."_ The latest Roman law was so entirely on the side
of testaments that, while originally these could be broken for the
slightest cause, they now had to be interpreted in the way most
adapted to secure their validity. Once the "cyclopean" right of the
father over the persons of his children had disappeared, his economic
right over property acquired by them disappeared also; and hence
the emperors first introduced the _peculium castrense_ (property
obtained during military service) to attract young men to war, then the
_peculium quasicastrense,_ to attract them into the praetorian guard,
and finally to satisfy those who were neither soldiers nor scholars
the _peculium adventitium._ They deprived the _patria potestas_ of
its influence over adoptions, now no longer restricted to the small
circle of relations; they uniformly countenanced formal adoption
(_arrogatio_) which was somewhat difficult owing to the difficulty
of a father's becoming a subordinate member of another family; they
considered emancipation as a benefit and gave to legitimization "by a
subsequent marriage" all the efficacy of solemn wedlock. The _imperium
paternum,_ as an arrogant title seeming to detract from the imperial
majesty, was altered into _patria potestas._ The humane tendencies of
the monarchs extended moreover to that part of the ancient "family"
which consisted of slaves: for the emperors restrained the cruelty of
masters towards these, and benefited them by increasing the force and
decreasing the solemnity of manumission; and citizen rights, which were
given originally only to distinguished foreigners who had deserved well
of the Roman people, were granted to every one born in Rome, even of a
slave father provided his mother were free or enfranchised. Punishments
were also made milder, and the monarchs distinguished themselves by
the gracious title of "clement." The letter of the law always tended
to be more freely interpreted in the light of natural equity, and it
may be said that Constantine absolutely cancelled the letter when he
laid down the principle that any particular motive of equity should
override the law. Thus was attained the precise opposite of the
_"privilegia ne irroganto"_ of the Twelve Tables ("that no exceptions
be made"): all privileges were exceptions to the law dictated by some
particular merit in the facts which lifted them out of the sphere of
legal generalisations. The restriction of rights to particular peoples
was by degrees abolished: under Caracalla the whole Roman world was
converted into a single Rome, since great monarchs desire the whole
world to become one city, according to the thought of Alexander the
Great, when he said that for him all the world was a single city of
which his phalanx was the citadel. The praetor's edict gives place,
under Hadrian, to the "perpetual edict" of Salvius Julianus, almost
exclusively composed of provincial edicts.
With monarchy, the natural law of races gives place to the natural law
of nations; and hence this political, social and juridical form is the
most suitable to human nature at its fullest rational development. Here
too, as we have already had occasion to remark, we reach again after
a long process the unity which existed in the person of the primitive
father under domestic monarchy; and the course of national history must
be considered as absolutely complete. To go further is impossible: the
only possibility, at this stage of the highest human civilisation and
refinement, is corruption, the return of barbarism as a "barbarism of
reflection" and a relapse into a kind of new state of nature, to return
once more into a new and heroic barbarism.