Law, Religion, Military System, Economic Condition, Nationality
Development of Law
In the development which law underwent during this period within the
Roman community, probably the most important material innovation was
that peculiar control which the community itself, and in a subordinate
degree its office-bearers, began to exercise over the manners and
habits of the individual burgesses. The germ of it is to be sought in
the right of the magistrate to inflict property-fines (-multae-) for
offences against order.(1) In the case of all fines of more than two
sheep and thirty oxen or, after the cattle-fines had been by the
decree of the people in 324 commuted into money, of more than 3020
libral -asses- (30 pounds), the decision soon after the expulsion of
the kings passed by way of appeal into the hands of the community;(2)
and thus procedure by fine acquired an importance which it was far
from originally possessing. Under the vague category of offences
against order men might include any accusations they pleased, and by
the higher grades in the scale of fines they might accomplish whatever
they desired. The dangerous character of such arbitrary procedure was
brought to light rather than obviated by the mitigating proviso, that
these property-fines, where they were not fixed by law at a definite
sum, should not amount to half the estate belonging to the person
fined. To this class belonged the police-laws, which from the earliest
times were especially abundant in the Roman community. Such were those
enactments of the Twelve Tables, which prohibited the anointing of a
dead body by persons hired for the purpose, the dressing it out with
more than one cushion or more than three purple-edged coverings, the
decorating it with gold or gaudy chaplets, the use of dressed wood for
the funeral pile, and the perfuming or sprinkling of the pyre with
frankincense or myrrh-wine; which limited the number of flute-players
in the funeral procession to ten at most; and which forbade wailing
women and funeral banquets--in a certain measure the earliest Roman
legislation against luxury. Such also were the laws--originating
in the conflicts of the orders--directed against usury as well as
against an undue use of the common pasture and a disproportionate
appropriation of the occupiable domain-land. But far more fraught
with danger than these and similar fining-laws, which at any rate
formulated once for all the trespass and often also the measure of
punishment, was the general prerogative of every magistrate who
exercised jurisdiction to inflict a fine for an offence against order,
and, if the fine reached the amount necessary to found an appeal and
the person fined did not submit to the penalty, to bring the case
before the community. Already in the course of the fifth century
quasi-criminal proceedings had been in this way instituted against
immorality of life both in men and women, against the forestalling of
grain, witchcraft, and similar matters. Closely akin to this was the
quasi-jurisdiction of the censors, which likewise sprang up at this
period. They were invested with authority to adjust the Roman budget
and the burgess-roll, and they availed themselves of it, partly to
impose of their own accord taxes on luxury which differed only in form
from penalties on it, partly to abridge or withdraw the political
privileges of the burgess who was reported to have been guilty of any
infamous action.(3) The extent to which this surveillance was already
carried is shown by the fact that penalties of this nature were
inflicted for the negligent cultivation of a man's own land, and that
such a man as Publius Cornelius Rufinus (consul in 464, 477) was
struck off the list of senators by the censors of 479, because he
possessed silver plate to the value of 3360 sesterces (34 pounds).
No doubt, according to the rule generally applicable to the edicts of
magistrates,(4) the sentences of the censors had legal force only
during their censorship, that is on an average for the next five
years, and might be renewed or not by the next censors at pleasure.
Nevertheless this censorial prerogative was of so immense importance,
that in virtue of it the censorship, originally a subordinate
magistracy, became in rank and consideration the first of all.(5)
The government of the senate rested essentially on this twofold
police control supreme and subordinate, vested in the community and
its officials, and furnished with powers as extensive as they were
arbitrary. Like every such arbitrary government, it was productive
of much good and much evil, and we do not mean to combat the view of
those who hold that the evil preponderated. But we must not forget
that--amidst the morality external certainly but stern and energetic,
and the powerful enkindling of public spirit, that were the genuine
characteristics of this period--these institutions remained exempt
as yet from any really base misuse; and if they were the chief
instruments in repressing individual freedom, they were also the means
by which the public spirit and the good old manners and order of the
Roman community were with might and main upheld.
Modifications in the Laws
Along with these changes a humanizing and modernizing tendency showed
itself slowly, but yet clearly enough, in the development of Roman
law. Most of the enactmerits of the Twelve Tables, which coincide with
the laws of Solon and therefore may with reason be considered as in
substance innovations, bear this character; such as the securing the
right of free association and the autonomy of the societies that
originated under it; the enactment that forbade the ploughing up of
boundary-balks; and the mitigation of the punishment of theft, so that
a thief not caught in the act might henceforth release himself from
the plaintiff's suit by payment of double compensation. The law of
debt was modified in a similar sense, but not till upwards of a
century afterwards, by the Poetelian law.(6) The right freely to
dispose of property, which according to the earliest Roman law was
accorded to the owner in his lifetime but in the case of death had
hitherto been conditional on the consent of the community, was
liberated from this restriction, inasmuch as the law of the Twelve
Tables or its interpretation assigned to the private testament the
same force as pertained to that confirmed in the curies. This was
an important step towards the breaking up of the clanships, and
towards the full carrying out of individual liberty in the disposal
of property. The fearfully absolute paternal power was restricted by
the enactment, that a son thrice sold by his father should not relapse
into his power, but should thenceforth be free; to which--by a legal
inference that, strictly viewed, was no doubt absurd--was soon
attached the possibility that a father might voluntarily divest
himself of dominion over his son by emancipation. In the law of
marriage civil marriage was permitted;(7) and although the full
marital power was associated as necessarily with a true civil as with
a true religious marriage, yet the permission of a connection instead
of marriage,(8) formed without that power, constituted a first step
towards relaxation of the full power of the husband. The first step
towards a legal enforcement of married life was the tax on old
bachelors (-aes uxorium-) with the introduction of which Camillus
began his public career as censor in 351.
Administration of Justice--
Code of Common Law--
New Judicial Functionaries
Changes more comprehensive than those effected in the law itself were
introduced into--what was more important in a political point of view,
and more easily admitted of alteration--the system of judicial
administration. First of all came the important limitation of the
supreme judicial power by the embodiment of the common law in a
written code, and the obligation of the magistrate thenceforth to
decide no longer according to varying usage, but according to the
written letter, in civil as well as in criminal procedure (303, 304).
The appointment of a supreme magistrate in Rome exclusively for the
administration of justice in 387,(9) and the establishment of
separate police functionaries which took place contemporaneously
in Rome, and was imitated under Roman influence in all the Latin
communities,(10) secured greater speed and precision of justice.
These police-magistrates or aediles had, of course, a certain
jurisdiction at the same time assigned to them. On the one hand,
they were the ordinary civil judges for sales concluded in open
market, for the cattle and slave markets in particular; and on
the other hand, they ordinarily acted in processes of fines and
amercements as judges of first instance or--which was in Roman
law the same thing--as public prosecutors. In consequence of this the
administration of the laws imposing fines, and the equally indefinite
and politically important right of fining in general, were vested
mainly in them. Similar but subordinate functions, having especial
reference to the poorer classes, pertained to the three night--or
blood-masters (-tres viri nocturni- or -capitales-), first nominated
in 465; they were entrusted with the duties of nocturnal police as
regards fire and the public safety and with the superintendence of
executions, with which a certain summary jurisdiction was very soon,
perhaps even from the outset, associated.(11) Lastly from the
increasing extent of the Roman community it became necessary, out of
regard to the convenience of litigants, to station in the more remote
townships special judges competent to deal at least with minor civil
causes. This arrangement was the rule for the communities of burgesses
-sine suffragio-,(12) and was perhaps even extended to the more
remote communities of full burgesses,(13)--the first germs of a
Romano-municipal jurisdiction developing itself by the side of that
which was strictly Roman.
Changes in Procedure
In civil procedure (which, however, according to the ideas of that
period included most of the crimes committed against fellow-citizens)
the division of a process into the settlement of the question of law
before the magistrate (-ius-), and the decision of the question of
fact by a private person nominated by the magistrate (-iudicium-)
--a division doubtless customary even in earlier times--was on
the abolition of the monarchy prescribed by law;(14) and to that
separation the private law of Rome was mainly indebted for its logical
clearness and practical precision.(15) In actions regarding property,
the decision as to what constituted possession, which hitherto had
been left to the arbitrary caprice of the magistrate, was subjected
gradually to legal rules; and, alongside of the law of property, a law
of possession was developed--another step, by which the magisterial
authority lost an important part of its powers. In criminal processes,
the tribunal of the people, which hitherto had exercised the
prerogative of mercy, became a court of legally secured appeal. If the
accused after hearing (-quaestio-) was condemned by the magistrate and
appealed to the burgesses, the magistrate proceeded in presence of
these to the further hearing (-anquisitio-) and, when he after three
times discussing the matter before the community had repeated his
decision, in the fourth diet the sentence was confirmed or rejected
by the burgesses. Modification was not allowed. A similar republican
spirit breathed in the principles, that the house protected the
burgess, and that an arrest could only take place out of doors; that
imprisonment during investigation was to be avoided; and that it
was allowable for every accused and not yet condemned burgess by
renouncing his citizenship to withdraw from the consequences of
condemnation, so far as they affected not his property but his
person-principles, which certainly were not embodied in formal laws
and accordingly did not legally bind the prosecuting magistrate, but
yet were by their moral weight of the greatest influence, particularly
in limiting capital punishment. But, if the Roman criminal law
furnishes a remarkable testimony to the strong public spirit and to
the increasing humanity of this epoch, it on the other hand suffered
in its practical working from the struggles between the orders, which
in this respect were specially baneful. The co-ordinate primary
jurisdiction of all the public magistrates in criminal cases, that
arose out of these conflicts,(16) led to the result, that there was
no longer any fixed authority for giving instructions, or any serious
preliminary investigation, in Roman criminal procedure. And, as the
ultimate criminal jurisdiction was exercised in the forms and by
the organs of legislation, and never disowned its origin from the
prerogative of mercy; as, moreover, the treatment of police fines had
an injurious reaction on the criminal procedure which was externally
very similar; the decision in criminal causes was pronounced--and that
not so much by way of abuse, as in some degree by virtue of the
constitution--not according to fixed law, but according to the
arbitrary pleasure of the judges. In this way the Roman criminal
procedure was completely void of principle, and was degraded into
the sport and instrument of political parties; which can the less be
excused, seeing that this procedure, while especially applied to
political crimes proper, was applicable also to others, such as murder
and arson. The evil was aggravated by the clumsiness of that
procedure, which, in concert with the haughty republican contempt for
non-burgesses, gave rise to a growing custom of tolerating, side by
side with the more formal process, a summary criminal, or rather
police, procedure against slaves and common people. Here too the
passionate strife regarding political processes overstepped natural
limits, and introduced institutions which materially contributed to
estrange the Romans step by step from the idea of a fixed moral order
in the administration of justice.
Religion--
New Gods
We are less able to trace the progress of the religious conceptions of
the Romans during this epoch. In general they adhered with simplicity
to the simple piety of their ancestors, and kept equally aloof from
superstition and from unbelief. How vividly the idea of spiritualizing
all earthly objects, on which the Roman religion was based, still
prevailed at the close of this epoch, is shown by the new "God of
silver" (-Argentinus-), who presumably came into existence only in
consequence of the introduction of the silver currency in 485, and who
naturally was the son of the older "God of copper" (-Aesculanus-).
The relations to foreign lands were the same as heretofore; but here,
and here especially, Hellenic influences were on the increase. It was
only now that temples began to rise in Rome itself in honour of the
Hellenic gods. The oldest was the temple of Castor and Pollux, which
had been vowed in the battle at lake Regillus(17) and was consecrated
on 15th July 269. The legend associated with it, that two youths of
superhuman size and beauty had been seen fighting on the battle-field
in the ranks of the Romans and immediately after the battle watering
their foaming steeds in the Roman Forum at the fountain of luturna,
and announcing the great victory, bears a stamp thoroughly un-Roman,
and was beyond doubt at a very early period modelled on the appearance
of the Dioscuri--similar down to its very details--in the famous
battle fought about a century before between the Crotoniates and
Locrians at the river Sagras. The Delphic Apollo too was not only
consulted--as was usual with all peoples that felt the influence of
Grecian culture--and presented moreover after special successes, such
as the capture of Veii, with a tenth of the spoil (360), but also had
a temple built for him in the city (323, renewed 401). The same honour
was towards the close of this period accorded to Aphrodite (459), who
was in some enigmatical way identified with the old Roman garden
goddess, Venus;(18) and to Asklapios or Aesculapius, who was obtained
by special request from Epidaurus in the Peloponnesus and solemnly
conducted to Rome (463). Isolated complaints were heard in serious
emergencies as to the intrusion of foreign superstition, presumably
the art of the Etruscan -haruspices- (as in 326); but in such cases
the police did not fail to take proper cognisance of the matter.
In Etruria on the other hand, while the nation stagnated and decayed
in political nullity and indolent opulence, the theological monopoly
of the nobility, stupid fatalism, wild and meaningless mysticism, the
system of soothsaying and of mendicant prophecy gradually developed
themselves, till they reached the height at which we afterwards find
them.
Sacerdotal System
In the sacerdotal system no comprehensive changes, so far as we know,
took place. The more stringent enactments, that were made about 465
regarding the collection of the process-fines destined to defray the
cost of public worship, point to an increase in the ritual budget of
the state--a necessary result of the increase in the number of its
gods and its temples. It has already been mentioned as one of the evil
effects of the dissensions between the orders that an illegitimate
influence began to be conceded to the colleges of men of lore, and
that they were employed for the annulling of political acts(19)--a
course by which on the one hand the faith of the people was shaken,
and on the other hand the priests were permitted to exercise a very
injurious influence on public affairs.
Military System--
Manipular Legion--
Entrenchment of Camp--
Cavalry--
Officers--
Military Discipline--
Training and Classes of Soldiers--
Military Value of the Manipular Legion
A complete revolution occurred during this epoch in the military
system. The primitive Graeco-Italian military organization, which was
probably based, like the Homeric, on the selection of the most
distinguished and effective warriors--who ordinarily fought on
horseback--to form a special vanguard, had in the later regal period
been superseded by the -legio--the old Dorian phalanx of hoplites,
probably eight file deep.(20) This phalanx thenceforth undertook the
chief burden of the battle, while the cavalry were stationed on the
flanks, and, mounted or dismounted according to circumstances, were
chiefly employed as a reserve. From this arrangement there were
developed nearly at the same time the phalanx of -sarrissae-in
Macedonia and the manipular arrangement in Italy, the former formed by
closing and deepening, the latter by breaking up and multiplying, the
ranks, in the first instance by the division of the old -legio- of
8400 into two -legiones- of 4200 men each. The old Doric phalanx had
been wholly adapted to close combat with the sword and especially with
the spear, and only an accessory and subordinate position in the order
of battle was assigned to missile weapons. In the manipular legion the
thrusting-lance was confined to the third division, and instead of it
the first two were furnished with a new and peculiar Italian missile
weapon, the -pilum- a square or round piece of wood, four and a half
feet long, with a triangular or quadrangular iron point--which had
been originally perhaps invented for the defence of the ramparts of
the camp, but was soon transferred from the rear to the front ranks,
and was hurled by the advancing line into the ranks of the enemy at a
distance of from ten to twenty paces. At the same time the sword
acquired far greater importance than the short knife of the phalangite
could ever have had; for the volley of javelins was intended in the
first instance merely to prepare the way for an attack sword in hand.
While, moreover, the phalanx had, as if it were a single mighty lance,
to be hurled at once upon the enemy, in the new Italian legion the
smaller units, which existed also in the phalanx system but were in
the order of battle firmly and indissolubly united, were tactically
separated from each other. Not merely was the close square divided, as
we have said, into two equally strong halves, but each of these was
separated in the direction of its depth into the three divisions of
the -hastati-, - principes-, and -triarii-, each of a moderate depth
probably amounting in ordinary cases to only four files; and was
broken up along the front into ten bands (-manipuli-), in such a way
that between every two divisions and every two maniples there was left
a perceptible interval. It was a mere continuation of the same process
of individualizing, by which the collective mode of fighting was
discouraged even in the diminished tactical unit and the single combat
became prominent, as is evident from the (already mentioned) decisive
part played by hand-to-hand encounters and combats with the sword. The
system of entrenching the camp underwent also a peculiar development.
The place where the army encamped, even were it only for a single
night, was invariably provided with a regular circumvallation and as
it were converted into a fortress. Little change took place on the
other hand in the cavalry, which in the manipular legion retained the
secondary part which it had occupied by the side of the phalanx. The
system of officering the army also continued in the main unchanged;
only now over each of the two legions of the regular army there were
set just as many war-tribunes as had hitherto commanded the whole
army, and the number of staff-officers was thus doubled. It was at
this period probably that the clear line of demarcation became
established between the subaltern officers, who as common soldiers had
to gain their place at the head of the maniples by the sword and
passed by regular promotion from the lower to the higher maniples, and
the military tribunes placed at the head of whole legions--six to
each--in whose case there was no regular promotion, and for whom men
of the better class were usually taken. In this respect it must have
become a matter of importance that, while previously the subaltern
as well as the staff-officers had been uniformly nominated by the
general, after 392 some of the latter posts were filled up through
election by the burgesses.(21) Lastly, the old, fearfully strict,
military discipline remained unaltered. Still, as formerly, the
general was at liberty to behead any man serving in his camp, and to
scourge with rods the staff-officer as well as the common soldier;
nor were such punishments inflicted merely on account of common
crimes, but also when an officer had allowed himself to deviate from
the orders which he had received, or when a division had allowed
itself to be surprised or had fled from the field of battle. On the
other hand, the new military organization necessitated a far more
serious and prolonged military training than the previous phalanx
system, in which the solidity of the mass kept even the inexperienced
in their ranks. If nevertheless no special soldier-class sprang up,
but on the contrary the army still remained, as before, a burgess
army, this object was chiefly attained by abandoning the former mode
of ranking the soldiers according to property(22) and arranging them
according to length of service. The Roman recruit now entered among
the light-armed "skirmishers" (-rorarii-), who fought outside of the
line and especially with stone slings, and he advanced from this step
by step to the first and then to the second division, till at length
the soldiers of long service and experience were associated together
in the corps of the -triarii-, which was numerically the weakest but
imparted its tone and spirit to the whole army.
The excellence of this military organization, which became the primary
cause of the superior political position of the Roman community,
chiefly depended on the three great military principles of maintaining
a reserve, of combining the close and distant modes of fighting, and
of combining the offensive and the defensive. The system of a reserve
was already foreshadowed in the earlier employment of the cavalry,
but it was now completely developed by the partition of the army into
three divisions and the reservation of the flower of the veterans for
the last and decisive shock. While the Hellenic phalanx had developed
the close, and the Oriental squadrons of horse armed with bows and
light missile spears the distant, modes of fighting respectively, the
Roman combination of the heavy javelin with the sword produced results
similar, as has justly been remarked, to those attained in modern
warfare by the introduction of bayonet-muskets; the volley of javelins
prepared the way for the sword encounter, exactly in the same way as a
volley of musketry now precedes a charge with the bayonet. Lastly,
the elaborate system of encampment allowed the Romans to combine the
advantages of defensive and offensive war and to decline or give
battle according to circumstances, and in the latter case to fight
under the ramparts of their camp just as under the walls of a
fortress--the Roman, says a Roman proverb, conquers by sitting still.
Origin of the Manipular Legion
That this new military organization was in the main a Roman, or at any
rate Italian, remodelling and improvement of the old Hellenic tactics
of the phalanx, is plain. If some germs of the system of reserve and
of the individualizing of the smaller subdivisions of the army are
found to occur among the later Greek strategists, especially Xenophon,
this only shows that they felt the defectiveness of the old system,
but were not well able to obviate it. The manipular legion appears
fully developed in the war with Pyrrhus; when and under what
circumstances it arose, whether at once or gradually, can no
longer be ascertained. The first tactical system which the Romans
encountered, fundamentally different from the earlier Italo-Hellenic
system, was the Celtic sword-phalanx. It is not impossible that the
subdivision of the army and the intervals between the maniples in
front were arranged with a view to resist, as they did resist, its
first and only dangerous charge; and it accords with this hypothesis
that Marcus Furius Camillus, the most celebrated Roman general of the
Gallic epoch, is presented in various detached notices as the reformer
of the Roman military system. The further traditions associated with
the Samnite and Pyrrhic wars are neither sufficiently accredited, nor
can they with certainty be duly arranged;(23) although it is in itself
probable that the prolonged Samnite mountain warfare exercised a
lasting influence on the individual development of the Roman soldier,
and that the struggle with one of the first masters of the art of war,
belonging to the school of the great Alexander, effected an
improvement in the technical features of the Roman military system.
National Economy--
The Farmers--
Farming of Estates
In the national economy agriculture was, and continued to be, the
social and political basis both of the Roman community and of the new
Italian state. The common assembly and the army consisted of Roman
farmers; what as soldiers they had acquired by the sword, they secured
as colonists by the plough. The insolvency of the middle class of
landholders gave rise to the formidable internal crises of the third
and fourth centuries, amidst which it seemed as if the young republic
could not but be destroyed. The revival of the Latin farmer-class,
which was produced during the fifth century partly by the large
assignations of land and incorporations, partly by the fall in the
rate of interest and the increase of the Roman population, was at once
the effect and the cause of the mighty development of Roman power.
The acute soldier's eye of Pyrrhus justly discerned the cause of the
political and military ascendency of the Romans in the flourishing
condition of the Roman farms. But the rise also of husbandry on a
large scale among the Romans appears to fall within this period.
In earlier times indeed there existed landed estates of--at least
comparatively--large size; but their management was not farming on a
large scale, it was simply a husbandry of numerous small parcels.(24)
On the other hand the enactment in the law of 387, not incompatible
indeed with the earlier mode of management but yet far more
appropriate to the later, viz. that the landholder should be bound
to employ along with his slaves a proportional number of free
persons,(25) may well be regarded as the oldest trace of the later
centralized farming of estates;(26) and it deserves notice that even
here at its first emergence it essentially rests on slave-holding. How
it arose, must remain an undecided point; possibly the Carthaginian
plantations in Sicily served as models to the oldest Roman
landholders, and perhaps even the appearance of wheat in husbandry
by the side of spelt,(27) which Varro places about the period of the
decemvirs, was connected with that altered style of management. Still
less can we ascertain how far this method of husbandry had already
during this period spread; but the history of the wars with Hannibal
leaves no doubt that it cannot yet have become the rule, nor can it
have yet absorbed the Italian farmer class. Where it did come into
vogue, however, it annihilated the older clientship based on the
-precarium-; just as the modern system of large farms has been formed
in great part by the suppression of petty holdings and the conversion
of hides into farm-fields. It admits of no doubt that the restriction
of this agricultural clientship very materially contributed towards
the distress of the class of small cultivators.
Inland Intercourse in Italy
Respecting the internal intercourse of the Italians with each other
our written authorities are silent; coins alone furnish some
information. We have already mentioned(28) that in Italy, with the
exception of the Greek cities and of the Etruscan Populonia, there was
no coinage during the first three centuries of Rome, and that cattle
in the first instance, and subsequently copper by weight, served as
the medium of exchange. Within the present epoch occurred the
transition on the part of the Italians from the system of barter to
that of money; and in their money they were naturally led at first to
Greek models. The circumstances of central Italy led however to the
adoption of copper instead of silver as the metal for their coinage,
and the unit of coinage was primarily based on the previous unit of
value, the copper pound; hence they cast their coins instead of
stamping them, for no die would have sufficed for pieces so large and
heavy. Yet there seems from the first to have been a fixed ratio for
the relative value of copper and silver (250:1), and with reference to
that ratio the copper coinage seems to have been issued; so that, for
example, in Rome the large copper piece, the -as-, was equal in value
to a scruple (1/288 of a pound) of silver. It is a circumstance
historically more remarkable, that coining in Italy most probably
originated in Rome, and in fact with the decemvirs, who found in the
Solonian legislation a pattern for the regulation of their coinage;
and that from Rome it spread over a number of Latin, Etruscan,
Umbrian, and east-Italian communities, --a clear proof of the superior
position which Rome from the beginning of the fourth century held in
Italy. As all these communities subsisted side by side in formal
independence, legally the monetary standard was entirely local, and
the territory of every city had its own monetary system. Nevertheless
the standards of copper coinage in central and northern Italy may be
comprehended in three groups, within which the coins in common
intercourse seem to have been treated as homogeneous. These groups
are, first, the coins of the cities of Etruria lying north of the
Ciminian Forest and those of Umbria; secondly, the coins of Rome and
Latium; and lastly, those of the eastern seaboard. We have already
observed that the Roman coins held a certain ratio to silver by
weight; on the other hand we find those of the east coast of Italy
placed in a definite proportional relation to the silver coins which
were current from an early period in southern Italy, and the standard
of which was adopted by the Italian immigrants, such as the Bruttians,
Lucanians, and Nolans, by the Latin colonies in that quarter, such as
Cales and Suessa, and even by the Romans themselves for their
possessions in Lower Italy. Accordingly the inland traffic of Italy
must have been divided into corresponding provinces, which dealt with
one another like foreign nations.
In transmarine commerce the relations we have previously described(29)
between Sicily and Latium, Etruria and Attica, the Adriatic and
Tarentum, continued to subsist during the epoch before us or rather,
strictly speaking, belonged to it; for although facts of this class,
which as a rule are mentioned without a date, have been placed
together for the purpose of presenting a general view under the first
period, the statements made apply equally to the present. The clearest
evidence in this respect is, of course, that of the coins. As the
striking of Etruscan silver money after an Attic standard(30) and the
penetrating of Italian and especially of Latin copper into Sicily(31)
testify to the two former routes of traffic, so the equivalence, which
we have just mentioned, between the silver money of Magna Graecia and
the copper coinage of Picenum and Apulia, forms, with numerous other
indications, an evidence of the active traffic which the Greeks of
Lower Italy, the Tarentines in particular, held with the east Italian
seaboard. The commerce again, which was at an earlier period perhaps
still more active, between the Latins and the Campanian Greeks seems
to have been disturbed by the Sabellian immigration, and to have been
of no great moment during the first hundred and fifty years of the
republic. The refusal of the Samnites in Capua and Cumae to supply
the Romans with grain in the famine of 343 may be regarded as an
indication of the altered relations which subsisted between Latium and
Campania, till at the commencement of the fifth century the Roman arms
restored and gave increased impetus to the old intercourse.
Touching on details, we may be allowed to mention, as one of the few
dated facts in the history of Roman commerce, the notice drawn from
the annals of Ardea, that in 454 the first barber came from Sicily to
Ardea; and to dwell for a moment on the painted pottery which was sent
chiefly from Attica, but also from Corcyra and Sicily, to Lucania,
Campania, and Etruria, to serve there for the decoration of tombs--a
traffic, as to the circumstances of which we are accidentally better
informed than as to any other article of transmarine commerce. The
commencement of this import trade probably falls about the period of
the expulsion of the Tarquins; for the vases of the oldest style,
which are of very rare occurrence in Italy, were probably painted in
the second half of the third century of the city, while those of the
chaste style, occurring in greater numbers, belong to the first half,
those of the most finished beauty to the second half, of the fourth
century; and the immense quantities of the other vases, often marked
by showiness and size but seldom by excellence in workmanship, must be
assigned as a whole to the following century. It was from the Hellenes
undoubtedly that the Italians derived this custom of embellishing
tombs; but while the moderate means and fine discernment of the Greeks
confined the practice in their case within narrow limits, it was
stretched in Italy by barbaric opulence and barbaric extravagance
far beyond its original and proper bounds. It is a significant
circumstance, however, that in Italy this extravagance meets us only
in the lands that had a Hellenic semi-culture. Any one who can read
such records will perceive in the cemeteries of Etruria and Campania
--the mines whence our museums have been replenished--a significant
commentary on the accounts of the ancients as to the Etruscan and
Campanian semi-culture choked amidst wealth and arrogance.(32)
The homely Samnite character on the other hand remained at all times
a stranger to this foolish luxury; the absence of Greek pottery from
the tombs exhibits, quite as palpably as the absence of a Samnite
coinage, the slight development of commercial intercourse and of urban
life in this region. It is still more worthy of remark that Latium
also, although not less near to the Greeks than Etruria and Campania,
and in closest intercourse with them, almost wholly refrained from
such sepulchral decorations. It is more than probable--especially on
account of the altogether different character of the tombs in the
unique Praeneste--that in this result we have to recognize the
influence of the stern Roman morality or--if the expression be
preferred--of the rigid Roman police. Closely connected with this
subject are the already-mentioned interdicts, which the law of the
Twelve Tables fulminated against purple bier-cloths and gold ornaments
placed beside the dead; and the banishment of all silver plate,
excepting the salt-cellar and sacrificial ladle, from the Roman
household, so far at least as sumptuary laws and the terror of
censorial censure could banish it: even in architecture we shall again
encounter the same spirit of hostility to luxury whether noble or
ignoble. Although, however, in consequence of these influences Rome
probably preserved a certain outward simplicity longer than Capua and
Volsinii, her commerce and trade--on which, in fact, along with
agriculture her prosperity from the beginning rested--must not be
regarded as having been inconsiderable, or as having less sensibly
experienced the influence of her new commanding position.
Capital in Rome
No urban middle class in the proper sense of that term, no body of
independent tradesmen and merchants, was ever developed in Rome. The
cause of this was--in addition to the disproportionate centralization
of capital which occurred at an early period--mainly the employment of
slave labour. It was usual in antiquity, and was in fact a necessary
consequence of slavery, that the minor trades in towns were very
frequently carried on by slaves, whom their master established as
artisans or merchants; or by freedmen, in whose case the master not
only frequently furnished the capital, but also regularly stipulated
for a share, often the half, of the profits. Retail trading and
dealing in Rome were undoubtedly constantly on the increase; and
there are proofs that the trades which minister to the luxury of
great cities began to be concentrated in Rome--the Ficoroni casket
for instance was designed in the fifth century of the city by a
Praenestine artist and was sold to Praeneste, but was nevertheless
manufactured in Rome.(33) But as the net proceeds even of retail
business flowed for the most part into the coffers of the great
houses, no industrial and commercial middle-class arose to an extent
corresponding to that increase. As little were the great merchants and
great manufacturers marked off as a distinct class from the great
landlords. On the one hand, the latter were from ancient times(34)
simultaneously traders and capitalists, and combined in their hands
lending on security, trafficking on a great scale, the undertaking
of contracts, and the executing of works for the state. On the other
hand, from the emphatic moral importance which in the Roman
commonwealth attached to the possession of land, and from its
constituting the sole basis of political privileges--a basis which was
infringed for the first time only towards the close of this epoch
(35)--it was undoubtedly at this period already usual for the
fortunate speculator to invest part of his capital in land. It is
clear enough also from the political privileges given to freedmen
possessing freeholds,(36) that the Roman statesmen sought in this way
to diminish the dangerous class of the rich who had no land.
Development of Rome as A Great City
But while neither an opulent urban middle class nor a strictly close
body of capitalists grew up in Rome, it was constantly acquiring more
and more the character of a great city. This is plainly indicated by
the increasing number of slaves crowded together in the capital (as
attested by the very serious slave conspiracy of 335), and still more
by the increasing multitude of freedmen, which was gradually becoming
inconvenient and dangerous, as we may safely infer from the
considerable tax imposed on manumissions in 397(37) and from the
limitation of the political rights of freedmen in 450.(38) For not
only was it implied in the circumstances that the great majority of
the persons manumitted had to devote themselves to trade or commerce,
but manumission itself among the Romans was, as we have already said,
less an act of liberality than an industrial speculation, the master
often finding it more for his interest to share the profits of the
trade or commerce of the freedman than to assert his title to
the whole proceeds of the labour of his slave. The increase of
manumissions must therefore have necessarily kept pace with the
increase of the commercial and industrial activity of the Romans.
Urban Police
A similar indication of the rising importance of urban life in Rome is
presented by the great development of the urban police. To this period
probably belong in great measure the enactments under which the
four aediles divided the city into four police districts, and made
provision for the discharge of their equally important and difficult
functions--for the efficient repair of the network of drains small and
large by which Rome was pervaded, as well as of the public buildings
and places; for the proper cleansing and paving of the streets; for
obviating the nuisances of ruinous buildings, dangerous animals, or
foul smells; for the removing of waggons from the highway except
during the hours of evening and night, and generally for the keeping
open of the communication; for the uninterrupted supply of the market
of the capital with good and cheap grain; for the destruction of
unwholesome articles, and the suppression of false weights and
measures; and for the special oversight of baths, taverns, and
houses of bad fame.
Building--
Impulse Given to It
In respect to buildings the regal period, particularly the epoch of
the great conquests, probably accomplished more than the first two
centuries of the republic. Structures like the temples on the Capitol
and on the Aventine and the great Circus were probably as obnoxious to
the frugal fathers of the city as to the burgesses who gave their
task-work; and it is remarkable that perhaps the most considerable
building of the republican period before the Samnite wars, the temple
of Ceres in the Circus, was a work of Spurius Cassius (261) who in
more than one respect, sought to lead the commonwealth back to the
traditions of the kings. The governing aristocracy moreover repressed
private luxury with a rigour such as the rule of the kings, if
prolonged, would certainly not have displayed. But at length even
the senate was no longer able to resist the superior force of
circumstances. It was Appius Claudius who in his epoch-making
censorship (442) threw aside the antiquated rustic system of
parsimonious hoarding, and taught his fellow-citizens to make a worthy
use of the public resources. He began that noble system of public
works of general utility, which justifies, if anything can justify,
the military successes of Rome even from the point of view of the
welfare of the nations, and which even now in its ruins furnishes some
idea of the greatness of Rome to thousands on thousands who have never
read a page of her history. To him the Roman state was indebted for
its great military road, and the city of Rome for its first aqueduct.
Following in the steps of Claudius, the Roman senate wove around Italy
that network of roads and fortresses, the formation of which has
already been described,(39) and without which, as the history of all
military states from the Achaemenidae down to the creator of the road
over the Simplon shows, no military hegemony can subsist. Following in
the steps of Claudius, Manius Curius built from the proceeds of the
Pyrrhic spoil a second aqueduct for the capital (482); and some years
previously (464) with the gains of the Sabine war he opened up for the
Velino, at the point above Terni where it falls into the Nera, that
broader channel in which the stream still flows, with a view to drain
the beautiful valley of Rieti and thereby to gain space for a large
burgess settlement along with a modest farm for himself. Such works,
in the eyes of persons of intelligence, threw into the shade the
aimless magnificence of the Hellenic temples.
Embellishment of the City
The style of living also among the citizens now was altered. About
the time of Pyrrhus silver plate began to make its appearance on Roman
tables, and the chroniclers date the disappearance of shingle roofs in
Rome from 470.(40) The new capital of Italy gradually laid aside its
village-like aspect, and now began to embellish itself. It was not yet
indeed customary to strip the temples in conquered towns of their
ornaments for the decoration of Rome; but the beaks of the galleys of
Antium were displayed at the orator's platform in the Forum(41) and
on public festival days the gold-mounted shields brought home from
the battle-fields of Samnium were exhibited along the stalls of the
market.(42) The proceeds of fines were specially applied to the paving
of the highways in and near the city, or to the erection and
embellishment of public buildings. The wooden booths of the butchers,
which stretched along the Forum on both sides, gave way, first on the
Palatine side, then on that also which faced the Carinae, to the stone
stalls of the money-changers; so that this place became the Exchange
of Rome. Statues of the famous men of the past, of the kings, priests,
and heroes of the legendary period, and of the Grecian -hospes- who
was said to have interpreted to the decemvirs the laws of Solon;
honorary columns and monuments dedicated to the great burgomasters who
had conquered the Veientes, the Latins, the Samnites, to state envoys
who had perished while executing their instructions, to rich women
who had bequeathed their property to public objects, nay even to
celebrated Greek philosophers and heroes such as Pythagoras and
Alcibiades, were erected on the Capitol or in the Forum. Thus, now
that the Roman community had become a great power, Rome itself
became a great city.
Silver Standard of Value
Lastly Rome, as head of the Romano-Italian confederacy, not only
entered into the Hellenistic state-system, but also conformed to the
Hellenic system of moneys and coins. Up to this time the different
communities of northern and central Italy, with few exceptions, had
struck only a copper currency; the south Italian towns again
universally had a currency of silver; and there were as many legal
standards and systems of coinage as there were sovereign communities
in Italy. In 485 all these local mints were restricted to the issuing
of small coin; a general standard of currency applicable to all Italy
was introduced, and the coining of the currency was centralized in
Rome; Capua alone continued to retain its own silver coinage struck in
the name of Rome, but after a different standard. The new monetary
system was based on the legal ratio subsisting between the two metals,
as it had long been fixed.(43) The common monetary unit was the piece
of ten -asses- (which were no longer of a pound, but reduced to the
third of a pound), the -denarius-, which weighed in copper 3 1/3 and
in silver 1/72, of a Roman pound, a trifle more than the Attic
--drachma--. At first copper money still predominated in the coinage;
and it is probable that the earliest silver -denarius- was coined
chiefly for Lower Italy and for intercourse with other lands. As the
victory of the Romans over Pyrrhus and Tarentum and the Roman embassy
to Alexandria could not but engage the thoughts of the contemporary
Greek statesman, so the sagacious Greek merchant might well ponder as
he looked on these new Roman drachmae. Their flat, unartistic, and
monotonous stamping appeared poor and insignificant by the side of
the marvellously beautiful contemporary coins of Pyrrhus and the
Siceliots; nevertheless they were by no means, like the barbarian
coins of antiquity, slavishly imitated and unequal in weight and
alloy, but, on the contrary, worthy from the first by their
independent and conscientious execution to be placed on a level
with any Greek coin.
Extension of the Latin Nationality
Thus, when the eye turns from the development of constitutions and
from the national struggles for dominion and for freedom which
agitated Italy, and Rome in particular, from the banishment of the
Tarquinian house to the subjugation of the Samnites and the Italian
Greeks, and rests on those calmer spheres of human existence which
history nevertheless rules and pervades, it everywhere encounters the
reflex influence of the great events, by which the Roman burgesses
burst the bonds of patrician sway, and the rich variety of the
national cultures of Italy gradually perished to enrich a single
people. While the historian may not attempt to follow out the great
course of events into the infinite multiplicity of individual detail,
he does not overstep his province when, laying hold of detached
fragments of scattered tradition, he indicates the most important
changes which during this epoch took place in the national life of
Italy. That in such an inquiry the life of Rome becomes still more
prominent than in the earlier epoch, is not merely the result of the
accidental blanks of our tradition; it was an essential consequence
of the change in the political position of Rome, that the Latin
nationality should more and more cast the other nationalities of Italy
into the shade. We have already pointed to the fact, that at this
epoch the neighbouring lands--southern Etruria, Sabina, the land of
the Volscians, --began to become Romanized, as is attested by the
almost total absence of monuments of the old native dialects, and by
the occurrence of very ancient Roman inscriptions in those regions;
the admission of the Sabines to full burgess-rights at the end of this
period(44) betokens that the Latinizing of Central Italy was already
at that time the conscious aim of Roman policy. The numerous
individual assignations and colonial establishments scattered
throughout Italy were, not only in a military but also in a linguistic
and national point of view, the advanced posts of the Latin stock. The
Latinizing of the Italians was scarcely at this time generally aimed
at; on the contrary, the Roman senate seems to have intentionally
upheld the distinction between the Latin and the other nationalities,
and they did not yet, for example, allow the introduction of Latin
into official use among the half-burgess communities of Campania. The
force of circumstances, however, is stronger than even the strongest
government: the language and customs of the Latin people immediately
shared its predominance in Italy, and already began to undermine
the other Italian nationalities.
Progress of Hellenism in Italy--
Adoption of Greek Habits at the Table
These nationalities were at the same time assailed from another
quarter and by an ascendency resting on another basis--by Hellenism.
This was the period when Hellenism began to become conscious of its
intellectual superiority to the other nations, and to diffuse itself
on every side. Italy did not remain unaffected by it. The most
remarkable phenomenon of this sort is presented by Apulia, which after
the fifth century of Rome gradually laid aside its barbarian dialect
and silently became Hellenized. This change was brought about, as in
Macedonia and Epirus, not by colonization, but by civilization, which
seems to have gone hand in hand with the land commerce of Tarentum; at
least that hypothesis is favoured by the facts, that the districts
of the Poediculi and Daunii who were on friendly terms with the
Tarentines carried out their Hellenization more completely than the
Sallentines who lived nearer to Tarentum but were constantly at feud
with it, and that the towns that were soonest Graecized, such as Arpi,
were not situated on the coast. The stronger influence exerted by
Hellenism over Apulia than over any other Italian region is explained
partly by its position, partly by the slight development of any
national culture of its own, and partly also perhaps by its
nationality presenting a character less alien to the Greek stock than
that of the rest of Italy.(45) We have already called attention(46) to
the fact that the southern Sabellian stocks, although at the outset in
concert with the tyrants of Syracuse they crushed and destroyed the
Hellenism of Magna Graecia, were at the same time affected by contact
and mingling with the Greeks, so that some of them, such as the
Bruttians and Nolans, adopted the Greek language by the side of their
native tongue, and others, such as the Lucanians and a part of the
Campanians, adopted at least Greek writing and Greek manners. Etruria
likewise showed tendencies towards a kindred development in the
remarkable vases which have been discovered(47) belonging to this
period, rivalling those of Campania and Lucania; and though Latium and
Samnium remained more strangers to Hellenism, there were not wanting
there also traces of an incipient and ever-growing influence of Greek
culture. In all branches of the development of Rome during this epoch,
in legislation and coinage, in religion, in the formation of national
legend, we encounter traces of the Greeks; and from the commencement
of the fifth century in particular, in other words, after the conquest
of Campania, the Greek influence on Roman life appears rapidly and
constantly on the increase. In the fourth century occurred the
erection of the "-Graecostasis-"--remarkable in the very form of the
word--a platform in the Roman Forum for eminent Greek strangers and
primarily for the Massiliots.(48) In the following century the annals
began to exhibit Romans of quality with Greek surnames, such as
Philipus or in Roman form Pilipus, Philo, Sophus, Hypsaeus. Greek
customs gained ground: such as the non-Italian practice of placing
inscriptions in honour of the dead on the tomb--of which the epitaph
of Lucius Scipio (consul in 456) is the oldest example known to us;
the fashion, also foreign to the Italians, of erecting without any
decree of the state honorary monuments to ancestors in public places
--a system begun by the great innovator Appius Claudius, when he
caused bronze shields with images and eulogies of his ancestors to be
suspended in the new temple of Bellona (442); the distribution of
branches of palms to the competitors, introduced at the Roman national
festival in 461; above all, the Greek manners and habits at table.
The custom not of sitting as formerly on benches, but of reclining
on sofas, at table; the postponement of the chief meal from noon to
between two and three o'clock in the afternoon according to our mode
of reckoning; the institution of masters of the revels at banquets,
who were appointed from among the guests present, generally by
throwing the dice, and who then prescribed to the company what, how,
and when they should drink; the table-chants sung in succession by the
guests, which, however, in Rome were not -scolia-, but lays in praise
of ancestors--all these were not primitive customs in Rome, but were
borrowed from the Greeks at a very early period, for in Cato's time
these usages were already common and had in fact partly fallen into
disuse again. We must therefore place their introduction in this
period at the latest. A characteristic feature also was the erection
of statues to "the wisest and the bravest Greek" in the Roman Forum,
which took place by command of the Pythian Apollo during the Samnite
wars. The selection fell--evidently under Sicilian or Campanian
influence--on Pythagoras and Alcibiades, the saviour and the Hannibal
of the western Hellenes. The extent to which an acquaintance with
Greek was already diffused in the fifth century among Romans of
quality is shown by the embassies of the Romans to Tarentum--when
their mouthpiece spoke, if not in the purest Greek, at any rate
without an interpreter--and of Cineas to Rome. It scarcely admits
of a doubt that from the fifth century the young Romans who devoted
themselves to state affairs universally acquired a knowledge of what
was then the general language of the world and of diplomacy.
Thus in the intellectual sphere Hellenism made advances quite as
incessant as the efforts of the Romans to subject the earth to their
sway; and the secondary nationalities, such as the Samnite, Celt, and
Etruscan, hard pressed on both sides, were ever losing their inward
vigour as well as narrowing their outward bounds.
Rome and the Romans of This Epoch
When the two great nations, both arrived at the height of their
development, began to mingle in hostile or in friendly contact, their
antagonism of character was at the same time prominently and fully
brought out--the total want of individuality in the Italian and
especially in the Roman character, as contrasted with the boundless
variety, lineal, local, and personal, of Hellenism. There was no epoch
of mightier vigour in the history of Rome than the epoch from the
institution of the republic to the subjugation of Italy. That epoch
laid the foundations of the commonwealth both within and without; it
created a united Italy; it gave birth to the traditional groundwork of
the national law and of the national history; it originated the
-pilum- and the maniple, the construction of roads and of aqueducts,
the farming of estates and the monetary system; it moulded the
she-wolf of the Capitol and designed the Ficoroni casket. But the
individuals, who contributed the several stones to this gigantic
structure and cemented them together, have disappeared without leaving
a trace, and the nations of Italy did not merge into that of Rome more
completely than the single Roman burgess merged in the Roman
community. As the grave closes alike over all whether important or
insignificant, so in the roll of the Roman burgomasters the empty
scion of nobility stands undistinguishable by the side of the great
statesman. Of the few records that have reached us from this period
none is more venerable, and none at the same time more characteristic,
than the epitaph of Lucius Cornelius Scipio, who was consul in 456,
and three years afterwards took part in the decisive battle of
Sentinum.(49) On the beautiful sarcophagus, in noble Doric style,
which eighty years ago still enclosed the dust of the conqueror of the
Samnites, the following sentence is inscribed:--
-Cornelius Lucius--Scipio Barbatus,
Gnaivod patre prognatus, --fortis vir sapiensque,
Quoius forma virtu--tei parisuma fuit,
Consol censor aidilis--quei fuit apud vos,
Taurasia Cisauna--Samnio cepit,
Subigit omne Loucanum--opsidesque abdoucit.-
_-'_-'_-'_||-'_-'_-'_
Innumerable others who had been at the head of the Roman commonwealth,
as well as this Roman statesman and warrior, might be commemorated as
having been of noble birth and of manly beauty, valiant and wise; but
there was no more to record regarding them. It is doubtless not the
mere fault of tradition that no one of these Cornelii, Fabii, Papirii,
or whatever they were called, confronts us in a distinct individual
figure. The senator was supposed to be no worse and no better than
other senators, nor at all to differ from them. It was not necessary
and not desirable that any burgess should surpass the rest, whether by
showy silver plate and Hellenic culture, or by uncommon wisdom and
excellence. Excesses of the former kind were punished by the censor,
and for the latter the constitution gave no scope. The Rome of this
period belonged to no individual; it was necessary for all the
burgesses to be alike, that each of them might be like a king.
Appius Claudius
No doubt, even now Hellenic individual development asserted its claims
by the side of that levelling system; and the genius and force which
it exhibited bear, no less than the tendency to which it opposed
itself, the full stamp of that great age. We can name but a single man
in connection with it; but he was, as it were, the incarnation of the
idea of progress. Appius Claudius (censor 442; consul 447, 458), the
great-great-grandson of the decemvir, was a man of the old nobility
and proud of the long line of his ancestors; but yet it was he who
set aside the restriction which confined the full franchise of the
state to the freeholders,(50) and who broke up the old system of
finance.(51) From Appius Claudius date not only the Roman aqueducts
and highways, but also Roman jurisprudence, eloquence, poetry, and
grammar. The publication of a table of the -legis actiones-, speeches
committed to writing and Pythagorean sentences, and even innovations
in orthography, are attributed to him. We may not on this account call
him absolutely a democrat or include him in that opposition party
which found its champion in Manius Curius;(52) in him on the contrary
the spirit of the ancient and modern patrician kings predominated
--the spirit of the Tarquins and the Caesars, between whom he forms
a connecting link in that five hundred years' interregnum of
extraordinary deeds and ordinary men. So long as Appius Claudius took
an active part in public life, in his official conduct as well as his
general carriage he disregarded laws and customs on all hands with the
hardihood and sauciness of an Athenian; till, after having long
retired from the political stage, the blind old man, returning as it
were from the tomb at the decisive Moment, overcame king Pyrrhus in
the senate, and first formally and solemnly proclaimed the complete
sovereignty of Rome over Italy.(53) But the gifted man came too early
or too late; the gods made him blind on account of his untimely
wisdom. It was not individual genius that ruled in Rome and through
Rome in Italy; it was the one immoveable idea of a policy--propagated
from generation to generation in the senate--with the leading maxims
of which the sons of the senators became already imbued, when in the
company of their fathers they went to the council and there at the
door of the hall listened to the wisdom of the men whose seats they
were destined at some future time to fill. Immense successes were
thus obtained at an immense price; for Nike too is followed by her
Nemesis. In the Roman commonwealth there was no special dependence
on any one man, either on soldier or on general, and under the
rigid discipline of its moral police all the idiosyncrasies of human
character were extinguished. Rome reached a greatness such as no other
state of antiquity attained; but she dearly purchased her greatness at
the sacrifice of the graceful variety, of the easy abandon and of
the inward freedom of Hellenic life.
Notes for Book II Chapter VIII
1. I. XI. Punishment of Offenses against Order
2. II. I. Right of Appeal
3. II. III. The Senate, Its Composition
4. II. I. Law and Edict
5. II. III. Censorship, the Magistrates, Partition and Weakening of
the Consular Powers
6. II. III. Laws Imposing Taxes
7. I. VI. Class of --Metoeci-- Subsisting by the Side of the Community
8. I. V. The Housefather and His Household, note
9. II. III. Praetorship
10. II. III. Praetorship, II. V. Revision of the Municipal
Constitutions, Police Judges
11. The view formerly adopted, that these -tres viri- belonged to the
earliest period, is erroneous, for colleges of magistrates with odd
numbers are foreign to the oldest state-arrangements (Chronol. p. 15,
note 12). Probably the well-accredited account, that they were first
nominated in 465 (Liv. Ep. 11), should simply be retained, and the
otherwise suspicious inference of the falsifier Licinius Macer (in
Liv. vii. 46), which makes mention of them before 450, should be
simply rejected. At first undoubtedly the -tres viri- were nominated
by the superior magistrates, as was the case with most of the later
-magistratus minores-; the Papirian -plebiscitum-, which transferred
the nomination of them to the community (Festus, -v. sacramentum-,
p. 344, Niall.), was at any rate not issued till after the institution
of the office of -praetor peregrinus-, or at the earliest towards the
middle of the sixth century, for it names the praetor -qui inter jus
cives ius dicit-.
12. II. VII. Subject Communities
13. This inference is suggested by what Livy says (ix. 20) as to the
reorganization of the colony of Antium twenty years after it was
founded; and it is self-evident that, while the Romans might very
well impose on the inhabitant of Ostia the duty of settling all his
lawsuits in Rome, the same course could not be followed with townships
like Antium and Sena.
14. II. I. Restrictions on the Delegation of Powers
15. People are in the habit of praising the Romans as a nation
specially privileged in respect to jurisprudence, and of gazing with
wonder on their admirable law as a mystical gift of heaven; presumably
by way of specially excusing themselves for the worthlessness of
their own legal system. A glance at the singularly fluctuating and
undeveloped criminal law of the Romans might show the untenableness
of ideas so confused even to those who may think the proposition too
simple, that a sound people has a sound law, and a morbid people an
unsound. Apart from the more general political conditions on which
jurisprudence also, and indeed jurisprudence especially, depends, the
causes of the excellence of the Roman civil law lie mainly in two
features: first, that the plaintiff and defendant were specially
obliged to explain and embody in due and binding form the grounds of
the demand and of the objection to comply with it; and secondly, that
the Romans appointed a permanent machinery for the edictal development
of their law, and associated it immediately with practice. By the
former the Romans precluded the pettifogging practices of advocates,
by the latter they obviated incapable law-making, so far as such
things can be prevented at all; and by means of both in conjunction
they satisfied, as far as is possible, the two conflicting
requirements, that law shall constantly be fixed, and that it
shall constantly be in accordance with the spirit of the age.
16. II. II. Relation of the Tribune to the Consul
17. V. V. The Hegemony of Rome over Latium Shaken and Re-established
18. Venus probably first appears in the later sense as Aphrodite on
occasion of the dedication of the temple consecrated in this year
(Liv. x. 31; Becker, Topographie, p. 472).
19. II. III. Intrigues of the Nobility
20. I. VI. Organization of the Army
21. II. III. Increasing Powers of the Burgesses
22. I. VI. the Five Classes
23. According to Roman tradition the Romans originally carried
quadrangular shields, after which they borrowed from the Etruscans the
round hoplite shield (-clupeus-, --aspis--), and from the Samnites the
later square shield (-scutum-, --thureos--), and the javelin (-veru-)
(Diodor. Vat. Fr. p. 54; Sallust, Cat. 51, 38; Virgil, Aen. vii. 665;
Festus, Ep. v. Samnites, p. 327, Mull.; and the authorities cited in
Marquardt, Handb. iii. 2, 241). But it may be regarded as certain that
the hoplite shield or, in other words, the tactics of the Doric
phalanx were imitated not from the Etruscans, but directly from the
Hellenes, As to the -scutum-, that large, cylindrical, convex leather
shield must certainly have taken the place of the flat copper
-clupeus-, when the phalanx was broken up into maniples; but the
undoubted derivation of the word from the Greek casts suspicion on the
derivation of the thing itself from the Samnites. From the Greeks the
Romans derived also the sling (-funda- from --sphendone--). (like
-fides- from --sphion--),(I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences).
The pilum was considered by the ancients as quite a Roman invention.
24. I. XIII. Landed Proprietors
25. II. III. Combination of the Plebian Aristocracy and the Farmers
against the Nobility
26. Varro (De R. R. i. 2, 9) evidently conceives the author of the
Licinian agrarian law as fanning in person his extensive lands;
although, we may add, the story may easily have been invented to
explain the cognomen (-Stolo-).
27. I. XIII. System of Joint Cultivation
28. I. XIII. Inland Commerce of the Italians
29. I. XIII. Commerce in Latium Passive, in Etruria Active
30. I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce
31. I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce
32. II. IV. Etruria at Peace and on the Decline, II. V. Campanian
Hellenism
33. The conjecture that Novius Flautius, the artist who worked at
this casket for Dindia Macolnia, in Rome, may have been a Campanian,
is refuted by the old Praenestine tomb-stones recently discovered,
on which, among other Macolnii and Plautii, there occurs also a Lucius
Magulnius, son of Haulms (L. Magolnio Pla. f.).
34. I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce, II. II.
Rising Power of the Capitalists
35. II. III. The Burgess Body
36. II. III. The Burgess Body
37. II. III. Laws Imposing Taxes
38. II. III. The Burgess Body
39. II. VII. Construction of New Fortresses and Roads
40. We have already mentioned the censorial stigma attached to Publius
Cornelius Rufinus (consul 464, 477) for his silver plate.(II. VIII.
Police) The strange statement of Fabius (in Strabo, v. p. 228) that
the Romans first became given to luxury (--aisthesthae tou plouton--)
after the conquest of the Sabines, is evidently only a historical
version of the same matter; for the conquest of the Sabines falls in
the first consulate of Rufinus.
41. II. V. Colonizations in the Land of the Volsci
42. II. VI. Last Campaigns in Samnium
43. II. VIII. Inland Intercourse in Italy
44. I. III. Localities of the Oldest Cantons
45. I. II. Iapygians
46. II. V. Campanian Hellenism
47. II. VIII. Transmarine Commerce
48. II. VII. The Full Roman Franchise
49. II. VI. Battle of Sentinum
50. II. III. The Burgess-Body
51. II. VIII. Impulse Given to It
52. II. III. New Opposition
53. II. VII. Attempts at Peace