PLĂGĬUM, the offence of kidnapping, concealing, and selling freemen
and other persons’ slaves was the subject of a Fabia Lex (B.C. 183).
The penalty of the lex was pecuniary; but this fell into disuse,
and persons who offended against the lex were punished according to
the nature of their offence; under the empire they were generally
condemned to the mines. The word _Plagium_ is said to come from the
Greek πλάγιος, oblique, indirect, dolosus. He who committed _plagium_
was _plagiarius_, a word which Martial applies to a person who
falsely gave himself out as the author of a book; and in this sense
the word has come into common use in our language.
PLAUSTRUM or PLOSTRUM (ἅμαξα), a cart or waggon. It had commonly two
wheels, but sometimes four, and it was then called the _plaustrum
majus_. Besides the wheels and axle the plaustrum consisted of a
strong pole (_temo_), to the hinder part of which was fastened a
table of wooden planks. The blocks of stone, or other things to be
carried, were either laid upon this table without any other support,
or an additional security was obtained by the use either of boards
at the sides, or of a large wicker basket tied upon the cart. The
annexed cut exhibits a cart, the body of which is supplied by a
basket. The commonest kind of cart-wheel was that called _tympanum_,
“the drum,” from its resemblance to the musical instrument of the
same name. It was nearly a foot in thickness, and was made either by
sawing the trunk of a tree across in a horizontal direction, or by
nailing together boards of the requisite shape and size. (See the
cut.) These wheels advanced slowly, and made a loud creaking, which
was heard to a great distance.
[Illustration: Plaustrum, Waggon. (From a Bas-Relief at Rome.)]
PLĒBES or PLEBS. PLĒBĒII. This word contains the same root as
_im-pleo_, _com-pleo_, &c., and is therefore etymologically
connected with πλῆθος, a term which was applied to the plebeians
by the more correct Greek writers on Roman history, while others
wrongly called them δῆμος or οἱ δημοτικοί. The plebeians were the
body of commons or the commonalty of Rome, and thus constituted
one of the two great elements of which the Roman nation consisted,
and which has given to the earlier periods of Roman history its
peculiar character and interest. The time when the plebeians first
appear as a distinct class of Roman citizens in contradistinction
to the patricians, is in the reign of Tullus Hostilius. Alba, the
head of the Latin confederacy, was in his reign taken by the Romans
and razed to the ground. The most distinguished of its inhabitants
were transplanted to Rome and received among the patricians; but
the great bulk of Alban citizens, who were likewise transferred to
Rome, received settlements on the Caelian hill, and were kept in
a state of submission to the populus Romanus or the patricians.
This new population of Rome, which in number is said to have been
equal to the old inhabitants of the city or the patricians, were
the plebeians. They were Latins, and consequently of the same
blood as the Ramnes, the noblest of the three patrician tribes.
After the conquest of Alba, Rome, in the reign of Ancus Martius,
acquired possession of a considerable extent of country, containing
a number of dependent Latin towns, as Medullia, Fidenae, Politorium,
Tellenae, and Ficana. Great numbers of the inhabitants of these
towns were again transplanted to Rome, and incorporated with the
plebeians already settled there, and the Aventine was assigned to
them as their habitation. Some portions of the land which these
new citizens had possessed were given back to them by the Romans,
so that they remained free land-owners as much as the conquerors
themselves, and thus were distinct from the clients.--The plebeians
were citizens, but not _optimo jure_; they were perfectly distinct
from the patricians, and were neither contained in the three tribes,
nor in the curiae, nor in the patrician gentes. The only point of
contact between the two estates was the army. The plebeians were
obliged to fight and shed their blood in the defence of their
new fellow-citizens, without being allowed to share any of their
rights or privileges, and without even the right of intermarriage
(_connubium_). In all judicial matters they were entirely at the
mercy of the patricians, and had no right of appeal against any
unjust sentence, though they were not, like the clients, bound to
have a patronus. They continued to have their own sacra, which
they had had before the conquest, but these were regulated by the
patrician pontiffs. Lastly, they were free land-owners, and had
their own gentes.--The population of the Roman state thus consisted
of two opposite elements; a ruling class or an aristocracy, and the
commonalty, which, though of the same stock as the noblest among
the rulers, and exceeding them in numbers, yet enjoyed none of the
rights which might enable them to take a part in the management of
public affairs, religious or civil. Their citizenship resembled the
relation of aliens to a state, in which they are merely tolerated on
condition of performing certain services, and they are, in fact,
sometimes called peregrini. That such a state of things could not
last, is a truth which must have been felt by every one who was not
blinded by his own selfishness and love of dominion. Tarquinius
Priscus was the first who conceived the idea of placing the plebeians
on a footing of equality with the old burghers, by dividing them
into three tribes, which he intended to call after his own name and
those of his friends. But this noble plan was frustrated by the
opposition of the augur Attus Navius, who probably acted the part
of a representative of the patricians. All that Tarquinius could do
was to effect the admission of the noblest plebeian families into
the three old tribes, who were distinguished from the old patrician
families by the names of Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres secundi, and
their gentes are sometimes distinguished by the epithet minores,
as they entered into the same relation in which the Luceres had
been to the first two tribes, before the time of Tarquinius. It
was reserved to his successor, Servius Tullius, to give to the
commonalty a regular internal organisation, and to determine their
relations to the patricians. He first divided the city into four, and
then the subject country around, which was inhabited by plebeians,
into twenty-six regions or local tribes, and in these regions he
assigned lots of land to those plebeians who were yet without landed
property. [TRIBUS.] Each tribe had its praefect, called tribunus. The
tribes had also their own sacra, festivals, and meetings (_comitia
tributa_), which were convoked by their tribunes. This division into
tribes with tribunes at their heads was no more than an internal
organisation of the plebeians, analogous to the division of the
patricians into thirty curiae, without conferring upon them the right
to interfere in any way in the management of public affairs, or in
the elections, which were left entirely to the senate and the curiae.
These rights, however, they obtained by another regulation of Servius
Tullius, which was made wholly independent of the thirty tribes. For
this purpose he instituted a census, and divided the whole body of
Roman citizens, plebeians as well as patricians, into five classes,
according to the amount of their property. Taxation and the military
duties were arranged according to these classes in such a manner,
that the heavier burdens fell upon the wealthier classes. The whole
body of citizens thus divided was formed into a great national
assembly called comitiatus maximus, or comitia centuriata. [COMITIA.]
In this assembly the plebeians now met the patricians apparently on
a footing of equality, but the votes were distributed in such a way
that it was always in the power of the wealthiest classes, to which
the patricians naturally belonged, to decide a question before it
was put to the vote of the poorer classes. A great number of such
noble plebeian families, as after the subjugation of the Latin towns
had not been admitted into the curies by Tarquinius Priscus, were
now constituted by Servius into a number of equites, with twelve
suffragia in the comitia centuriata. [EQUITES.] In this constitution,
the plebeians, as such, did not obtain admission to the senate, nor
to the highest magistracy, nor to any of the priestly offices. To
all these offices the patricians alone thought themselves entitled
by divine right. The plebeians also continued to be excluded from
occupying any portion of the public land, which as yet was possessed
only by the patricians, and they were only allowed to keep their
cattle upon the common pasture.--In the early times of the republic
there was a constant struggle between the two orders, the history
of which belongs to a history of Rome, and cannot be given here.
Eventually the plebeians gained access to all the civil and religious
offices, until at last the two hostile elements became united into
one great body of Roman citizens with equal rights, and a state of
things arose, totally different from what had existed before. After
the first secession, in B.C. 494, the plebeians gained several great
advantages. First, a law was passed to prevent the patricians from
taking usurious interest of money, which they frequently lent to
impoverished plebeians; secondly, tribunes were appointed for the
protection of the plebeians [TRIBUNI]; and lastly, plebeian aediles
were appointed. [AEDILES.] Shortly after, they gained the right to
summon before their own comitia tributa any one who had violated the
rights of their order, and to make decrees (_plebiscita_), which,
however, did not become binding upon the whole nation, free from
the control of the curies, until the year B.C. 286. In B.C. 445,
the tribune Canuleius established, by his rogations, the connubium
between patricians and plebeians. He also attempted to divide the
consulship between the two orders, but the patricians frustrated the
realisation of this plan by the appointment of six military tribunes,
who were to be elected from both orders. [TRIBUNI.] But that the
plebeians might have no share in the censorial power, with which the
consuls had been invested, the military tribunes did not obtain that
power, and a new curule dignity, the censorship, was established,
with which patricians alone were to be invested. [CENSOR.] In B.C.
421 the plebeians were admitted to the quaestorship, which opened
to them the way into the senate, where henceforth their number
continued to increase. [QUAESTOR; SENATUS.] In B.C. 367 the tribunes
L. Licinius Stolo and L. Sextius placed themselves at the head of the
commonalty, and resumed the contest against the patricians. After
a fierce struggle, which lasted for several years, they at length
carried a rogation, according to which decemvirs were to be appointed
for keeping the Sibylline books instead of duumvirs, of whom half
were to be plebeians. The next great step was the restoration of
the consulship, on condition that one consul should always be a
plebeian. A third rogation of Licinius, which was only intended to
afford momentary relief to the poor plebeians, regulated the rate
of interest. From this time forward the plebeians also appear in
the possession of the right to occupy parts of the ager publicus.
In B.C. 366, L. Sextius Lateranus was the first plebeian consul.
The patricians, however, who always contrived to yield no more than
what it was absolutely impossible for them to retain, stripped the
consulship of a considerable part of its power, and transferred
it to two new curule offices, viz. that of praetor and of curule
aedile. [AEDILES; PRAETOR.] But after such great advantages had
been once gained by the plebeians, it was impossible to stop them
in their progress towards a perfect equality of political rights
with the patricians. In B.C. 356, C. Marcius Rutilus was the first
plebeian dictator; in B.C. 351 the censorship was thrown open to
the plebeians, and in B.C. 336 the praetorship. The Ogulnian law,
in B.C. 300, also opened to them the offices of pontifex and augur.
These advantages were, as might be supposed, not gained without the
fiercest opposition of the patricians, and even after they were
gained and sanctioned by law, the patricians exerted every means to
obstruct the operation of the law. Such fraudulent attempts led,
in B.C. 286, to the last secession of the plebeians, after which,
however, the dictator Q. Hortensius successfully and permanently
reconciled the two orders, secured to the plebeians all the rights
they had acquired until then, and procured for their plebiscita the
full power of leges binding upon the whole nation. After the passing
of the Hortensian law, the political distinction between patricians
and plebeians ceased, and, with a few unimportant exceptions, both
orders were placed on a footing of perfect equality. Henceforth
the name populus is sometimes applied to the plebeians alone, and
sometimes to the whole body of Roman citizens, as assembled in the
comitia centuriata or tributa. The term plebs or plebecula, on
the other hand, was applied, in a loose manner of speaking, to the
multitude or populace, in opposition to the nobiles or the senatorial
party.--A person who was born a plebeian could only be raised to
the rank of a patrician by a lex curiata, as was sometimes done
during the kingly period, and in the early times of the republic.
It frequently occurs in the history of Rome that one and the same
gens contains plebeian as well as patrician families. In the gens
Cornelia, for instance, we find the plebeian families of the Balbi,
Mammulae, Merulae, &c., along with the patrician Scipiones, Sullae,
Lentuli, &c. The occurrence of this phenomenon may be accounted for
in different ways. It may have been, that one branch of a plebeian
family was made patrician while the others remained plebeians. It may
also have happened that two families had the same nomen gentilicium
without being actual members of the same gens. Again, a patrician
family might go over to the plebeians, and as such a family continued
to bear the name of its patrician gens, this gens apparently
contained a plebeian family. When a peregrinus obtained the civitas
through the influence of a patrician, or when a slave was emancipated
by his patrician master, they generally adopted the nomen gentilicium
of their benefactor, and thus appear to belong to the same gens with
him.
PLĒBISCĪTUM, a name properly applied to a law passed at the comitia
tributa on the rogation of a tribune. Originally, a plebiscitum
required confirmation by the comitia curiata and the senate; but a
Lex Hortensia was passed B.C. 286, to the effect that plebiscita
should bind all the populus (_universus populus_), and this lex
rendered confirmation unnecessary. The Lex Hortensia is always
referred to as the lex which put plebiscita as to their binding force
exactly on the same footing as leges. The principal plebiscita are
mentioned under the article LEX.