The Government and the Governed
Formation of New Parties
The fall of the patriciate by no means divested the Roman commonwealth
of its aristocratic character. We have already(1) indicated that the
plebeian party carried within it that character from the first as well
as, and in some sense still more decidedly than, the patriciate; for,
while in the old body of burgesses an absolute equality of rights
prevailed, the new constitution set out from a distinction between
the senatorial houses who were privileged in point of burgess
rights and of burgess usufructs, and the mass of the other citizens.
Immediately, therefore, on the abolition of the patriciate and the
formal establishment of civic equality, a new aristocracy and a
corresponding opposition were formed; and we have already shown how
the former engrafted itself as it were on the fallen patriciate, and
how, accordingly, the first movements of the new party of progress
were mixed up with the last movements of the old opposition between
the orders.(2) The formation of these new parties began in the fifth
century, but they assumed their definite shape only in the century
which followed. The development of this internal change is, as it
were, drowned amidst the noise of the great wars and victories, and
not merely so, but the process of formation is in this case more
withdrawn from view than any other in Roman history. Like a crust
of ice gathering imperceptibly over the surface of a stream and
imperceptibly confining it more and more, this new Roman aristocracy
silently arose; and not less imperceptibly, like the current
concealing itself beneath and slowly extending, there arose in
opposition to it the new party of progress. It is very difficult
to sum up in a general historical view the several, individually
insignificant, traces of these two antagonistic movements, which do
not for the present yield their historical product in any distinct
actual catastrophe. But the freedom hitherto enjoyed in the
commonwealth was undermined, and the foundation for future revolutions
was laid, during this epoch; and the delineation of these as well as
of the development of Rome in general would remain imperfect, if we
should fail to give some idea of the strength of that encrusting ice,
of the growth of the current beneath, and of the fearful moaning and
cracking that foretold the mighty breaking up which was at hand.
Germs of the Nobility in the Patriciate
The Roman nobility attached itself, in form, to earlier institutions
belonging to the times of the patriciate. Persons who once had filled
the highest ordinary magistracies of the state not only, as a matter
of course, practically enjoyed all along a higher honour, but also had
at an early period certain honorary privileges associated with their
position. The most ancient of these was doubtless the permission
given to the descendants of such magistrates to place the wax images
of these illustrious ancestors after their death in the family hall,
along the wall where the pedigree was painted, and to have these
images carried, on occasion of the death of members of the family,
in the funeral procession.(3) To appreciate the importance of this
distinction, we must recollect that the honouring of images was
regarded in the Italo-Hellenic view as unrepublican, and on that
account the Roman state-police did not at all tolerate the exhibition
of effigies of the living, and strictly superintended that of effigies
of the dead. With this privilege were associated various external
insignia, reserved by law or custom for such magistrates and their
descendants:--the golden finger-ring of the men, the silver-mounted
trappings of the youths, the purple border on the toga and the golden
amulet-case of the boys (4)--trifling matters, but still important in
a community where civic equality even in external appearance was so
strictly adhered to,(5) and where, even during the second Punic war,
a burgess was arrested and kept for years in prison because he had
appeared in public, in a manner not sanctioned by law, with a garland
of roses upon his head.(6)
Patricio-Plebian Nobility
These distinctions may perhaps have already existed partially in the
time of the patrician government, and, so long as families of higher
and humbler rank were distinguished within the patriciate, may have
served as external insignia for the former; but they certainly only
acquired political importance in consequence of the change of
constitution in 387, by which the plebeian families that attained
the consulate were placed on a footing of equal privilege with the
patrician families, all of whom were now probably entitled to carry
images of their ancestors. Moreover, it was now settled that the
offices of state to which these hereditary privileges were attached
should include neither the lower nor the extraordinary magistracies
nor the tribunate of the plebs, but merely the consulship, the
praetorship which stood on the same level with it,(7) and the curule
aedileship, which bore a part in the administration of public justice
and consequently in the exercise of the sovereign powers of the
state.(8) Although this plebeian nobility, in the strict sense of the
term, could only be formed after the curule offices were opened to
plebeians, yet it exhibited in a short time, if not at the very first,
a certain compactness of organization--doubtless because such a
nobility had long been prefigured in the old senatorial plebeian
families. The result of the Licinian laws in reality therefore
amounted nearly to what we should now call the creation of a batch of
peers. Now that the plebeian families ennobled by their curule
ancestors were united into one body with the patrician families and
acquired a distinctive position and distinguished power in the
commonwealth, the Romans had again arrived at the point whence they
had started; there was once more not merely a governing aristocracy
and a hereditary nobility--both of which in fact had never
disappeared--but there was a governing hereditary nobility, and the
feud between the gentes in possession of the government and the
commons rising in revolt against the gentes could not but begin
afresh. And matters very soon reached that stage. The nobility was
not content with its honorary privileges which were matters of
comparative indifference, but strove after separate and sole political
power, and sought to convert the most important institutions of the
state--the senate and the equestrian order--from organs of the
commonwealth into organs of the plebeio-patrician aristocracy.
The Nobility in Possession of the Senate
The dependence -de jure- of the Roman senate of the republic, more
especially of the larger patricio-plebeian senate, on the magistracy
had rapidly become lax, and had in fact been converted into
independence. The subordination of the public magistracies to
the state-council, introduced by the revolution of 244;(9) the
transference of the right of summoning men to the senate from the
consul to the censor;(10) lastly, and above all, the legal recognition
of the right of those who had been curule magistrates to a seat and
vote in the senate,(11) had converted the senate from a council
summoned by the magistrates and in many respects dependent on them
into a governing corporation virtually independent, and in a certain
sense filling up its own ranks; for the two modes by which its members
obtained admission--election to a curule office and summoning by the
censor--were both virtually in the power of the governing board
itself. The burgesses, no doubt, at this epoch were still too
independent to allow the entire exclusion of non-nobles from the
senate, and the nobility were perhaps still too judicious even to wish
for this; but, owing to the strictly aristocratic gradations in the
senate itself--in which those who had been curule magistrates were
sharply distinguished, according to their respective classes of
-consulares-, -praetorii-, and -aedilicii-, from the senators who
had not entered the senate through a curule office and were therefore
excluded from debate--the non-nobles, although they probably sat in
considerable numbers in the senate, were reduced to an insignificant
and comparatively uninfluential position in it, and the senate became
substantially a mainstay of the nobility.
The Nobility in Possession of the Equestrian Centuries
The institution of the equites was developed into a second, less
important but yet far from unimportant, organ of the nobility. As the
new hereditary nobility had not the power to usurp sole possession of
the comitia, it necessarily became in the highest degree desirable
that it should obtain at least a separate position within the body
representing the community. In the assembly of the tribes there
was no method of managing this; but the equestrian centuries under
the Servian organization seemed as it were created for the very
purpose. The 1800 horses which the community furnished(12) were
constitutionally disposed of likewise by the censors. It was, no
doubt, the duty of these to select the equites on military grounds and
at their musters to insist that all horsemen incapacitated by age or
otherwise, or at all unserviceable, should surrender their public
horse; but the very nature of the institution implied that the
equestrian horses should be given especially to men of means, and it
was not at all easy to hinder the censors from looking to genteel
birth more than to capacity, and from allowing men of standing who
were once admitted, senators particularly, to retain their horse
beyond the proper time. Perhaps it was even fixed by law that the
senator might retain it as long as he wished. Accordingly it became
at least practically the rule for the senators to vote in the eighteen
equestrian centuries, and the other places in these were assigned
chiefly to the young men of the nobility. The military system, of
course, suffered from this not so much through the unfitness for
effective service of no small part of the legionary cavalry, as
through the destruction of military equality to which the change gave
rise, inasmuch as the young men of rank more and more withdrew from
service in the infantry. The closed aristocratic corps of the equites
proper came to set the tone for the whole legionary cavalry, taken
from the citizens who were of highest position by descent and wealth.
This enables us in some degree to understand why the equites during
the Sicilian war refused to obey the order of the consul Gaius
Aurelius Cotta that they should work at the trenches with the
legionaries (502), and why Cato, when commander-in-chief of the army
in Spain, found himself under the necessity of addressing a severe
reprimand to his cavalry. But this conversion of the burgess-cavalry
into a mounted guard of nobles redounded not more decidedly to the
injury of the commonwealth than to the advantage of the nobility,
which acquired in the eighteen equestrian centuries a suffrage not
merely separate but giving the tone to the rest.
Separation of the Orders in the Theatre
Of a kindred character was the formal separation of the places
assigned to the senatorial order from those occupied by the rest of
the multitude as spectators at the national festivals. It was the
great Scipio, who effected this change in his second consulship in
560. The national festival was as much an assembly of the people as
were the centuries convoked for voting; and the circumstance that the
former had no resolutions to pass made the official announcement of a
distinction between the ruling order and the body of subjects--which
the separation implied--all the more significant. The innovation
accordingly met with much censure even from the ruling class, because
it was simply invidious and not useful, and because it gave a very
manifest contradiction to the efforts of the more prudent portion of
the aristocracy to conceal their exclusive government under the forms
of civil equality.
The Censorship a Prop of the Nobility
These circumstances explain, why the censorship became the pivot of
the later republican constitution; why an office, originally standing
by no means in the first rank, came to be gradually invested with
external insignia which did not at all belong to it in itself and with
an altogether unique aristocratic-republican glory, and was viewed as
the crown and completion of a well-conducted public career; and why
the government looked upon every attempt of the opposition to
introduce their men into this office, or even to hold the censor
responsible to the people for his administration during or after his
term of office, as an attack on their palladium, and presented a
united front of resistance to every such attempt. It is sufficient
in this respect to mention the storm which the candidature of Cato for
the censorship provoked, and the measures, so extraordinarily reckless
and in violation of all form, by which the senate prevented the
judicial prosecution of the two unpopular censors of the year 550.
But with their magnifying the glory of the censorship the government
combined a characteristic distrust of this, their most important and
for that very reason most dangerous, instrument. It was thoroughly
necessary to leave to the censors absolute control over the personal
composition of the senate and the equites; for the right of exclusion
could not well be separated from the right of summoning, and it was
indispensable to retain such a right, not so much for the purpose of
removing from the senate capable men of the opposition--a course which
the smooth-going government of that age cautiously avoided--as for the
purpose of preserving around the aristocracy that moral halo, without
which it must have speedily become a prey to the opposition. The
right of ejection was retained; but what they chiefly needed was the
glitter of the naked blade--the edge of it, which they feared, they
took care to blunt. Besides the check involved in the nature of the
office--under which the lists of the members of the aristocratic
corporations were liable to revision only at intervals of five years
--and besides the limitations resulting from the right of veto vested
in the colleague and the right of cancelling vested in the successor,
there was added a farther check which exercised a very sensible
influence; a usage equivalent to law made it the duty of the censor
not to erase from the list any senator or knight without specifying in
writing the grounds for his decision, or, in other words, adopting, as
a rule, a quasi-judicial procedure.
Remodelling of the Constitution According to the Views of the Nobility
Inadequate Number of Magistrates
In this political position--mainly based on the senate, the equites,
and the censorship--the nobility not only usurped in substance the
government, but also remodelled the constitution according to their
own views. It was part of their policy, with a view to keep up the
appreciation of the public magistracies, to add to the number of these
as little as possible, and to keep it far below what was required by
the extension of territory and the increase of business. Only the
most urgent exigencies were barely met by the division of the judicial
functions hitherto discharged by a single praetor between two judges
--one of whom tried the lawsuits between Roman burgesses, and the
other those that arose between non-burgesses or between burgess and
non-burgess--in 511, and by the nomination of four auxiliary consuls
for the four transmarine provinces of Sicily (527), Sardinia including
Corsica (527), and Hither and Further Spain (557). The far too
summary mode of initialing processes in Rome, as well as the
increasing influence of the official staff, are doubtless traceable
in great measure to the practically inadequate numbers of the
Roman magistracy.
Election of Officers in the Comitia
Among the innovations originated by the government--which were none
the less innovations, that almost uniformly they changed not the
letter, but merely the practice of the existing constitution--the most
prominent were the measures by which the filling up of officers' posts
as well as of civil magistracies was made to depend not, as the letter
of the constitution allowed and its spirit required, simply on merit
and ability, but more and more on birth and seniority. As regards the
nomination of staff-officers this was done not in form, but all the
more in substance. It had already, in the course of the previous
period, been in great part transferred from the general to the
burgesses;(13) in this period came the further step, that the whole
staff-officers of the regular yearly levy--the twenty-four military
tribunes of the four ordinary legions--were nominated in the -comitia
tributa-. Thus a line of demarcation more and more insurmountable was
drawn between the subalterns, who gained their promotion from the
general by punctual and brave service, and the staff, which obtained
its privileged position by canvassing the burgesses.(14) With a view
to check simply the worst abuses in this respect and to prevent young
men quite untried from holding these important posts, it became
necessary to require, as a preliminary to the bestowal of staff
appointments, evidence of a certain number of years of service.
Nevertheless, when once the military tribunate, the true pillar of the
Roman military system, was laid down as the first stepping-stone in
the political career of the young aristocrats, the obligation of
service inevitably came to be frequently eluded, and the election of
officers became liable to all the evils of democratic canvassing and
of aristocratic exclusiveness. It was a cutting commentary on the new
institution, that in serious wars (as in 583) it was found necessary
to suspend this democratic mode of electing officers, and to leave
once more to the general the nomination of his staff.
Restrictions on the Election of Consuls and Censors
In the case of civil offices, the first and chief object was to
limit re-election to the supreme magistracies. This was certainly
necessary, if the presidency of annual kings was not to be an empty
name; and even in the preceding period reelection to the consulship
was not permitted till after the lapse often years, while in the case
if the censorship it was altogether forbidden.(15) No farther law was
passed in the period before us; but an increased stringency in its
application is obvious from the fact that, while the law as to the ten
years' interval was suspended in 537 during the continuance of the war
in Italy, there was no farther dispensation from it afterwards, and
indeed towards the close of this period re-election seldom occurred at
all. Moreover, towards the end of this epoch (574) a decree of the
people was issued, binding the candidates for public magistracies to
undertake them in a fixed order of succession, and to observe certain
intervals between the offices, and certain limits of age. Custom,
indeed, had long prescribed both of these; but it was a sensibly
felt restriction of the freedom of election, when the customary
qualification was raised into a legal requirement, and the right of
disregarding such requirements in extraordinary cases was withdrawn
from the elective body. In general, admission to the senate was
thrown open to persons belonging to the ruling families without
distinction as to ability, while not only were the poorer and humbler
ranks of the population utterly precluded from access to the offices
of government, but all Roman burgesses not belonging to the hereditary
aristocracy were practically excluded, not indeed exactly from the
senate, but from the two highest magistracies, the consulship and the
censorship. After Manius Curius and Gaius Fabricius,(16) no instance
can be pointed out of a consul who did not belong to the social
aristocracy, and probably no instance of the kind occurred at all.
But the number of the -gentes-, which appear for the first time in the
lists of consuls and censors in the half-century from the beginning of
the war with Hannibal to the close of that with Perseus, is extremely
limited; and by far the most of these, such as the Flaminii, Terentii,
Porcii, Acilii, and Laelii, may be referred to elections by the
opposition, or are traceable to special aristocratic connections.
The election of Gaius Laelius in 564, for instance, was evidently
due to the Scipios. The exclusion of the poorer classes from the
government was, no doubt, required by the altered circumstances of the
case. Now that Rome had ceased to be a purely Italian state and had
adopted Hellenic culture, it was no longer possible to take a small
farmer from the plough and to set him at the head of the community.
But it was neither necessary nor beneficial that the elections should
almost without exception be confined to the narrow circle of the
curule houses, and that a "new man" could only make his way into that
circle by a sort of usurpation.(17) No doubt a certain hereditary
character was inherent not merely in the nature of the senate as
an institution, in so far as it rested from the outset on a
representation of the clans,(18) but in the nature of aristocracy
generally, in so far as statesmanly wisdom and statesmanly experience
are bequeathed from the able father to the able son, and the inspiring
spirit of an illustrious ancestry fans every noble spark within the
human breast into speedier and more brilliant flame. In this sense
the Roman aristocracy had been at all times hereditary; in fact, it
had displayed its hereditary character with great naivete in the old
custom of the senator taking his sons with him to the senate, and of
the public magistrate decorating his sons, as it were by anticipation,
with the insignia of the highest official honour--the purple border of
the consular, and the golden amulet-case of the triumphator. But,
while in the earlier period the hereditariness of the outward dignity
had been to a certain extent conditioned by the inheritance of
intrinsic worth, and the senatorial aristocracy had guided the state
not primarily by virtue of hereditary right, but by virtue of the
highest of all rights of representation--the right of the excellent,
as contrasted with the ordinary, man--it sank in this epoch (and with
specially great rapidity after the end of the Hannibalic war) from its
original high position, as the aggregate of those in the community who
were most experienced in counsel and action, down to an order of lords
filling up its ranks by hereditary succession, and exercising
collegiate misrule.
Family Government
Indeed, matters had already at this time reached such a height, that
out of the grave evil of oligarchy there emerged the still worse evil
of usurpation of power by particular families. We have already
spoken(19) of the offensive family-policy of the conqueror of Zama,
and of his unhappily successful efforts to cover with his own laurels
the incapacity and pitifulness of his brother; and the nepotism of the
Flaminini was, if possible, still more shameless and scandalous than
that of the Scipios. Absolute freedom of election in fact turned to
the advantage of such coteries far more than of the electing body.
The election of Marcus Valerius Corvus to the consulship at twenty-
three had doubtless been for the benefit of the state; but now, when
Scipio obtained the aedileship at twenty-three and the consulate at
thirty, and Flamininus, while not yet thirty years of age, rose from
the quaestorship to the consulship, such proceedings involved serious
danger to the republic. Things had already reached such a pass, that
the only effective barrier against family rule and its consequences
had to be found in a government strictly oligarchical; and this was
the reason why even the party otherwise opposed to the oligarchy
agreed to restrict the freedom of election.
Government of the Nobility
Internal Administration
The government bore the stamp of this gradual change in the spirit of
the governing class. It is true that the administration of external
affairs was still dominated at this epoch by that consistency and
energy, by which the rule of the Roman community over Italy had been
established. During the severe disciplinary times of the war as to
Sicily the Roman aristocracy had gradually raised itself to the height
of its new position; and if it unconstitutionally usurped for the
senate functions of government which by right foil to be shared
between the magistrates and the comitia alone, it vindicated the step
by its certainly far from brilliant, but sure and steady, pilotage
of the vessel of the state during the Hannibalic storm and the
complications thence arising, and showed to the world that the Roman
senate was alone able, and in many respects alone deserved, to rule
the wide circle of the Italo-Hellenic states. But admitting the noble
attitude of the ruling Roman senate in opposition to the outward foe
--an attitude crowned with the noblest results--we may not overlook
the fact, that in the less conspicuous, and yet far more important
and far more difficult, administration of the internal affairs of the
state, both the treatment of the existing arrangements and the new
institutions betray an almost opposite spirit, or, to speak more
correctly, indicate that the opposite tendency has already acquired
the predominance in this field.
Decline in the Administration
In relation, first of all, to the individual burgess the government
was no longer what it had been. The term "magistrate" meant a man who
was more than other men; and, if he was the servant of the community,
he was for that very reason the master of every burgess. But the
tightness of the rein was now visibly relaxed. Where coteries and
canvassing flourish as they did in the Rome of that age, men are chary
of forfeiting the reciprocal services of their fellows or the favour
of the multitude by stern words and impartial discharge of official
duty. If now and then magistrates appeared who displayed the gravity
and the sternness of the olden time, they were ordinarily, like Cotta
(502) and Cato, new men who had not sprung from the bosom of the
ruling class. It was already something singular, when Paullus, who
had been named commander-in-chief against Perseus, instead of
tendering his thanks in the usual manner to the burgesses, declared
to them that he presumed they had chosen him as general because
they accounted him the most capable of command, and requested them
accordingly not to help him to command, but to be silent and obey.
As to Military Discipline and Administration of Justice
The supremacy and hegemony of Rome in the territories of the
Mediterranean rested not least on the strictness of her military
discipline and her administration of justice. Undoubtedly she was
still, on the whole, at that time infinitely superior in these
respects to the Hellenic, Phoenician, and Oriental states, which were
without exception thoroughly disorganized; nevertheless grave abuses
were already occurring in Rome. We have previously(20) pointed out
how the wretched character of the commanders-in-chief--and that not
merely in the case of demagogues chosen perhaps by the opposition,
like Gaius Flaminius and Gaius Varro, but of men who were good
aristocrats--had already in the third Macedonian war imperilled the
weal of the state. And the mode in which justice was occasionally
administered is shown by the scene in the camp of the consul Lucius
Quinctius Flamininus at Placentia (562). To compensate a favourite
youth for the gladiatorial games of the capital, which through his
attendance on the consul he had missed the opportunity of seeing, that
great lord had ordered a Boian of rank who had taken refuge in the
Roman camp to be summoned, and had killed him at a banquet with his
own hand. Still worse than the occurrence itself, to which various
parallels might be adduced, was the fact that the perpetrator was not
brought to trial; and not only so, but when the censor Cato on account
of it erased his name from the roll of the senate, his fellow-senators
invited the expelled to resume his senatorial stall in the theatre
--he was, no doubt, the brother of the liberator of the Greeks,
and one of the most powerful coterie-leaders in the senate.
As to the Management of Finances
The financial system of the Roman community also retrograded rather
than advanced during this epoch. The amount of their revenues,
indeed, was visibly on the increase. The indirect taxes--there were
no direct taxes in Rome--increased in consequence of the enlargement
of the Roman territory, which rendered it necessary, for example, to
institute new customs-offices along the Campanian and Bruttian coasts
at Puteoli, Castra (Squillace), and elsewhere, in 555 and 575. The
same reason led to the new salt-tariff of 550 fixing the scale of
prices at which salt was to be sold in the different districts of
Italy, as it was no longer possible to furnish salt at one and the
same price to the Roman burgesses now scattered throughout the land;
but, as the Roman government probably supplied the burgesses with salt
at cost price, if not below it, this financial measure yielded no gain
to the state. Still more considerable was the increase in the produce
of the domains. The duty indeed, which of right was payable to the
treasury from the Italian domain-lands granted for occupation, was in
the great majority of cases neither demanded nor paid. On the other
hand the -scriptura- was retained; and not only so, but the domains
recently acquired in the second Punic war, particularly the greater
portion of the territory of Capua(21) and that of Leontini,(22)
instead of being given up to occupation, were parcelled out and let to
petty temporary lessees, and the attempts at occupation made in these
cases were opposed with more than usual energy by the government; by
which means the state acquired a considerable and secure source of
income. The mines of the state also, particularly the important
Spanish mines, were turned to profit on lease. Lastly, the revenue
was augmented by the tribute of the transmarine subjects. From
extraordinary sources very considerable sums accrued during this epoch
to the state treasury, particularly the produce of the spoil in the
war with Antiochus, 200 millions of sesterces (2,000,000 pounds), and
that of the war with Perseus, 210 millions of sesterces (2,100,000
pounds)--the latter, the largest sum in cash which ever came at one
time into the Roman treasury.
But this increase of revenue was for the most part counterbalanced by
the increasing expenditure. The provinces, Sicily perhaps excepted,
probably cost nearly as much as they yielded; the expenditure on
highways and other structures rose in proportion to the extension of
territory; the repayment also of the advances (-tributa-) received
from the freeholder burgesses during times of severe war formed a
burden for many a year afterwards on the Roman treasury. To these
fell to be added very considerable losses occasioned to the revenue
by the mismanagement, negligence, or connivance of the supreme
magistrates. Of the conduct of the officials in the provinces, of
their luxurious living at the expense of the public purse, of their
embezzlement more especially of the spoil, of the incipient system of
bribery and extortion, we shall speak in the sequel. How the state
fared generally as regarded the farming of its revenues and the
contracts for supplies and buildings, may be estimated from the
circumstance, that the senate resolved in 587 to desist from the
working of the Macedonian mines that had fallen to Rome, because the
lessees of the minerals would either plunder the subjects or cheat
the exchequer--truly a naive confession of impotence, in which the
controlling board pronounced its own censure. Not only was the duty
from the occupied domain-land allowed tacitly to fall into abeyance,
as has been already mentioned, but private buildings in the capital
and elsewhere were suffered to encroach on ground which was public
property, and the water from the public aqueducts was diverted to
private purposes: great dissatisfaction was created on one occasion
when a censor took serious steps against such trespassers, and
compelled them either to desist from the separate use of the public
property, or to pay the legal rate for the ground and water. The
conscience of the Romans, otherwise in economic matters so scrupulous,
showed, so far as the community was concerned, a remarkable laxity.
"He who steals from a burgess," said Cato, "ends his days in chains
and fetters; but he who steals from the community ends them in gold
and purple." If, notwithstanding the fact that the public property
of the Roman community was fearlessly and with impunity plundered by
officials and speculators, Polybius still lays stress on the rarity
of embezzlement in Rome, while Greece could hardly produce a single
official who had not touched the public money, and on the honesty with
which a Roman commissioner or magistrate would upon his simple word of
honour administer enormous sums, while in the case of the paltriest
sum in Greece ten letters were sealed and twenty witnesses were
required and yet everybody cheated, this merely implies that social
and economic demoralization had advanced much further in Greece than
in Rome, and in particular, that direct and palpable peculation was
not as yet so flourishing in the one case as in the other. The
general financial result is most clearly exhibited to us by the state
of the public buildings, and by the amount of cash in the treasury.
We find in times of peace a fifth, in times of war a tenth, of the
revenues expended on public buildings; which, in the circumstances,
does not seem to have been a very copious outlay. With these sums, as
well as with fines which were not directly payable into the treasury,
much was doubtless done for the repair of the highways in and near the
capital, for the formation of the chief Italian roads,(23) and for the
construction of public buildings. Perhaps the most important of the
building operations in the capital, known to belong to this period,
was the great repair and extension of the network of sewers throughout
the city, contracted for probably in 570, for which 24,000,000
sesterces (240,000 pounds) were set apart at once, and to which it may
be presumed that the portions of the -cloacae- still extant, at least
in the main, belong. To all appearance however, even apart from the
severe pressure of war, this period was inferior to the last section
of the preceding epoch in respect of public buildings; between 482 and
607 no new aqueduct was constructed at Rome. The treasure of the
state, no doubt, increased; the last reserve in 545, when: they found
themselves under the necessity of laying hands on it, amounted only to
164,000 pounds (4000 pounds of gold);(24) whereas a short time after
the close of this period (597) close on 860,000 pounds in precious
metals were stored in the treasury. But, when we take into account
the enormous extraordinary revenues which in the generation after the
close of the Hannibalic war came into the Roman treasury, the latter
sum surprises us rather by its smallness than by its magnitude. So
far as with the extremely meagre statements before us it is allowable
to speak of results, the finances of the Roman state exhibit doubtless
an excess of income over expenditure, but are far from presenting a
brilliant result as a whole.
Italian Subjects
Passive Burgesses
The change in the spirit of the government was most distinctly
apparent in the treatment of the Italian and extra-Italian subjects of
the Roman community. Formerly there had been distinguished in Italy
the ordinary, and the Latin, allied communities, the Roman burgesses
-sine suffragio- and the Roman burgesses with the full franchise. Of
these four classes the third was in the course of this period almost
completely set aside, inasmuch as the course which had been earlier
taken with the communities of passive burgesses in Latium and Sabina,
was now applied also to those of the former Volscian territory, and
these gradually--the last perhaps being in the year 566 Arpinum,
Fundi, and Formiae--obtained full burgess-rights. In Campania Capua
along with a number of minor communities in the neighbourhood was
broken up in consequence of its revolt from Rome in the Hannibalic
war. Although some few communities, such as Velitrae in the Volscian
territory, Teanum and Cumae in Campania, may have remained on their
earlier legal footing, yet, looking at the matter in the main, this
franchise of a passive character may be held as now superseded.
Dediticii
On the other hand there emerged a new class in a position of
peculiar inferiority, without communal freedom and the right to
carry arms, and, in part, treated almost like public slaves
(-peregrini dediticii-); to which, in particular, the members of
the former Campanian, southern Picentine, and Bruttian communities,
that had been in alliance with Hannibal,(25) belonged. To these were
added the Celtic tribes tolerated on the south side of the Alps, whose
position in relation to the Italian confederacy is indeed only known
imperfectly, but is sufficiently characterized as inferior by the
clause embodied in their treaties of alliance with Rome, that no
member of these communities should ever be allowed to acquire
Roman citizenship.(26)
Allies
The position of the non-Latin allies had, as we have mentioned
before,(27) undergone a change greatly to their disadvantage in
consequence of the Hannibalic war. Only a few communities in this
category, such as Neapolis, Nola, Rhegium, and Heraclea, had during
all the vicissitudes of that war remained steadfastly on the Roman
side, and therefore retained their former rights as allies unaltered;
by far the greater portion were obliged in consequence of having
changed sides to acquiesce in a revision of the existing treaties to
their disadvantage. The reduced position of the non-Latin allies is
attested by the emigration from their communities into the Latin:
when in 577 the Samnites and Paelignians applied to the senate for a
reduction of their contingents, their request was based on the ground
that during late years 4000 Samnite and Paelignian families had
migrated to the Latin colony of Fregellae.
Latins
That the Latins--which term now denoted the few towns in old Latium
that were not included in the Roman burgess-union, such as Tibur and
Praeneste, the allied cities placed in law on the same footing with
them, such as several of the Hernican towns, and the Latin colonies
dispersed throughout Italy--were still at this time in a better
position, is implied in their very name; but they too had, in
proportion, hardly less deteriorated. The burdens imposed on them
were unjustly increased, and the pressure of military service was more
and more devolved from the burgesses upon them and the other Italian
allies. For instance, in 536, nearly twice as many of the allies were
called out as of the burgesses: after the end of the Hannibalic war
all the burgesses received their discharge, but not all the allies;
the latter were chiefly employed for garrison duty and for the odious
service in Spain; in the triumphal largess of 577 the allies received
not as formerly an equal share with the burgesses, but only the half,
so that amidst the unrestrained rejoicing of that soldiers' carnival
the divisions thus treated as inferior followed the chariot of victory
in sullen silence: in the assignations of land in northern Italy the
burgesses received ten jugera of arable land each, the non-burgesses
three -jugera- each. The unlimited liberty of migration had already
at an earlier period been taken from the Latin communities, and
migration to Rome was only allowed to them in the event of their
leaving behind children of their own and a portion of their estate in
the community which had been their home.(28) But these burdensome
requirements were in various ways evaded or transgressed; and the
crowding of the burgesses of Latin townships to Rome, and the
complaints of their magistrates as to the increasing depopulation
of the cities and the impossibility under such circumstances of
furnishing the fixed contingent, led the Roman government to institute
police-ejections from the capital on a large scale (567, 577). The
measure might be unavoidable, but it was none the less severely felt.
Moreover, the towns laid out by Rome in the interior of Italy began
towards the close of this period to receive instead of Latin rights
the full franchise, which previously had only been given to the
maritime colonies; and the enlargement of the Latin body by the
accession of new communities, which hitherto had gone on so regularly,
thus came to an end. Aquileia, the establishment of which began in
571, was the latest of the Italian colonies of Rome that received
Latin rights; the full franchise was given to the colonies, sent forth
nearly at the same time, of Potentia, Pisaurum, Mutina, Parma, and
Luna (570-577). The reason for this evidently lay in the decline of
the Latin as compared with the Roman franchise. The colonists
conducted to the new settlements were always, and now more than ever,
chosen in preponderating number from the Roman burgesses; and even
among the poorer portion of these there was a lack of people willing,
for the sake even of acquiring considerable material advantages, to
exchange their rights as burgesses for those of the Latin franchise.
Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition
Lastly, in the case of non-burgesses--communities as well as
individuals--admission to the Roman franchise was almost completely
foreclosed. The earlier course incorporating the subject communities
in that of Rome had been dropped about 400, that the Roman burgess
body might not be too much decentralized by its undue extension; and
therefore communities of half-burgesses were instituted.(29) Now
the centralization of the community was abandoned, partly through
the admission of the half-burgess communities to the full franchise,
partly through the accession of numerous more remote burgess-colonies
to its ranks; but the older system of incorporation was not resumed
with reference to the allied communities. It cannot be shown that
after the complete subjugation of Italy even a single Italian
community exchanged its position as an ally for the Roman franchise;
probably none after that date in reality acquired it Even the
transition of individual Italians to the Roman franchise was confined
almost solely to the case of magistrates of the Latin communities(30)
and, by special favour, of individual non-burgesses admitted to share
it at the founding of burgess-colonies.(31)
It cannot be denied that these changes -de facto- and -de jure- in
the relations of the Italian subjects exhibit at least an intimate
connection and consistency. The situation of the subject classes was
throughout deteriorated in proportion to the gradations previously
subsisting, and, while the government had formerly endeavoured to
soften the distinctions and to provide means of transition from one to
another, now the intermediate links were everywhere set aside and the
connecting bridges were broken down. As within the Roman burgess-body
the ruling class separated itself from the people, uniformly withdrew
from public burdens, and uniformly took for itself the honours and
advantages, so the burgesses in their turn asserted their distinction
from the Italian confederacy, and excluded it more and more from the
joint enjoyment of rule, while transferring to it a double or triple
share in the common burdens. As the nobility, in relation to the
plebeians, returned to the close exclusiveness of the declining
patriciate, so did the burgesses in relation to the non-burgesses;
the plebeiate, which had become great through the liberality of
its institutions, now wrapped itself up in the rigid maxims of
patricianism. The abolition of the passive burgesses cannot in itself
be censured, and, so far as concerned the motive which led to it,
belongs presumably to another connection to be discussed afterwards;
but through its abolition an intermediate link was lost. Far more
fraught with peril, however, was the disappearance of the distinction
between the Latin and the other Italian communities. The privileged
position of the Latin nation within Italy was the foundation of the
Roman power; that foundation gave way, when the Latin towns began to
feel that they were no longer privileged partakers in the dominion of
the powerful cognate community, but substantially subjects of Rome
like the rest, and when all the Italians began to find their position
equally intolerable. It is true, that there were still distinctions:
the Bruttians and their companions in misery were already treated
exactly like slaves and conducted themselves accordingly, deserting,
for instance, from the fleet in which they served as galley-slaves,
whenever they could, and gladly taking service against Rome; and the
Celtic, and above all the transmarine, subjects formed by the side of
the Italians a class still more oppressed and intentionally abandoned
by the government to contempt and maltreatment at the hands of the
Italians. But such distinctions, while implying a gradation of
classes among the subjects, could not withal afford even a remote
compensation for the earlier contrast between the cognate, and the
alien, Italian subjects. A profound dissatisfaction prevailed through
the whole Italian confederacy, and fear alone prevented it from
finding loud expression. The proposal made in the senate after the
battle at Cannae, to give the Roman franchise and a seat in the senate
to two men from each Latin community, was made at an unseasonable
time, and was rightly rejected; but it shows the apprehension with
which men in the ruling community even then viewed the relations
between Latium and Rome. Had a second Hannibal now carried the war to
Italy, it may be doubted whether he would have again been thwarted by
the steadfast resistance of the Latin name to a foreign domination.
The Provinces
But by far the most important institution which this epoch introduced
into the Roman commonwealth, and that at the same time which involved
the most decided and fatal deviation from the course hitherto pursued,
was the new provincial magistracies. The earlier state-law of Rome
knew nothing of tributary subjects: the conquered communities were
either sold into slavery, or merged in the Roman commonwealth, or
lastly, admitted to an alliance which secured to them at least
communal independence and freedom from taxation. But the Carthaginian
possessions in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, as well as the kingdom of
Hiero, had paid tribute and rent to their former masters: if Rome was
desirous of retaining these possessions at all, it was in the judgment
of the short-sighted the most judicious, and undoubtedly the most
convenient, course to administer the new territories entirely in
accordance with the rules heretofore observed. Accordingly the Romans
simply retained the Carthagino-Hieronic provincial constitution, and
organized in accordance with it those provinces also, such as Hither
Spain, which they wrested from the barbarians. It was the shirt of
Nessus which they inherited from the enemy. Beyond doubt at first
the Roman government intended, in imposing taxes on their subjects,
not strictly to enrich themselves, but only to cover the cost of
administration and defence; but they already deviated from this
course, when they made Macedonia and Illyria tributary without
undertaking the government or the guardianship of the frontier there.
The fact, however, that they still maintained moderation in the
imposition of burdens was of little consequence, as compared with the
conversion of their sovereignty into a right yielding profit at all;
the fall was the same, whether a single apple was taken or the tree
was plundered.
Position of the Governors
Punishment followed in the steps of wrong. The new provincial
system necessitated the appointment of governors, whose position was
absolutely incompatible not only with the welfare of the provinces,
but with the Roman constitution. As the Roman community in the
provinces took the place of the former ruler of the land, so their
governor appeared there in the king's stead; the Sicilian praetor, for
example, resided in the palace of Hiero at Syracuse. It is true, that
by right the governor nevertheless ought to administer his office with
republican honesty and frugality. Cato, when governor of Sardinia,
appeared in the towns subject to him on foot and attended by a single
servant, who carried his coat and sacrificial ladle; and, when he
returned home from his Spanish governorship, he sold his war-horse
beforehand, because he did not hold himself entitled to charge the
state with the expenses of its transport. There is no question that
the Roman governors--although certainly but few of them pushed their
conscientiousness, like Cato, to the verge of being niggardly and
ridiculous--made in many cases a powerful impression on the subjects,
more especially on the frivolous and unstable Greeks, by their old-
fashioned piety, by the reverential stillness prevailing at their
repasts, by their comparatively upright administration of office and
of justice, especially by their proper severity towards the worst
bloodsuckers of the provincials--the Roman revenue-farmers and
bankers--and in general by the gravity and dignity of their
deportment. The provincials found their government comparatively
tolerable. They had not been pampered by their Carthaginian stewards
and Syracusan masters, and they were soon to find occasion for
recalling with gratitude the present rods as compared with the coming
scorpions: it is easy to understand how, in later times, the sixth
century of the city appeared as the golden era of provincial rule.
But it was not practicable for any length of time to be at once
republican and king. Playing the part of governors demoralized the
Roman ruling class \vith fearful rapidity. Haughtiness and arrogance
towards the provincials were so natural in the circumstances, as
scarcely to form matter of reproach against the individual magistrate.
But already it was a rare thing--and the rarer, because the government
adhered rigidly to the old principle of not paying public officials
--that a governor returned with quite clean hands from his province;
it was already remarked upon as something singular that Paullus, the
conqueror of Pydna, did not take money. The bad custom of delivering
to the governor "honorary wine" and other "voluntary" gifts seems as
old as the provincial constitution itself, and may perhaps have been
a legacy from the Carthaginians; even Cato in his administration of
Sardinia in 556 had to content himself with regulating and moderating
such contributions. The right of the magistrates, and of those
travelling on the business of the state generally, to free quarters
and free conveyance was already employed as a pretext for exactions.
The more important right of the magistrate to make requisitions of
grain in his province--partly for the maintenance of himself and his
retinue (-in cellam-) partly for the provisioning of the army in case
of war, or on other special occasions at a fair valuation--was already
so scandalously abused, that on the complaint of the Spaniards the
senate in 583 found it necessary to withdraw from the governors the
right of fixing the price of the supplies for either purpose.(32)
Requisitions had begun to be made on the subjects even for the popular
festivals in Rome; the unmeasured vexatious demands made on the
Italian as well as extra-Italian communities by the aedile Tiberius
Sempronius Gracchus, for the festival which he had to provide, induced
the senate officially to interfere against them (572). The liberties
which Roman magistrates at the close of this period allowed themselves
to take not only with the unhappy subjects, but even with the
dependent free-states and kingdoms, are illustrated by the raids of
Gaius Volso in Asia Minor,(33) and above all by the scandalous
proceedings in Greece during the war with Perseus.(34)
Control over the Governors
Supervision of the Senate over the Provinces and Their Governors
The government had no right to be surprised at such things, for it
provided no serious check on the excesses of this capricious military
administration. Judicial control, it is true, was not entirely
wanting. Although, according to the universal but more than
questionable rule of allowing no complaint to be brought against a
commander-in-chief during his term of office,(35) the Roman governor
could ordinarily be called to account only after the mischief had
been done, yet he was amenable both to a criminal and to a civil
prosecution. In order to the institution of the former, a tribune of
the people by virtue of the judicial power pertaining to him had to
take the case in hand and bring it to the bar of the people; the civil
action was remitted by the senator who administered the corresponding
praetorship to a jury appointed, according to the constitution of the
tribunal in those times, from the ranks of the senate. In both cases,
therefore, the control lay in the hands of the ruling class, and,
although the latter was still sufficiently upright and honourable not
absolutely to set aside well-founded complaints, and the senate even
in various instances, at the call of those aggrieved, condescended
itself to order the institution of a civil process, yet the complaints
of poor men and foreigners against powerful members of the ruling
aristocracy--submitted to judges and jurymen far remote from the scene
and, if not involved in the like guilt, at least belonging to the same
order as the accused--could from the first only reckon on success in
the event of the wrong being clear and crying; and to complain in vain
was almost certain destruction. The aggrieved no doubt found a sort
of support in the hereditary relations of clientship, which the
subject cities and provinces entered into with their conquerors and
other Romans brought into close contact with them. The Spanish
governors felt that no one could with impunity maltreat clients of
Cato; and the circumstance that the representatives of the three
nations conquered by Paullus--the Spaniards, Ligurians, and
Macedonians--would not forgo the privilege of carrying his bier to the
funeral pile, was the noblest dirge in honour of that noble man. But
not only did this special protection give the Greeks opportunity to
display in Rome all their talent for abasing themselves in presence of
their masters, and to demoralize even those masters by their ready
servility--the decrees of the Syracusans in honour of Marcellus, after
he had destroyed and plundered their city and they had complained of
his conduct in these respects to the senate in vain, form one of the
most scandalous pages in the far from honourable annals of Syracuse
--but, in connection with the already dangerous family-politics, this
patronage on the part of great houses had also its politically
perilous side. In this way the result perhaps was that the Roman
magistrates in some degree feared the gods and the senate, and for
the most part were moderate in their plundering; but they plundered
withal, and did so with impunity, if they but observed such
moderation. The mischievous rule became established, that in the case
of minor exactions and moderate violence the Roman magistrate acted in
some measure within his sphere and was in law exempt from punishment,
so that those who were aggrieved had to keep silence; and from this
rule succeeding ages did not fail to draw the fatal consequences.
Nevertheless, even though the tribunals had been as strict as they
were lax, the liability to a judicial reckoning could only check
the worst evils. The true security for a good administration lay
in a strict and uniform supervision by the supreme administrative
authority: and this the senate utterly failed to provide. It was
in this respect that the laxity and helplessness of the collegiate
government became earliest apparent. By right the governors ought to
have been subjected to an oversight far more strict and more special
than had sufficed for the administration of Italian municipal affairs;
and now, when the empire embraced great transmarine territories, the
arrangements, through which the government preserved to itself the
supervision of the whole, ought to have undergone a corresponding
expansion. In both respects the reverse was the case. The governors
ruled virtually as sovereign; and the most important of the
institutions serving for the latter purpose, the census of the empire,
was extended to Sicily alone, not to any of the provinces subsequently
acquired. This emancipation of the supreme administrative officials
from the central authority was more than hazardous. The Roman
governor, placed at the head of the armies of the state, and in
possession of considerable financial resources: subject to but a
lax judicial control, and practically independent of the supreme
administration; and impelled by a sort of necessity to separate the
interest of himself and of the people whom he governed from that of
the Roman community and to treat them as conflicting, far more
resembled a Persian satrap than one of the commissioners of the Roman
senate at the time of the Samnite wars. The man, moreover, who had
just conducted a legalized military tyranny abroad, could with
difficulty find his way back to the common civic level, which
distinguished between those who commanded and those who obeyed, but
not between masters and slaves. Even the government felt that their
two fundamental principles--equality within the aristocracy, and the
subordination of the power of the magistrates to the senatorial
college--began in this instance to give way in their hands. The
aversion of the government to the acquisition of new provinces and to
the whole provincial system; the institution of the provincial
quaestorships, which were intended to take at least the financial
power out of the hands of the governors; and the abolition of the
arrangement--in itself so judicious--for a longer tenure of such
offices,(36) very clearly evince the anxiety felt by the more far-
seeing of the Roman statesmen as to the fruits of the seed thus sown.
But diagnosis is not cure. The internal government of the nobility
continued to follow the direction once given to it; and the decay of
the administration and of the financial system--paving the way for
future revolutions and usurpations--steadily pursued its course,
if not unnoticed, yet unchecked.
The Opposition
If the new nobility was less sharply defined than the old aristocracy
of the clans, and if the encroachment on the other burgesses as
respected the joint enjoyment of political rights was in the one
case -de jure-, in the other only -de facto-, the second form of
inferiority was for that very reason worse to bear and worse to throw
off than the first. Attempts to throw it off were, as a matter of
course, not wanting. The opposition rested on the support of the
public assembly, as the nobility did on the senate: in order to
understand the opposition, we must first describe the Roman burgess-
body during this period as regards its spirit and its position in the
commonwealth.
Character of the Roman Burgess-Body
Whatever could be demanded of an assembly of burgesses like the Roman,
which was not the moving spring, but the firm foundation, of the whole
machinery--a sure perception of the common good, a sagacious deference
towards the right leader, a steadfast spirit in prosperous and evil
days, and, above all, the capacity of sacrificing the individual for
the general welfare and the comfort of the present for the advantage
of the future--all these qualities the Roman community exhibited in so
high a degree that, when we look to its conduct as a whole, all
censure is lost in reverent admiration. Even now good sense and
discretion still thoroughly predominated. The whole conduct of
the burgesses with reference to the government as well as to the
opposition shows quite clearly that the same mighty patriotism before
which even the genius of Hannibal had to quit the field prevailed also
in the Roman comitia. No doubt they often erred; but their errors
originated not in the mischievous impulses of a rabble, but in the
narrow views of burgesses and farmers. The machinery, however, by
means of which the burgesses intervened in the course of public
affairs became certainly more and more unwieldy, and the circumstances
in which they were placed through their own great deeds far outgrew
their power to deal with them. We have already stated, that in the
course of this epoch most of the former communities of passive
burgesses, as well as a considerable number of newly established
colonies, received the full Roman franchise.(37) At the close of this
period the Roman burgess-body, in a tolerably compact mass, filled
Latium in its widest sense, Sabina, and a part of Campania, so that it
reached on the west coast northward to Caere and southward to Cumae;
within this district there were only a few cities not included in it,
such as Tibur, Praeneste, Signia, Norba, and Ferentinum. To this
fell to be added the maritime colonies on the coasts of Italy which
uniformly possessed the full Roman franchise, the Picenian and Trans-
Apennine colonies of the most recent times, to which the franchise
must have been conceded,(38) and a very considerable number of Roman
burgesses, who, without forming separate communities in a strict
sense, were scattered throughout Italy in market-villages and hamlets
(-fora et conciliabula-). To some extent the unwieldiness of a civic
community so constituted was remedied, for the purposes of justice(39)
and of administration, by the deputy judges previously mentioned;(40)
and already perhaps the maritime(41) and the new Picenian and Trans-
Apennine colonies exhibited at least the first lineaments of the
system under which afterwards smaller urban communities were organized
within the great city-commonwealth of Rome. But in all political
questions the primary assembly in the Roman Forum remained alone
entitled to act; and it is obvious at a glance, that this assembly
was no longer, in its composition or in its collective action, what
it had been when all the persons entitled to vote could exercise their
privilege as citizens by leaving their farms in the morning and
returning home the same evening. Moreover the government--whether
from want of judgment, from negligence, or from any evil design, we
cannot tell--no longer as formerly enrolled the communities admitted
to the franchise after 513 in newly instituted election-districts, but
included them along with others in the old; so that gradually each
tribe came to be composed of different townships scattered over the
whole Roman territory. Election-districts such as these, containing
on an average 8000--the urban naturally having more, the rural fewer
--persons entitled to vote, without local connection or inward unity,
no longer admitted of any definite leading or of any satisfactory
previous deliberation; disadvantages which must have been the more
felt, since the voting itself was not preceded by any free debate.
Moreover, while the burgesses had quite sufficient capacity to discern
their communal interests, it was foolish and utterly ridiculous to
leave the decision of the highest and most difficult questions which
the power that ruled the world had to solve to a well-disposed but
fortuitous concourse of Italian farmers, and to allow the nomination
of generals and the conclusion of treaties of state to be finally
judged of by people who understood neither the grounds nor the
consequences of their decrees. In all matters transcending mere
communal affairs the Roman primary assemblies accordingly played a
childish and even silly part. As a rule, the people stood and gave
assent to all proposals; and, when in exceptional instances they of
their own impulse refused assent, as on occasion of the declaration
of war against Macedonia in 554,(42) the policy of the market-place
certainly made a pitiful opposition--and with a pitiful issue--to the
policy of the state.
Rise of a City Rabble
At length the rabble of clients assumed a position, formally of
equality and often even, practically, of superiority, alongside of
the class of independent burgesses. The institutions out of which it
sprang were of great antiquity. From time immemorial the Roman of
quality exercised a sort of government over his freedmen and
dependents, and was consulted by them in all their more important
affairs; a client, for instance, was careful not to give his children
in marriage without having obtained the consent of his patron, and
very often the latter directly arranged the match. But as the
aristocracy became converted into a special ruling class concentrating
in its hands not only power but also wealth, the clients became
parasites and beggars; and the new adherents of the rich undermined
outwardly and inwardly the burgess class. The aristocracy not only
tolerated this sort of clientship, but worked it financially and
politically for their own advantage. Thus, for instance, the old
penny collections, which hitherto had taken place chiefly for
religious purposes and at the burial of men of merit, were now
employed by lords of high standing--for the first time by Lucius
Scipio, in 568, on occasion of a popular festival which he had in
contemplation--for the purpose of levying on extraordinary occasions a
contribution from the public. Presents were specially placed under
legal restriction (in 550), because the senators began under that name
to take regular tribute from their clients. But the retinue of
clients was above all serviceable to the ruling class as a means of
commanding the comitia; and the issue of the elections shows clearly
how powerfully the dependent rabble already at this epoch competed
with the independent middle class.