A History of the Roman World (14 page)

The political history of the two hundred years which followed the fall of the monarchy is mainly that of the struggle of the social orders, as the plebeians sought protection from, and then equality with, the patricians. The kings may have tried to temper the power of the nobles by giving consideration to the people, but in the Republic the plebeians had no protection against the consuls, and their political disabilities were numerous. Most, if not all,
magistrates, priests and judges were patricians. But when the losses in the numerous wars with the Etruscans, Aequi and Volsci (see Chap. IV) fell mainly on the patricians, they were soon forced to realize the military value of the rapidly increasing plebeians. At the same time the plebeians, who risked their lives in Rome’s defence, became conscious of their rights and found a means by which to extort them. Their method was a general strike (
secessio
); they threatened to withdraw from Rome when their military services were most needed. Tradition records five such secessions between 494 and 287
BC
; not all of them are historical and many of the details are false, but this was certainly the method adopted.

This struggle between the orders was political and social, but it was also economic; the influence of this aspect has been very differently estimated. As our records of the struggle were composed after the agrarian troubles of Gracchan days, many have supposed that the economic element has been greatly exaggerated in order to provide precedents for later agrarian legislation, and that the party fights are modelled on the political upheavals of Sulla’s day. Undoubtedly the influence of later history has falsified much of the traditional account, but the basic elements may still be sound. In so far as the concessions won by the plebs were political, we may suppose that the richer plebeians worked to that end. But as economic legislation also resulted, it cannot be denied that economic distress was a real cause of the trouble; whether directly or only because the leaders of the movement were clever enough to use it as a handle for their own political ends, is another question. Probably the urban plebs wanted protection and political recognition and privilege, while the country plebs clamoured for more land and greater freedom. The whole history of the struggle is closely interrelated with Rome’s wars with her neighbours which are recounted in the next chapter.

The new Republic presumably wished to maintain Rome’s earlier trade relations, and indeed made a treaty with Carthage which probably merely renewed an earlier agreement of regal times (p. 53). Nevertheless, her commerce and industry suffered a gradual decline. Greek pottery was still imported, but on a smaller scale than in the sixth century, until a dramatic change took place in the mid-century: fifty-three red-figure vases imported from Athens have been found at Rome which date from the years 500–450
BC
, whereas only two occur from the years 450–420, and the trade did not begin to revive until
c.
400.
⁸
During the early part of the fifth century Rome’s commerce was matched by much building activity in the city: temples to Saturn in 496, to Mercury (the god of commerce) in 495, to Ceres, Liber and Libera on the Aventine in 495 (to secure their favour for the corn supply), to the Dioscuri in the Forum in 484, and to Dius Fidius in 466. Thus Greek artists and Roman workmen were kept busy; but then the activity died down: economic difficulties were obviously increasing, while Etruscan cultural
influences were waning (as we have seen, a few men with Etruscan names occasionally even held the consulship until 487, but only a small number appear between 461 and 448). Rome was clearly reverting to a simpler state and greater dependence on what was always her main interest, agriculture.

With the decline of industry in the city, some of the workers who remained, being landless, may have sunk into some kind of dependence. But the plight of the farmers formed the main grievance. This arose from shortage of land. A strip of two
iugera
(1⅓ acres), which formed a minimum
heredium
in early Rome, was hardly sufficient to support a family, and its soil might soon be overworked and become less productive. It could be supplemented by grazing animals on commons, while the
ager publicus
could be rented from the state by individual tenants. But this was of little use to the peasant who lacked capital. The situation was aggravated by the harsh laws of debt, for a peasant would soon fall into debt when his crops failed through a series of bad seasons or when he returned from military service to find his farm ruined through mishandling or enemy raids during his absence. Whether or not he had to pay high rates of interest the nature of the contract which he formed soon reduced him to serfdom.
⁹
As the development of full private property was slow, probably at this period a peasant could not alienate his land outside his family, or mortgage it. At Solonian Athens land was not entailed within the family, but farms were expropriated and later restored to the debtors; at Rome we hear of no such process. As a man could not offer his land as security, he must perforce offer his person. He might anticipate events by becoming a client; if he failed to achieve this status he had to enter into a formal contract (
nexum
) which pledged personal service as security, so that the peasant became a serf until he worked off his debt. Defaulters (
addicti
) could be sold into slavery or even put to death by their creditors (at any rate in theory).
¹⁰
Though extreme cases may have been rare, it can easily be understood that the plight of the debtor was wretched. His misery and that of the town-dweller was often increased by actual shortage of food, due in part to the ravages of war. So severe were these famines in the fifth century that the government had to interfere and to import foreign corn into the home market, for instance from Cumae (492) and Sicily (488).
¹¹
In 440 or 439 a famine was so acute that the plebs appointed L. Minucius to deal with the corn supply; when he failed, a rich plebeian, named Spurius Maelius, appeared as a
deus ex machina
, distributed corn to the people and was thereafter killed by C. Servilius Ahala for aspiring to a tyranny. Whatever the truth about Maelius may be, attempts to undermine the historicity of Minucius have failed, and there is good reason to suppose that Rome on occasion suffered from famine in the fifth and fourth centuries, as well as outbreaks of severe epidemics.
¹²

The wretchedness of their economic position induced the peasants to raise the cry that land from the
ager publicus
should be distributed to individuals.
Though the amount of public land at this period was small, and though such a cry was typical of Gracchan times, there is no cause to doubt this. The leader of the movement, the consul Sp. Cassius, who proposed to distribute public land, was killed for aiming at kingship (486). Many details of his story are false, and he himself bears a suspicious resemblance to Gracchus, but he may well be an historical figure who voiced the grievances of the peasants and pricked the conscience of the patricians.
¹³
For thirty years after his death we hear of continued but unsuccessful agitation to renew his proposal. In 456 on the proposal of L. Icilius the public land on the Aventine was distributed to provide dwellings for the plebs. This would relieve the unemployed proletariat in the city (if such existed), but it hardly affected the distress of the peasantry, which was ameliorated rather by the foundation of colonies, or outposts of Roman citizens; these served both as garrisons in newly-conquered territory and as outlets for surplus population. The conquered land would doubtless have been exploited by the patricians, so that its employment for colonies was a useful concession by the nobles, though the earlier colonies were not so numerous as tradition alleges, and many were of Latin foundation.

Livy speaks of ‘
duas civitates ex una factas
’ as a result of the agitation of the plebs; it would be more accurate to say that the plebs succeeded in forming a state within the state by setting up their own organizations to resist the oppressive government of the patricians. They established plebeian assemblies and officers, and forced their rivals to recognize these. Such an attempt might well have led to a bloody revolution, but tolerance and patience averted this calamity; the Romans preferred to adapt their institutions to existing needs rather than to risk disaster by trying to pour new wine into old bottles. The prelude to the bloodless revolution was the First Secession of 494
BC
, when the plebs on returning from a campaign refused to enter Rome and withdrew to the Mons Sacer (the ‘Mount of Curses’ rather than the ‘Sacred Mount’). Menenius Agrippa at last persuaded them to return, showing by a parable of the ‘Belly and the Limbs’ that they were a vital part of the state. A
lex sacrata
confirmed the terms of a compact, which guaranteed some economic relief to the peasants and the establishment of two plebeian tribunes as their champions. This tradition is doubtful and many historians would jettison the whole account as designed to explain the early existence of the tribunes. Others would suppose that there is a kernel of truth in the story and that early in the fifth century the plebs did secede to the Aventine, possibly in 471 when, as will be seen, the patricians officially recognized the tribunes.
¹⁴
In any case the two orders did not enter a formal contract in 494; at the most
the plebs swore an oath to slay anyone who destroyed their tribunes: that is, a section of the people declared its rights and that the infringement of these would justify a revolution.

The comparative facility with which the plebs established their own assembly and officers was due to the recent ‘Servian’ organization of the whole people into tribes. Whatever the chief object of this reform may have been, it produced a result which its promoters can hardly have foreseen. The plebs may already have been accustomed to hold meetings to discuss their common needs; in such gatherings, which were perhaps summoned by
curiae
, the urban plebs and the clients of patrician families would predominate. Whether or no such early meetings existed, it is certain that a plebeian gathering was now organized on the new tribal and territorial basis so that the small farmers and proprietors got the upper hand, or at least a fair representation. This new Concilium Plebis Tributum had at first no constitutional position, but the patricians were gradually forced to take note of it, until in 471 a law (
lex Publilia
) gave the plebs the right to meet and elect their officers by tribes: the Concilium Plebis and the tribunes were officially recognized.
¹⁵

So convenient was the arrangement by tribes, compared with the more cumbersome centuriate organization, that later (perhaps in 447 when the quaestorship was thrown open to popular election) it was imitated by the creation of a new assembly of the whole people meeting by tribes to simplify the conduct of business in matters of minor importance. This assembly was called the Comitia Tributa Populi and is quite distinct from the Concilium Plebis; assemblies of the whole people (
populus
) were called Comitia, meetings of the plebs alone, Concilia.
¹⁶
The functions of election, jurisdiction and legislation of the tribes remained distinct from those of the centuries.

The powers of the Concilium Plebis were strictly limited. It elected tribunes and aediles, but the Comitia Centuriata continued to elect all magistrates who had
Imperium
; the Comitia Tributa, if in existence, was not yet an electing body. In jurisdiction the Concilium Plebis was not a high court of justice in capital cases tried on appeal, as legend asserts; this duty was reserved to the Comitia Centuriata. It may, however, have tried cases relating to the infliction of fines on magistrates who in any way violated the rights of the plebs; such cases came later before the Comitia Tributa. Legislation was reserved for the Comitia Centuriata, but the Concilium Plebis passed its own resolutions (
plebiscita
) which bound the plebs only; if confirmed by the centuries they became laws (
leges
). The attempt to make these resolutions binding on the whole community without other sanction forms a large factor in the subsequent history of the struggle. In other respects these meetings by tribes resembled the Comitia Centuriata. The initiative lay with the presiding officer, the tribune, and the meeting could only answer his question (
rogatio
) by voting on the group vote system. There was no debate; if discussion was
necessary, it took place at a preliminary
contio
. But the plebs had won a great victory in establishing their Concilium and still more in forcing through the recognition of their officers.

The origin of the
tribuni plebis
is obscure. They were not created by the secession of 494, but are to be explained by the growth of the tribal system. Doubtless there were tribal leaders who took the initiative in administrative matters relating to the tribes; these were gradually transformed by force of circumstances into annually elected magistrates who championed the plebs. Alternatively they may have originated from landed gentry who were outside the patrician circle, held minor commands as
tribuni militum
, and voiced the grievances of the plebeians. Their power was not legal, but sacrosanct: the plebs swore that he who did violence to a tribune should be an outlaw,
sacer Iovi
. Similarly, the number of the tribunes is obscure; originally two, they were increased to perhaps four in 471
BC
and to ten probably before 449
BC
. Their powers were negative over the whole people, and positive over the plebs. Most important was their right to help a plebeian against the arbitrary exercise of a magistrate’s
Imperium
(
ius auxilii
); for this purpose the house of the inviolable tribune remained open night and day and he was forbidden to leave the city. He could enforce his will by his right to constrain even a magistrate (
coercitio
). There gradually developed a power to veto (
intercessio
) or annul any official act, so that the tribune could check the whole state machinery. On the positive side he acquired the right to consult the plebs and convene its meetings (
ius agendi cum plebe
) and thus became a plebeian magistrate. Yet he was not technically a magistrate as he had no
Imperium
and his authority did not extend beyond the city. Though he checked the magistrates and represented a kind of extension of the principle of collegiality to the plebs, he too was subject to the restraint of his colleagues.
¹⁷

In one further respect the plebs modelled their institutions on those of the city: the tribunes were given two assistants, called aediles, who stood in the same relation to them as the quaestors to the consuls. They kept the archives of the plebs (doubtless documents relating to tribal administration) in the temple of Ceres on the Aventine Mount, and after 449
BC
copies of senatorial decrees were deposited with them. They had other functions, such as seizing the victims of the tribunes’
coercitio
, and later they took an important share in municipal administration.

The tribune’s sacrosanctity secured his person from danger, but he lacked the trappings of office. The consul wore a robe bordered with purple (
toga praetexta
) or of full royal red when in command of an army; twelve lictors attended him with their bundles of rods (
fasces
) which, beyond the city walls, contained an axe; he had an official seat (
sella curulis
) which later gave its name to the curule offices. All this outward show of dignity the tribunes lacked, but their power grew at the expense of the consuls’. Many were the clashes
between the two authorities, as can be surmised from the early story of Coriolanus, the type of proud noble who tried to spurn the tribunes’ power. But the good sense of the Roman people, shown in the timely concessions of the patricians, who countenanced the creation of plebeian assemblies and officers, averted an open revolution.