Chapter 10 The Magistrates of the Republic It would be a great mistake to look upon the Republican institutions, established after the fall of the Tarquin monarchy, as an entirely new creation. We have already had occasion to observe that such new creations are unknown in the history of the human race, and that all that appears to be new in constitutional reforms is in fact only a development of existing germs. This can be satisfactorily shown to have been the case at Rome in this early period of its career, as it was at every subsequent stage. The division of the people into patricians and plebeians remained what it had been. The patrician assembly of Curiees retained its religious character, the military and political assembly of centuries came into regular working order. The senate continued to be the great council of the nation, but a change was made in the executive. In the place of a king for life, two annual chief magistrates were appointed under the name of praetors which name was afterwards changed into that of consuls. To these annual magistrates the power of the kingly office was transferred undiminished, as were also the insignia of the kings. The change seemed slight, yet it was most important. For by the limitation of the office to a short period of time the Romans secured the personal responsibility of their chief magistrates, which is the most essential part of republican government. During his term of office a magistrate could not have been subject to a criminal prosecution and punishment, without derogating from the majesty of the state as represented by him, and without danger to the safety of the republic itself. But his term of office being over the council became a private citizen and was amenable to the laws. This prospect of an impending settlement of accounts was calculated to keep an annual magistrate in the path of duty, while the king, who retained power as long as he lived, was free from such salutary considerations. The second modification in the office of chief magistrate was its partition among two colleagues equal in every respect and rank and power. This measure which necessarily impaired to some extent the unity and vigor of the executive was adopted as a precaution against the abuse of authority. Not satisfied with the limitation of the office to a short annual period, the Romans desired a guarantee for their liberty even during that period, and they expected to find it in the control which one council might exercise over the other. Each of them was entrusted consequently with the right of intercession, that is, he could place his veto on any official act of his colleague. Such a right might of course be abused to the great detriment of the public interest, but coupled with the responsibility which awaited every council after the expiration of his term of office, it proved on the whole so successful that the Romans adhered to it cheerfully through all the vicissitudes of their history until the republican government passed into a monarchy. However they were not blind to the weakness of the arrangement which they had adopted out of jealousy for their liberties. Whenever it was found that the division of authority endangered the national independence in great emergencies of foreign or domestic conflicts, they had recourse to a temporary restoration of undivided authority by appointing a single chief officer called dictator to supersede the two consuls and to unite in his own hands the whole executive power as it had been possessed by the kings. A dictator was appointed after a decree of the senate, not by popular suffrage, but by one of the consuls, who though nominally free in his choice, would naturally name the man pointed out by the general confidence as equal to the occasion. The consent of the people to his nomination was expressed by a solemn act of the assembly of Curiees, not the centuries, which being summoned by the dictator himself, conferred upon him by the soul called Lex Curiata the Imperium, that is, the chief and unlimited military command. The dictator then appointed an officer second in command called the master of the horse Magister Aquitum, to act under his orders. The consuls and all other magistrates were suspended during the time the dictator carried on the government, and they re-entered on their offices the moment he abdicated. This he did as soon as the emergency which had called for his nomination was over, the maximum term of his office being six months. Our authorities are not agreed as to the time when the dictatorship was first established, nor as to the name of the first man who filled the office. They agree in so far that it belongs to the first period of the Republic. It is in all likelihood of still higher antiquity. In fact, those officers who led the legions of Rome in the earliest times in the age of the sacro-dotal kings were probably dictators or the prototypes of dictators. We have already pointed out the probability that the popular names Master of the People, Magister Papuli, and the first Praetor, Praetor Maximus, which are reported to have been synonymous with the title of dictator, were used to designate these chief officers in the pre-Republican age. They were certainly not used afterwards, and as they were titles of high antiquity, we are led to assume that they were applied to a constitutional office in the oldest period of Rome. If this conjecture proved correct, we see that the Republican practice was also in this respect far from being an entire novelty, and that the forms of the Republican institutions were partly a revival, partly a development of a former state of things. We may go further and say that in all probability the duality of the chief office, that is the consular form of government, was probably not introduced immediately upon the expulsion of the kings, but that that event was followed in the first instance by the restoration of the dictatorship, which in its turn was modified to give place to the consular government. Such a course of events is made highly probable by the traditions which clung to the name of Valerius Publicola. It is related that after the death of Brutus, his colleague, in the first year of the Republic, he remained alone in office as sole consul, and omitted to call an assembly of the people for the election of a second consul. This proceeding, it is said, gave umbrage to the people, especially as Valerius began to build himself a house on the Velia, the very spot where the kings had resided. It was feared that he was about to imitate the example of Tarquin, and aspire to make himself sole and perpetual master. But Valerius put to shame all fear and all suspicion. He proposed and passed a law in the Conturriate Assembly by which it was declared high treason in a citizen to assume public authority which was not legally and freely conferred upon him by the people, in other words, a law punishing by outlawry and confiscation any attempt to restore the monarchy. A second law of Valerius granted to every citizen the right of appeal from a penal sentence of the magistrates to the popular assembly. These two laws contained the formal abolition of the monarchy and secured the acknowledgement of the sovereignty of the people. To mark this by an outward sign, Valerius ordered the axes to be removed from the fast case of his lictors, and thus appeared before the people without the dreaded instruments of death which had been a significant part of the royal and dictatorial insignia. From this time forward the consuls did not show the axes within the precincts of the city. This symbol of power over life and death was reserved to the dictators and in case of war to the consuls in the field. The tradition of the policy of Valerius deserves credit in as much as it was necessarily kept alive by the continued enforcement of the Valerian laws, the Charter of the Republic. It points unmistakably to the fact that the annual election of two magistrates, which is the characteristic mark of the Republic, was preceded by a period in which not two but one man was at the head of the state, and that the time of office was not then strictly limited to one year. This dictatorship again was not a new invention, but the revival of the old or perhaps primeval office of an occasional master of the people, which had degenerated in the time of the Tarquins into government for life. The duties of government and the states of antiquity were very simple, especially in states so small and so little advanced in civilization as Rome was in the earlier stages of her career. The principal duty devolving upon the consuls was the command of the army in those everlasting petty wars in which Rome, like every small and rude community, was involved. To maintain the independence of the state is the primary object of all national institutions, and the military organization was therefore the foundation for all civil order. The army, as we shall see, was the model for the popular assembly. Internal peace, not less important than protection from abroad, was secured by the laws, and here again the duties of the Roman magistrates were very simple. For the settlement of private disputes and claims, private arbitrators agreed upon by the parties acted under the authority and sanction of the magistrates. Criminal jurisdiction alone was in the hands of the magistrates, but the consuls could, like the kings, appoint judges, questors, for the trial of offenders. An appeal lay from the decision of the magistrate to the popular assembly, which was thus constituted the highest court of law in criminal jurisdiction. The public jurisdiction was to a considerable extent limited by the private jurisdiction exercised by every pot of familias over the members of his family and his slaves. As he had power of life and death, it may easily be imagined how important this family jurisdiction must have been. Religion being in Rome as everywhere in antiquity a political and national institution, and therefore necessarily under the control of the state, the priests and other ministers of religion were to a certain extent public servants, though they differed from the secular magistrates in being appointed not by the people, but by other priests, and not for a limited term, but for life. They were not confined to their priestly functions. They might hold civil offices. And it could and did happen that even the chief pontiff, the head of the national worship, was prider or consul. The king of sacrifices, Rex Acrorum, was the solitary exception. He was not only lowered in authority, being placed under the chief pontiff, though nominally first in rank, but he was specially debarred from all public functions civil or military. His office was preserved only as a relic of past times, and this is among the most noteworthy examples of that superstitious conservatism which made the Romans scruple formally to abolish old institutions even when they were superseded in reality. This tendency is especially perceptible when the old institutions were sanctioned by religion, introduced by auspices with the special approbation of the gods, and connected with solemn periodical rites as was the case with the office of the king of sacrifices. The office of pontiff was by far the most important of all those connected with religion. The pontiffs, three in number, afterwards seven, with a high pontiff pontifex maximus at their head, were not priests in the strict sense of the word, not being specially attached to the service of any particular god. They were rather a body of superintendents, guardians of the purity of the national religion and worship, interpreters of the divine law, and as the divine law, Fas, was the foundation of civil law, they were in possession of all those forms and technicalities which constituted a most essential feature in Roman jurisprudence, and the exclusive knowledge of which was doubly valuable at a time when the laws were not committed to writing, but jealously watched as a sacred and secret treasure. In the maze of numberless and subtle intricacies which the complicated system of religious observances could not fail to present, the people, whether in their private capacity or as public servants, were obliged constantly to have recourse to the pontiffs, who would advise them what solemn words had to be spoken, what times and seasons to be observed, what gestures and dress, what purifications and sacrifices were necessary to avert the danger of a deity ever ready to avenge the least, even, involuntary, deviation from the prescribed rule. When a word wrongfully omitted or added, or an omen misinterpreted or neglected might possibly bring irretrievable ruin on a worshipper, and could at any rate be expiated, only by a certain definite right or sacrifice, the advice of the pontiffs must have been in constant request, and their influence must have been unbounded. Besides the strictly religious duties which they had to discharge, the pontiffs represented in some sense the science and literature of the nation, like the Christian clergy amid the universal ignorance of the Middle Ages. They were the public astronomers, having to fix the solemn days of worship and political transactions, to divide the year into months and weeks, to keep it in accordance with the course of the sun, a duty which they discharged with reckless irregularity, partly from ignorance, partly to serve political and party purposes. They were also, as we have seen, the national chroniclers, and as such were bound to cultivate what might be called a literature. But their annals were no great literary performance, and the literature of Rome remained in a rudimentary condition until Greek influence made itself felt. The public auspices were in the keeping of another body of religious functionaries, the augurs, who, like the pontiffs, were not really priests in the strict sense of the word, as they had not to conduct any public worship. Their only duty was to assist the magistrates in taking the auspices, that is to act as their servants, when they wished to consult the will of the gods. They could not act of their own accord, but had to wait till they were bidden. They were therefore far from being able to exercise an independent authority or to counteract and thwart the public will. The signs sent by the gods were sent not to them, but to the magistrates. All that the augurs had to do was to watch for them in the form prescribed by the sacred law, to interpret and to announce them to the magistrates, and the spirit of formalism pervading the religion of Rome was such, that if an augur, by mistake or purposely, announced signs which he had not seen, the magistrate was justified in acting upon the announcement as if it had been correct, and the gods were supposed to be bound by the false announcement, though they might punish the augur for making it. The system of public auspices sprang up like every religious custom in a period of unbounded faith, at a time when no man would have ventured upon any enterprise unless he had honestly ascertained by undoubted signs the will of the approving deity. But this faith did not survive long the primeval period of sacrodotal kings. After the establishment of the republic the auspices began to be used as a political instrument to serve purely political ends. The science of the augurs was pressed into the service of the state and they were made to announce favorable or unfavorable auspices as the public interest or even the interest of a party might require. The election of political adversaries might thus be frustrated on the pretext that the auspices were against it. A law might be rejected on the same plea. An expedition postponed or given up. A council called back from a campaign. In short, any measure annulled or thwarted by this means without making it appear that political considerations dictated the opposition. Of course such procedures would in the end dull the edge of the weapon employed. People will not submit to be influenced by religious scruples when they discover that their scruples are not shared by priests or rulers who make good use of them for worldly purposes. This was shown at Rome in the contest between the patricians and the plebeians. The clenching argument of the former was always this, that the plebeians could not take the auspices and therefore could not hold the high offices of state. When the plebeians had gradually acquired power and influence enough to extort equal political rights from their opponents, this argument was found to be based on false assumptions, for no difficulty was experienced by plebeian consuls when they had to approach the gods through the old patrician auspices. End of section 15 Section 16 of Early Rome by Wilhelm Ena This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Pamela Negami, Chapter 11, The Senate of the Republic. The Senate and the People of Rome, SPQR, that is Sanatus Papalus Cui Romanus, was the official designation of the Roman Commonwealth. The precedents occupied in this title by the Senate is indicative of the prominence of that assembly in the public life of Rome. The Senate was indeed the soul of that mighty body. The greatness of Rome is to be ascribed not so much to the eminent genius of a few men, nor to the civic virtues and martial spirit of the people, as to the ability displayed at all times by this assembly, which united within itself whatever of worth or talent, of experience and political wisdom the whole nation possessed. The Senate had neither executive nor legislative nor judicial power. It was merely a consultative body free to give advice to the magistrates when asked for it, but unable either to give advice unasked or to enforce its acceptance. Its influence consisted in this, that it really represented the intelligence of the people and generally gave a correct expression of the national will. The normal number of senators is supposed to have been 300 in the Kingly period. They were, of course, all patricians. The last king is said to have reduced the Senate in numbers and to have disregarded its advice. On the establishment of the Republic the Senate regained its old position. Brutus, or according to some statements, Valerius, added many new senators and thus restored the former standard. Our informants are of opinion that these new senators were taken from among the plebeians, and whilst some think that they were by their nomination raised to the rank of patricians, others fancy that they remained plebeians, that the Senate, therefore, from the commencement of the Republic, contained a considerable number of plebeian members. This is, however, a notion which cannot be entertained. It is refuted by all that we know of the early constitutional struggles between patricians and plebeians. The plebeians were for a long time after, in a depressed condition, excluded from all participation in the government of the Republic. It took them a century and a half before they were admitted to the consulship, and two hundred years elapsed before they were declared eligible for any priestly offices. Up to four forty-five B.C. they were excluded from intermarriage with the patricians. When after a severe struggle and an armed insurrection tribunes of the plebs were created, to act as patrons of the plebeians and to ward off the worst form of oppression, these tribunes were not allowed access to the Senate, but had for a long time to take their seats outside the sacred precincts, and to shout their interceding veto through the open door. How is it credible that such an assembly should have received a number of plebeian members in the very first year of the Republic? To believe such an extraordinary statement we should require better evidence than we have. But even supposing that Brutus or Valerius completed the number of Senators from the plebs, these new plebeian members must have died in course of time, and therefore if no law was enacted to provide for plebeian successors, the Senate would in a short time have become purely patrician again. Of such a law we have no trace, nor is it reported that the alleged act of Brutus or Valerius was ever repeated. We hear of no election of plebeian Senators, nor of the presence of plebeians in the Senate during the early period of the Republic. The Senate is constantly represented as the champion of the patrician order without a dissentient voice. It is therefore an absolute impossibility that plebeians should have been received into it at the time in question. The arguments adduced against the possible reception of plebeians into the Senate by Brutus or Valerius do not tell with equal force against the assumption that plebeians were indeed received but were at the same time raised to patrician rank. Yet even this seems improbable, for such a precedent as the wholesale creation of a number of new patrician families from the body of plebeians could not have failed to be followed in after times and would have led to drafting off the foremost leaders of the plebeians into the patrician ranks. It would have been such a weakening of the plebeian opposition that the struggle would have lost its disparity and tradition would not have failed to commemorate some instances of transition from the lower to the higher order of citizens. But not a single instance is alleged. Nay, it appears to have been impossible in law. We are therefore compelled to assume that the new Senators created by Brutus or Valerius were members of patrician houses. This assumption agrees with all we know of the subsequent history. It is certain that the revolution which overthrew the kings led to a restoration of aristocratic, that is, patrician government. It was a revolution not in favor of the people, that is, the mass of the lower ranks, but, as we have already remarked, it was rather directed against their interests. The plebeians were so far from being benefited by it that they had to rise an open rebellion to obtain not equality with the patricians, not a share in the government, but simple protection from arbitrary and illegal treatment. The Senate during this time and for a long time after was most assuredly patrician throughout, and had never been tainted by the presence of even and nobled plebeians. The new Senators added by Brutus or Valerius are said to have been called conscripti, indistinction from the older members who were simply called patrace. Thus it is said arose the title patrace conscripti, conscript fathers, which was the official designation of the Roman Senators. For patrace conscripti we are told as contracted from patrace et conscripti. This explanation of the name falls to the ground with the assumption that the new members differed in rank from the older. It is an attempt of some antiquarian to account for the peculiar title of the Senate, and cannot be based upon a genuine tradition. We must explain the title differently. We know, what not all the analysts knew, that the word patrace meant originally not Senators but members of the patrician community as distinct from the plebeians, hence not all the patrace in strictness of speech, the lords or masters of families were Senators, and to distinguish the latter from the body of patrace they were called patrace conscripti, that is fathers whose names were entered, conscripta, on the lists of the Senators. The Roman Senate was a consultative body of men picked from the mass of the community and accustomed to meet periodically for the discussion of public affairs. It resembled, therefore in many respects, the representative assemblies of modern times, and upon the whole exercised a similar influence upon the direction of affairs. But in detail the difference is perhaps more striking than the resemblance, and as we are too apt to form our ideas of the past from the analogies of the present, it is worthwhile to notice some of the most striking features in which the Roman Senate differed from modern parliaments. The Senate was not a representative assembly in the strict sense of the word. The members were not elected by the suffrage of the people, nor did they sit and vote for particular divisions of the nation or territory. They were nominated by the Executive Government, that is by the Consuls, and after the establishment of the Censorship in 443 B.C., by the Censors. Only in a limited degree, and in an indirect way, had the people any influence in the nomination of Senators in as much as they elected the electors, and as the latter were bound to call into the Senate, men who enjoyed the confidence of the people, in the first instance, therefore men who had discharged public offices. In the earlier period of the Republic when the two Consuls were the only annual magistrates, the vacancies in the Senate caused by death could not all be filled up by ex-magistrates, and even when the number of annual magistrates was considerably increased, the Senate could only be kept at its normal standard by the nomination of men who had not previously discharged a public office. Yet those Senators who had passed the official chairs were always the leaders in the Senate, and it appears that the other Senators had only the right to vote, and not that of justifying their vote by set speeches. As the Senators held their seats for life, or at least during good behavior, and as the Senate accordingly was never renewed in total by a dissolution, it constituted a permanent undying body, only receiving fresh blood from time to time as old men dropped off and others were substituted in their place. They may in short be said to have held life peerages. This circumstance naturally gave to the Senate the character of great stability and decided conservatism. New ideas could make their way but slowly in such an assembly, and the people had no means of pushing measures of reform through a body which could not, like a modern parliament, be reconstructed on new principles at a general election. At the same time, the traditions of bygone times, the constitutional precedents which in the absence of a written constitution contained the public law of the Republic, could not be better preserved in their purity than by such an assembly. If we take into consideration that not only the Councils after their year of office, but also Pontiffs and other priests were life members of the Senate, we can understand how the knowledge of many old institutions, and even a dim recollection of the events that led to their establishment, might be recorded and handed down for generations before it was consigned to writing. CHAPTER XII The Senate, as we have seen, had no direct influence on the election of magistrates or on legislative enactments. These powers were lodged in the assembly of the people and constituted the attributes of sovereignty, which in the ancient republics the people never delegated to any person or select body, but invariably reserved to themselves as an inalienable right. The oldest form of a popular assembly in Rome was, as we have seen, that of the Curriese Comitia Curriata. It consisted of patricians alone to the exclusion of plebeians. This assembly was never formally abolished, but in republican times it had lost all real political power and was retained only for the sake of a few formalities more of a religious than a political character of which the most remarkable was the annual passing of the Law de Imperio, which conferred the military command on every newly elected consul, and thus resembled in some way the annual enactment of the Mutiny Bill in England. When Roman history emerges from the legendary period, we find another form of popular assembly in operation, the Assembly of Centuries, Comitia Curriata, organized on an entirely different plan. The plebeians were no longer excluded, nor was family relationship and dissent the principle of classification. The whole people, patricians and plebeians, were divided into five classes according to a property qualification, and each of these five classes was subdivided into a certain number of voting units called centuries, the first class having eighty, each of the three succeeding classes, twenty centuries, and the last class thirty, thus making up a total of one hundred and seventy centuries or votes. In addition to these there were eighteen centuries of knights and four centuries of musicians, smiths, and carpenters which were formed without regard to the amount of their property. The qualification of the members of the first class was according to the statement of Livy, the possession of property valued above one hundred thousand asses or pounds of copper. In each successive class this figure was less by twenty-five thousand asses, so that the fifth class embraced the citizens owning less than twenty-five thousand asses. There are indeed many controverted points of detail arising from the fact that our informants differ from one another, but as they agree in the general character of the arrangement we need not here be detained by these variations. It must strike everyone at first sight that this is a division of the people on military principles. The people in fact were here looked upon as an army and divided into fighting bodies. The one hundred and seventy centuries of the five classes were all infantry. The cavalry was formed by the eighteen centuries of knights. The musicians and engineers were equally essential branches of the service. In each class consisted of an equal number of young fighting men and of veterans. The former destined to take the field, the latter reserved for the defense of the city. The men of the higher classes were bound to provide themselves with more or less complete armor. The lower classes were light-armed, and the horses for the cavalry were furnished by the state. Lastly, the place of meeting for this assembly was the field of Mars, and the signal for calling it together was not the voice of the public crier, but the military trumpet. From all this it is evident that the original purpose of the Conturriate Assembly was to provide protection for the state by organizing the whole body of citizens as an army. It followed as a natural consequence that this body was entrusted with the decisions of peace and war and with the election of commanders, the two most important matters for every state, and almost the only questions which would be a frequent occurrence in a rude community situated like that of Rome. Criminal offenders were looked upon as enemies of the country, and were very properly tried by the same body which fought against foreign enemies. The final decision in legislative questions thus fell within the competency of the same military assembly of centuries which thus became the sovereign assembly of the Roman people. But how did it first arise? More informants are ready with a very simple answer. They affirm that one of the kings called Servius Tullius worked out the plan in his own brain, furnished it in all its detail, and was about to introduce it when he was murdered by Tarkwin the Tyrant. That during the reign of Tarkwin the scheme of Servius remained unexecuted, and that on his expulsion the Romans drew it forth from the public archives and made it the foundation of their new Republican form of government. We need hardly say that this cannot have been the way in which the Conturriate Commitia came into being and supplanted the Courieres. This change can have come to pass only in consequence of a revolution which changed the old sacerdotal kingdom into a military monarchy, breaking up the primeval federal constitution with its three tribes of Ramne's T.T.A.s and Lucerre's, its 30 Courieres, patrician houses and their clients, and raising the plebeians from their degraded position to the rank of Roman citizens. By this revolution Rome became a military power and even when the kings were expelled the military organization of the people created by them was retained and no doubt contributed to give Rome a superiority over her neighbors. The memory of the process which led to this great advance has been lost. Whether it was entirely worked out by an internal organic reform or whether a Truscan rule is introduced it cannot now be proved by any external evidence. Some few traces in the traditions point to the latter alternative, for instance the account of the opposition which the elder Tarquin met when he wished to reform the old centuries of knights. The natives say buying auger Addis Navias we are told resisted the foreign king but was obliged to yield when Tarquin, though reforming the old institutions, left the old names unaltered. Servius Tullius the traditional author of the Canturid Commitia is represented in some annals as an Etruscan warrior named Mastarna coming to Rome and settling there with his followers. These are indications of a reform caused by foreign influence yet there are not wanting traces which seem to show that the Canturid organization was an organic development of that of the Carriais. A theory which however does not exclude the possibility of foreign influence to facilitate and direct the process. The popular assembly could only meet when duly convoked by a consul on a day set apart by the pontifical calendar for such meetings. Under the presidency of a consul the people were called upon to approve or negative the motion which the consul with the approval of the senate laid before them. There was no discussion of any kind. The people were simply asked to say yes or no. Their power went no further and there is no doubt that in most cases the vote of the people was a mere matter of form. When a question had been duly discussed in the senate and was upon a decree of the senate brought before the people by the executive magistrate it would have been strange indeed and an ominous sign of internal dissensions if the people had voted contrary to what was expected of them. In ordinary times the consul acted under the authority of the senate and the people under the authority of the consul, and thus the three apparently independent agents worked in harmony together because in reality one of them led and the others followed. We have now drawn such a sketch of the first republican constitution as ours ganti sources justify. Here as it is it enables us to form an opinion of its general character. It was a decidedly aristocratic form of government. The patricians were in possession of the executive power and of the priestly offices. They alone formed the senate and they had such influence in the popular assembly of centuries that they were able to carry elections and resolutions in it in the patrician interest. But we cannot estimate the influence of these institutions on the nation at large unless we can ascertain the proportion which the patricians bore to the whole roman people as to wealth and numbers. If the governing body formed but a small nobility and nevertheless engrossed all political power the constitution of the republic was in the highest degree unsafe and the position of the patricians quite untenable for the physical strength represented by numbers is indispensable for the maintenance of the rule of one class over another. We have no data whatever to fix accurately the respective numbers of patricians and plebeians. In the beginning of the regal period when the foundation of the state was laid the patricians undoubtedly formed a people or rather the people the populace romanus they were the conquerors who had won their position by force of arms. The conquered population even if it had been more numerous was not a match for them and had to be content with toleration and protection. But it seems natural that a class which like the patricians received no addition from without and which had to bear the brunt of all the numerous wars must gradually have diminished in number whereas the inferior citizens would be constantly recruited by the admission of conquered enemies and liberated slaves. Thus it would become imperatively necessary to strengthen the patrician combatants by plebeians and this process found its legal expression in the establishment of the canturiate comedia. To be able to judge of the true character of the comedia cantoriata we ought to know what proportion the plebeians bore in the centuries to the patricians. Did they form a considerable portion or half or more than half or the whole of the 170 centuries of the infantry? Did the patricians form the 18 centuries of knights or some of the centuries of the infantry and how many? By putting these questions we have indicated already that the Roman historians leave us in doubt and that we are driven to form our opinions independently of their evidence. This is not the place to enumerate the various conjectures of writers still less to discuss them. Perhaps we ought simply to confess our ignorance and our inability to supply the gap left by the silence of our informants. Still without pretending to infallibility we may venture to express an opinion, vague enough yet better than mere vacuity. We think that when the canturiate assembly of the people was first established a body of plebeian companies was formed equal to that of the old patrician companies of fighting men. We think that the traces of this division of the whole people into two equal parts are discernible in the fact that the first class alone in the canturiate committee contained 80 centuries and the four succeeding classes only 90 centuries. The first class therefore was almost equal to all the others put together. If we take into consideration that the first class had originally the name of classes that is army to itself and that the four other classes were designated as below the class, infraclassom, we can hardly fail to see that there must have been a difference of kind and not only of degree between the 80 centuries of the first class and the 90 centuries of the other classes. Now it is extremely probable that this difference was no other than the difference between patricians and plebeians and that the reform which established the canturiate comitia consisted in this, that an equal number of plebeian companies or centuries were added to the existing number of patrician companies to form the army and the national assembly. This is the reform which as we have several times hinted before was effected in Rome by those military kings who succeeded the sacerdotal kings of the primeval period. When the light of history begins to dawn upon the republic, we find a state of things somewhat differing from this equal balance of patricians and plebeians in the army. It seems that the number of patricians must have greatly diminished, while that of the plebeians increased. The Roman armies are generally represented as essentially consisting of plebeians, not so the political assembly of centuries. In this assembly the patricians for a long time had a decided majority, at least they were sufficiently strong in it to carry the elections in their own favor. This shows that the comitia canturiata, though originally the groundwork of the military organization, had come to be merely a political organization, and that the army was now formed on a different principle. That such was the case later in the history of Rome is well known, but what we do not know is the exact time when the separation took place between the political assembly and the army. In our opinion, this separation had taken place in that period of the republic, which preceded the secession of the plebs. Perhaps it was co-evil with the establishment of the republic, for as it threw the great burden of military service chiefly upon the plebeians, whilst it reserved for the patricians the superiority in the voting assembly, it is in keeping with that aristocratic spirit which as we have seen characterized the republican revolution. The plebeians therefore found themselves in this position, that whereas they were called upon to bear the burdens of citizenship, and especially the greatest of them, namely military service, they had little influence in the decisions of the sovereign assembly of citizens. Such a state of things could not last. It was overthrown by a great convulsion, the secession of the plebs, which might have led to the dissolution of the Roman commonwealth, but which owing to the wise concessions of the senate and the patricians laid the foundation of plebeian liberties. CHAPTER XIII The Tribunes of the People According to the account preserved by Livy and Dionysius the patricians no sooner heard of the death of the exiled Tarquin than they began to oppress the plebeians, whom they had treated up to that time with great friendliness and leniency in order to wean them from their attachment to the monarchy. Making use of the necessities of the impoverished commons, they lent them money on hard terms and relentlessly treated their insolvent debtors as slaves, loading them with fetters and driving their families from house and home. The plebeians could no longer bear the outrages of their oppressors any longer. They rose in a body, left Rome and encamped like a hostile army on a hill beyond the river Anio, at a distance of a few miles from the gates with the intention of dissolving their connection with their native city and of forming a separate community of their own. The patricians, unable to reduce them by force, and seeing that without the plebeians they were utterly helpless and exposed to foreign enemies, sent a message to the insurgents and then treated them to return. Both parties were inclined to a reconciliation. The plebeians asked for nothing but protection from the unjust treatment of patrician magistrates. It was stipulated that they should have the right to elect magistrates of their own, called tribunes of the plebs, tribuny plebis, empowered to act as their special patrons and protectors. They were to be invested with the right of intercession, by which they could stop any legal or administrative proceedings directed against plebeians. This right of intercession, of which the patricians had already to benefit, in as much as each council could use it against his colleague, was now extended to the plebeian tribunes and afforded the same protection from arbitrary measures to a class of citizens which had hitherto been exposed without a remedy to illegal treatment. In order to give effect to the power of the tribunes they were declared sacrosancti, that is, inviolable. The curse of outlawry was pronounced against any man who should venture to resist or harm them. Upon these terms peace was concluded between the two orders of citizens and the shedding of blood avoided. The covenant, thus made, was called a sacred law, lexacrata, and the hill on which the plebeians had encamped retained for all future ages the name of Monsacre, the sacred hill. As no stipulations were made in the covenant about any remission of debts nor the laws of debt altered we may be sure that the cause which led to the secession was not a general indebtedness of the plebeians as represented in the annals. It is indeed highly improbable that in the primitive state of society in which we must imagine the Romans then to have been numerous loan transactions could have taken place. Moreover, as Sir G. C. Lewis remarks, it is difficult for us to conceive a state of society in which to pour our borrowers on a large scale. To strengthen this impression of doubt we find that for a hundred years following the secession, that is, up to the disasters of the Gala conflagration, no further mention is made of any distress of the plebeians caused by debts, although as already remarked, no remediary measures had been adopted. We may therefore feel sure that the cause of the secession was not the economic distress of the commons but their exclusion from political rights which left them without those safeguards from injustice which the patricians possessed. It is universally admitted that the original power of the tribunes was the use auxilie or right of aid. They could claim and did claim no more. They were far from usurping a share in the government of the Republic. Their business was to protect plebeians from unjust treatment at the hands of patrician magistrates. From this humble origin they advanced by degrees to the power of controlling the whole civil government, and finally they became the instruments by means of which the Republican constitution was changed into the empire. At the same time with the tribune ship, another plebeian office was established that of Idilis, who were to act chiefly as the attendants and servants of the tribunes, and like them were invested with inviolability. The reason for investing the plebeian magistrates with the character of inviolability and of calling the laws that conferred this right sacred laws is to be found in the fact that from the patrician point of view the plebeians were looked upon as a distinct people, not fully and in every respect part of the populous Romanus. For this reason the agreement between the two parties was concluded in the form of an international treaty, with due observance of all those ceremonies, chiefly sacrifices and oaths, which were considered necessary when independent nations came to terms of amity. Those are an appeal not to a civil magistrate but to a divine power, the only power that can arbitrate between independent states. They are always employed to bind in their consciences those who cannot be compelled by a secular authority to fulfill their engagements. The patricians and the plebeians could not be looked upon as entirely members of one community as long as only the patricians had through their auspices intercourse with the gods of Rome and for that reason excluded the plebeians from the government of the state, as long also as marriages between patricians and plebeians were unlawful. Therefore the magistrates of the plebs required to be specially protected by a sacred law and like the ambassadors of a foreign power to be declared inviolable. The ancient writers are unanimously of opinion that the offices of tribune and ideal were first created during the secession and that they were in fact the fruit of that secession. But we may well ask if it is likely that the plebeians, who as we have just seen formed a separate community for themselves, had before that time no sort of organization of their own and no officers to regulate their affairs. It seems highly probable that the plebeians were not without such special plebeian magistrates, and if so it seems most natural that these magistrates were no other than those tribunes and ideales whom they chose as their legal patrons. The novelty introduced by the Treaty of Peace on the sacred hill consisted accordingly not in the creation of new offices, but in the solemn acknowledgment on the part of the patricians, that the old plebeian magistrates, should, under the guarantee of a lexacrata, have authority to control the official acts even of patrician magistrates. What particular acts of patrician magistrates were likely to be specially obnoxious to plebeians we are not told, but it is not difficult to guess what they were. The principal burden of the citizens was the military service. The carrying on of the civil government entailed no expense. The Roman people did not groan under the weight of taxes, but every man was liable to be called out for military service, and it is clear that great injustice might be practiced by the consuls if they disregarded the special claims of exemption which individual citizens might have. In such cases the tribunes would interfere, and their interference might amount to an inhibition of the whole conscription, so that they might actually veto a war if they were so minded. Their right in this respect resembled, therefore, the privilege of a popular chamber in modern times which refuses the supplies, and as this right has secured to modern parliaments the chief control of the state, so the use auxilii of the tribunes contained the germ of their future power. The number of tribunes originally chosen is stated variously to have been either two or five. This divergence of opinion is of little moment and affects only a very short period of time. All authors are agreed that from the Pupilian law passed in 471 B.C., that is, twenty-two years after the first secession the number was five and it was raised to ten in 457 B.C. It is more annoying that doubts should exist with regard to the original mode of the election of the tribunes, owing to the partly vague and partly contradictory statements of the writers on whom we depend for our information, the greatest difference of opinion prevails on this subject. We cannot hear enter into a discussion of their conflicting statements, and it is therefore better at once to record the result to which a careful examination of the whole subject must lead us. It is this, that the tribunes of the plebs could have been elected neither by the patrician Commedia Curriata, nor by the military Commedia Canturiata in which patricians and plebeians were mixed, but only by the Commedia Tributa, the assembly of the plebeian tribes. What these Commedia were we shall now proceed to inquire. The old patrician populus, as we have seen, was divided into tribes, the Romnes, Titias, and Luceres, which were a division of the people, not of the territory. This division was the basis on which the Commedia Curriata was established. In the beginning of the republican period this division was superseded, and the division of the people into five classes was substituted as we have seen, according to a property qualification. Thus arose the Commedia Canturiata. The five classes contained both patricians and plebeians. They were established in the first place for military, in the second for political purposes. As an assembly for the election of the higher magistrates and for legislation, they continued in force to the end of the republic, but they ceased at an early period to be the basis on which the army was formed. The conscriptions for the army, as far back as the light of history penetrates, were made not according to classes, but according to tribes, that is, wards and districts into which the town and territory were divided. These local tribes accordingly had nothing in common with the old patrician tribes but the name. Each tribe consisted of the Roman citizens settled within its boundaries without regard either to descent or to property. We are not informed when this division into tribes was first made. As long as the patricians had their own distinct organization, the old patrician tribes and couriers, the division of the territory into local tribes would most probably affect the plebeians only, and whatever organization they had for self-government would be based on this division into local tribes. If they elected officers of their own, the forerunners of the famous tribunes of the plebs, these officers were of course elected by and for the tribes, whence they also derived their name. At the same period which we cannot fix with accuracy, these tribes were made military districts, that is, the troops were levied tributem according to tribes. In fact, the whole administration of the republic was adjusted to this division of the territory, and when it became necessary to raise a tribute or war tax for the expenses of a campaign, the tax was assessed tributem according to tribes from which circumstance it also received its name. Thus arose a third form of popular assembly, the Comitea Tributa, or Assembly of Tribes. Being plebeian in its origin, and representing that community of plebeians who as we have seen formed a distinct body in the Roman state, and almost a separate people apart from the patricians, the Comitea Tributa preserved this plebeian character throughout the whole history of the republic. Whereas the Comitea Corriata had been an aristocratic organization from which the plebeians were excluded, and the Comitea Canturiata had given a preponderance to wealth, the Comitea Tributa was purely democratic. They gave rich and poor an equal vote, and excluded the patricians who were indeed unfit to assist in the transaction of the internal affairs of the plebeian body, and especially to take a share in the election of the tribunes of the plebs, officers whose chief duty it was to control the actions of patrician magistrates, and thus to be the special patrons of the plebeians. By the treaty on the monsocare, the Comitea of Tribes, that is the plebeian assemblies of citizens, were first recognized by the patricians as invested with political rights, for the patricians bound themselves to treat the tribunes of the plebs elected in those Comitea as persons invested with public authority. They could no longer ignore the public and official character of the tribunes, which we may suppose might have been their practice before the secession. The Comitea of the plebs therefore from this moment acquired rights co-extensive with the rights of the Comitea of centuries though exerted in a different direction. If the centuries continued to elect the consuls, the tribes now elected tribunes and idilis, and the authority of these officers was acknowledged by the whole community. By and by as we shall see, the Comitea of Tribes extended their sphere of action whilst the centuries remained stationary. The Comitea of Tribes under the direction of the tribunes of the plebs became the moving power in the commonwealth to which all progress in constitutional and civil laws chiefly do. The Comitea of Centuries merely retained the privileges which they already possessed, namely the election of consuls and afterwards of praitors and kensors, which offices had branched off from the consulship, the right to declare war, the decision in criminal appeals, and the legislation in constitutional law. The original number of local tribes was twenty, four of them were city wards, the remaining sixteen country districts. Soon after the establishment of the republic a new tribe was added and their number thus raised to twenty-one. This number of tribes remained stationary for upwards of one hundred years. Then began the career of conquest. New tribes were formed out of the territory acquired in Etruria, Latium, and in the land of the Ichaeans and Vultians, until in two hundred and forty-one B.C. the number thirty-five was reached, and the Roman citizens had become so numerous and lived at such great distances from one another that meetings in Rome for legislation and election had become physically impossible to the mass of them. Nevertheless the Romans with their spirit of conservatism retained the comitia tributa to the end of the republic when they were swept away with the general wreck of the old worn-out and antiquated institutions. CHAPTER XIV The agrarian law of Spurrius Cassius The great disparity of political rights which separated patricians and plebeians had its counterpart in the economic relations of the two classes of citizens. The patricians are always represented as the rich, the plebeians as the poor. In a rude age when the industrial arts and trade were all but unknown, wealth consisted chiefly in the possession of land and cattle. The Latin tongue by calling money pecunia, that is, cattle, chattels, sufficiently denotes this original identity of wealth with land and the produce of land. That the patricians, as the wealthy, were the chief owners of the soil we might infer a priori from the circumstance of their being the governing class and the original conquerors of the land, for it was the invariable practice in ancient Italy, a practice followed by the Romans themselves in historical times, for the conquerors to treat the conquered land as forfeited and to make such new dispositions with regard to it as suited their purposes. They usually left only a portion of it, one half or even less to the old owners, and took the remainder for themselves. This was declared public land. That is, the land of the Papalus, or governing people, and was occupied by members of the ruling body, who used either to cultivate it themselves, or give it in lots to be held and cultivated by their dependents or clients. None of this land, reserved for the Papalus, could be occupied by the inferior class of citizens, nor could such portions of it as were left in pasture be used by them. Other restrictions may be supposed to have been made, for instance the prohibition of the free purchase or inheritance of land which had been set apart for the ruling class. As long as the memory of conquest was fresh in men's minds, such institutions would not be felt to involve cruelty or hardship, for according to the law of ancient warfare, not only the property but even the liberty and life of a conquered people were at the mercy of their conquerors. Whatever was left to them was a free gift, and would be appreciated as such. But when in course of time the two classes had gradually grown into one people, it would be felt that the traces of the original wrong inflicted by the stronger ought to be effaced. As demands were made by the plebeians for civil rights, so they naturally began to claim a release from those restrictions under which they had hitherto lain with regard to the tenure and enjoyment of land. This is the origin and meaning of the agrarian laws, which agitated the early republic side by side with the contests about political rights. They did not and could not refer to the disposal of newly conquered land, for at the time when we hear of the first agrarian disputes there were no new conquests made by Rome, and therefore there was no land to distribute. At a later period the case was different. When Rome entered on her career of conquest and large tracks of public land were at her disposal, the agrarian disputes referred to these new acquisitions and had consequently an entirely different character. The first agrarian law is said to have been proposed by a patrician, Spurious Cassius, who was consul in the year of the secession, 493 B.C., and again seven years later. The descriptions of his proposals given by our informants are so confused and palpably erroneous that we can make nothing of them. They proceed on the false assumption that Rome had a great deal of conquered land to distribute, and they mix up the account of the agrarian law with the conditions of a league said to have been concluded at the time between Rome and her neighbors, the Latins and the hernicans. We cannot attempt here to unravel the errors into which the analysts have fallen, nor to discuss the different opinions held about the nature of the agrarian law of Cassius. We confine ourselves to pointing out the apparent connection of this proposal with the struggles of the plebeians for more equal rights, which seems to be evident from the facts that Spurious Cassius was consul in the year of the secession, and that he brought forward this motion in his next consulship. He was the first patrician who espoused the cause of the plebeians, and the first also who paid the price of such a policy. He was charged with treasonable designs and was condemned to death. His law was not carried into effect. It remained a dead letter, though it acted as a stimulus to continue agitation. The principle of confederation, which was the chief cause of Rome and greatness, seems to have been common to all the aboriginal races of Italy, and in fact was forced upon them by the necessities of their situation. In a time of almost incessant warfare, an isolated community would soon have been the prey of some powerful foe if it had not sought security in an alliance with neighboring cities equally in want of assistance. Thus arose the old League of the Latins of which in prehistoric times Alba Longa was the head, and the Temple of Jupiter Latiaris on the Alban Mount, the common sanctuary. We do not know when and how this League was dissolved and Alba destroyed, for the story of her destruction by the Third King of Rome is in every respect legendary. Yet there is no reason to doubt that Rome, as reported, succeeded Alba in the headship of Latium. We hear of no other power strong enough to have brought about the downfall of that city, and Rome was always looked upon as the successor of Alba, and took the presidency at the annual Festival of the Latins on the Alban Mount. The stories of the later kings represent Rome as ruling over the Latins. Under Servius Tullius it is said that a temple of Diana was built on the Aventine Hill as a common sanctuary of the Latins and the Romans. The younger Tarquan, we are told, reduced the towns of Latium by force and fraud, and extended his dominion over the whole country. Whatever may be the truth of these stories the supremacy of Rome over Latium, if it really existed toward the close of the regal period, came to an end with the expulsion of the kings. In all probability, as we have seen above, the Latins helped the Romans to throw off the common yoke, and both Latins and Romans became free at the same time. The pretended victory of Rome over the combined cities of Latium at Lake Regulus is a fable or a misrepresentation. The Latins were so far from being conquered by Republic and Rome that the same year, 493 BC, which witnessed the secession of the plebs and the establishment of the plebeian tribunate, is marked by the conclusion of a treaty between Rome and Latium, in which both appear as independent powers. That such a treaty was concluded is certain, for it lasted for more than a century and a half, that is to say, down to a period in which the leading events are no longer subject to historical doubts. Nor is it difficult to understand the motives which induced the two nations to conclude such an alliance. It was a renewal of that old union between the two kindred races which appears to have been temporarily dissolved after the Roman Revolution, and it was dictated by the common interests of both. The war with the Tarquins and the Etruscans as we have surmised was a common war of liberation, and the Etruscans remained for many years the common enemies of Rome and Latium. Other aggressors threatened both nations in the east and south. In the east the Ichaeans, a hardy and rapacious tribe of mountaineers, and in the south the warlike vultures were pressing upon them. The Latin towns formed for Rome a line of fortifications down the south and east against these assaults, and Rome defended for Latium the line of the Tiber against the Etruscans on the western and northern sides. Thus both peoples were largely benefited by a league for mutual protection, and it seems to be hardly doubtful that the preservation of the independence as well of Latium as of Rome is due chiefly to this wise policy. The league between Rome and Latium is said to have been concluded by Spurrius Cassius, who was consul in the year 493 B.C., an author of the agrarian law in his third consulship in 486 B.C. Soon afterwards another nation, the hernicans, who lived further eastward between the Ichaeans and the vultures, joined the league on equal terms. The object of the league being simply mutual protection in war, it left the independence of each contracting city unimpaired. But it is in the nature of such alliances that the stronger members gradually acquire an ascendancy which is very nearly akin to dominion. Rome by virtue of her extent and population was by far the most powerful and consequently the leading member of the league. In course of time some of the Latin towns fell into decay, owing to the ravages of the Ichaeans and vultures. Others were actually destroyed and laid waste. Others fell into the hands of the enemies and became Ichaean or vultian towns in Latium. Rome and her allies were by no means always victorious. On the contrary, for more than a hundred years they suffered more harm than they inflicted. The vultians succeeded in penetrating into the very heart of Latium, threatening even Rome itself. The Ichaeans lay like a hostile garrison on Mount Algatis in the immediate vicinity of Tiber and Pryneste. More raged from year to year. Military training was more important than peaceful work. The Roman citizens and their Latin allies acquired in this hard school that discipline and warlike spirit, that unshaken bravery and endurance which distinguished them ever after. Whatever the hardships and miseries of this period were, the walls of Rome resisted all attacks, whilst the Latin suffered so much that they were reduced from the rank of allies to that of subjects. The League thus proved highly beneficial to Rome. It served to protect her and it raised her to a preeminence which she could not have otherwise attained. Chapter 16 The Wars with the Vultians and Ichaeans The history of the wars with the Vultians and Ichaeans, as narrated by Livy, is destitute of all historical value. It is a succession of battles, sieges, triumphs, and reverses, which are evidently the product of the imagination, with a very slight infusion of trustworthy tradition. Exaggeration, vane glory and repetition, reckless invention and contradiction are discoverable on every page. It would be in the highest degree unprofitable to examine these accounts in detail and to burden the memory with facts, dates, and names so unreal. We shall content ourselves with justifying this opinion by reviewing shortly the celebrated stories of Coriolanus and Sincenatus, as characteristic both of the wars to which they refer and of the historians who relate them. In the year after the secession of the Plebs, 492 B.C., there was a famine in Rome, for during the civil contention the plebeians had not cultivated their own lands, and they had laid waste the fields of their adversaries. There was therefore great distress among the poor plebeians, and they would have fallen victims to hunger if the consuls had not bought corn in Etruria, and distributed it to the starving people. But even this was not sufficient, and the people suffered great want, till corn arrived from Sicily, which Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, sent as a present to the Romans. There was at that time in Rome a brave patrician whose name was Gaius Marshus. He had conquered the town of Corioli in the preceding year, when the Romans were carrying on war with the Vultians, and for this reason his fellow soldiers had given him the surname Coriolanus. This man set himself stoutly against the plebeians, for he hated them because they had won the tribunship from the Senate. He therefore advised the consuls not to divide the corn among the plebeians unless they surrendered their newly acquired right and abolished the office of the tribunes. When the plebeians heard this they were enraged and would have killed him, had not the tribunes protected him from the fury of the crowd, and accused him before the assembly of the people of having broken the peace and violated the sacred laws. But Coriolanus mocked the people in the tribunes, showing haughty defiance and presumptuous pride, and as he did not appear before the people assembled to try him, he was banished. It seemed that he would be revenged on his enemies he went to Antium, where he lived as the guest of Adius Tullius, the chief of the Vultians. After this the two men consulted together how they might persuade the Vultians to make war on the Romans. It happened that at this time the great games were celebrated in Rome in honor of Jupiter, and a great number of Vultians came to Rome to see the games. Then Adius Tullius went secretly to the consuls and advised them to take care that his countrymen did not break the peace during the festive season. When the consuls heard this they sent heralds through the town and caused it to be proclaimed that all the Vultians should leave the town before night. The Vultians, exasperated at this outrage to their nation, proceeded in a body to return home by the Latin road. This road led past the spring of Ferentina, where at one time the Latins used to hold their consuls. Here Adius was waiting for his countrymen and excited them against Rome, saying that they had been shut out unjustly from sharing in the sacred festivities, as if they had been guilty of sacrilege or were not worthy to be treated as allies and friends by the Roman people. Thus a new war with Rome was decided on, and Adius Tullius and Gaius Marchus Coriolanus set out with a large army and conquered in one campaign many of the most important towns of Latium. After this the Vultians advanced to Rome and encamping near the Fossa Cluiglia, five miles from the town, they laid waste the lands of the plebeians round about. Then the Romans were seized with despair and were afraid to advance against the Vultians or fight them in the field, but looking for deliverance only from the mercy of their conquerors, they sent the principal senators as ambassadors to Coriolanus to sue for peace. But Coriolanus answered that unless the Romans restored to the Vultians all the conquered towns peace would not be granted. When the same ambassadors came a second time to ask for more favorable conditions, Coriolanus would not even see them. Thereupon the chief priests came to his tent in their sacred robes and with the insignia of their office and tried to calm his anger, but they strove in vain. At last the noblest Roman matrons came to Vitturia, the mother of Coriolanus, and to Volumnia, his wife, and persuaded them to accompany them into the enemy's camp and with their prayers and tears to soften the conquerors' heart into save the town which the men could not protect with their arms. Now in the procession of Roman matrons approached the Vultian camp and Coriolanus recognized his mother, his wife, and his little children. He was deeply moved and listened to the entreaties of the matrons and granted their requests, saying, O my mother, Rome thou hast saved, but thou hast lost thy son. And forthwith he led the army of the Vultians away from Rome and gave back all the conquered towns. But he never returned to Rome because he had been banished by the people, and he closed his life in exile among the Vultians. The whole of this pretty story, when examined by the light of historical criticism, vanishes into air. Neither the hero's name nor his banishment nor his rapid conquests nor the intercession of the Roman matrons belonged to history. We know for certain that Scipio Africanus, more than four hundred years later, was the first Roman who received a surname to commemorate a conquest. Hence Gaius Marshes could not have been called Coriolanus from the capture of Corioli. Besides, Corioli could hardly have been taken by the Romans from the Vultians in 492, as in 493 it is enumerated among the Latin cities which concluded a league with Rome. The Vultians, the constant enemies of the Republic, could not be present at the Roman games, nor could they assemble at the grove of Farentina, which was a tristing place of the Latins. Coriolanus could not be banished by the Roman plebeians on the accusation of the tribunes, for the tribunes, who had just been elected, had as yet only the right of protecting plebeians from unjust treatment, not the power of prosecuting protrisions before an assembly of the plebs. The rapid conquests of the Vultians under the command of Coriolanus are nothing short of miraculous. The capture of twelve towns in one summer campaign is a success which suits fiction, but is unequaled in the history of early Rome. Yet after such conquests, Coriolanus insists upon the Romans giving up these towns as if he could not hold what he had taken, and when he is induced by private and personal motives to make peace, he is so reckless of the interests of his Vultian friends, who after all were the real conquerors, that he generously restores his conquests to the Romans. These Romans at other times so ready to come forward and fight their enemies, shrink like cowards behind their walls, and send messages to entreat the mercy of the conqueror, without, however, offering the slightest concessions. They hit upon a novel scheme. They send priests to propitiate the anger of their exasperated fellow-citizen, a thing which they never did before or after, and which their whole system of public and sacred law forbade. More than that an embassy of matrons comes out to the hostile camp. We almost fancy we see again the Sabine matrons who rushed between the angry combatants to establish peace in the time of Romulus. Such a scene is effective and proper in fiction, but impossible in the history of Rome. Neither matrons nor priests could be employed on political embassies.  What circumstances gave rise to the story of Coriolanus it is impossible for us to say? It may be a mere fiction designed to glorify the Roman matrons. At any rate, it was not calculated to throw light on the history of the Vulsion Wars. These wars continued apparently without interruption during the whole period we have under review. The Vulsions obtained a settlement in southern Latium, where their most important town was the Seaport Antium. But after the Decomvirate, 450 BC, their power visibly decreased. The Romans and Latins recovered some of the lost ground and finally extended their league over the whole district from the Tiber to the confines of Campania. This was concluded with the Ichaeans in the year 459 BC, and the Romans expected no hostilities on that side. But soon after this the faithless Ichaeans suddenly invaded the country of Tuscalem, and their commander, Grocus Cloylius, pitched his camp on the hill Algidus, the eastern spur of the Albin range, from whence he laid waste the land of the Roman allies. Here Quintus Fabius appeared before him at the head of an embassy and demanded satisfaction and compensation, but Cloylius laughed at the ambassadors and mocking them said they should lay their complaints before the oak tree under which his tent was pitched. Then the Romans took the oak and all the gods to witness that the Ichaeans had broken the peace, and had begun an unrighteous war, and without delay the council minutious led an army against them. But the chances of war were not in his favour. He was defeated and blockaded in his camp. At this news terror prevailed in Rome, as if the enemy were at the very gates, for the second council was far away with his army fighting with the Sabines, the allies of the Ichaeans. There was nothing now to be done, but to name a dictator, and only one man seemed to be fit to fill the post. This was Lucius Quintius Quincanatus, or Cincinnatius, a noble patrician who had long served his country in peace and war as senator and consul, and was then living quietly at home, cultivating his small estate with his own hands. Now when the messengers of the senate came to Quintius Quintius Quintius to announce to him that he was nominated dictator, they found him plowing, and he had taken off his garments for the heat was great. Therefore he first asked his wife to bring him his toga, that he might receive the message of the senate in a becoming manner. And when he had heard their errand he went with them into the town, accepted the dictatorship, and chose, for master of the horse, Lucius Tarquitius, a noble but poor patrician. Then having ordered that all the courts of justice should be closed, and all common business suspended till the danger was averted from the country, he summoned all men who could bear arms to meet in the evening on the field of Mars, every man with twelve stakes for ramparts, and provisions for five days. Before the sun went down the army had started off and reached Mount Algidus at midnight. Now when the dictators saw that they were drawing near to the enemy, he bade the men halt and throw their baggage in a heap, and he quietly surrounded the camp of the Ichaeans, and gave orders to make a ditch round the enemy, and drive in the stakes. Then the Romans raised a loud cry, so that the Ichaeans were overcome by terror and despair. With legions of the consul, Menusius recognized the war cry of their countrymen, seized their arms, and sallied forth from their camp. Thus the Ichaeans were attacked on both sides, and seeing there was no escape surrendered and prayed for mercy. Sincenatus granted them their lives, and allowed them all to depart home unharmed after passing naked under the yoke, except Grocus Cloylius and the other commanders. These he kept as prisoners of war, and he divided the spoil among his victorious soldiers. In this manner Sincenatus rescued the blockaded army and returned in triumph to Rome, and when he had delivered his country from its enemies, he laid down his office on the sixteenth day, and returned to his fields, crowned with glory and honored by the people, but poor and contented in his poverty. The story of Sincenatus differs in character from that of Coriolanus and seems to have a genuine historical basis. It is not a mere fiction, but only a boastful, distorted and exaggerated account of what may have really happened, and it is in so far a good specimen of the usual performance of the Roman analysts. It is also worthy of notice that with some variations it is related not less than five times under five different years. 466, 460, 458, 443, 440 BC. It cannot, therefore, contribute much to our knowledge of the wars with the Ichaeans. These wars continued to harass Rome and her allies for the whole of the first century of the Republic, and like the Volscian wars contributed to enforce military discipline upon the citizens, and to improve their tactics, whilst the constantly impending danger arising from them had no doubt the effect of mitigating the internal conflicts between patricians and plebeians. For nearly fifty years the Romans and their allies were hard pressed. The Ichaeans established themselves on the Alban Hills in the heart of Latium, once they pushed their inroads to the very walls of Rome. But it seems that after the deconvirate the Ichaeans like the Volscians relaxed in their national vigor. Whether owing to the hostility of the Samnites in their rear or to other causes, they gradually ceased to be dangerous, so that the Romans were enabled to turn their attention to the North West and to begin their career of conquest on the side of Etruria. End of Section 21. Section 22 of Early Rome by Vilhelmina. This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Pamela Nagami, Chapter 17, War with the Etruscans. When in the beginning of the Republic the Etruscans were expelled from Latium, they did not entirely lose their hold of the country on that side of the Tiber. They continued masters of Fidenai, a strong town at a distance of but five miles from Rome. Constant hostilities seemed to have gone on between the Romans and the people of Fidenai, in which the latter were usually supported by their countrymen across the Tiber, especially the Veintines. In fact, Fidenai, and an equal distance from Rome and Veille, seems to have been a military post of the latter town, at Tete de Pont, on the left bank of the Tiber, by which the Veintines were enabled, whenever they liked, to cross the river into Latium and to harass Rome and her allies by their plundering incursions. It was obviously to obtain a similar footing on the Etruscan side of the Tiber, that in 479 B.C. the Romans determined to establish a fort on the small river Cremera, not far from Veille. Such military settlements were a characteristic feature of the early wars in Italy as well as Greece, as they enabled invaders to secure their hold on conquered districts. The colonies which Rome established in the course of her conquests were mainly such military posts, and proved the successful means of incorporating gradually the whole peninsula in the dominion of the Republic. The settlement on the Cremera gave rise to a popular legend, not less characteristic of the early wars and of the style of the early annals than the stories of Coriolanus and Sincenatus. The noble house of the Fabii, it is said, volunteered to secure Rome from the inroads of the Veintines. They obtained the sanction of the Senate for this patriotic enterprise, mustered the whole strength of the house, 306 fighting men, and marched out under the command of Caesophabius, the Council, to carry on the war with Veille at their own risk and expense. They built a fort on the river Cremera in the neighborhood of Veille, and sallying forth from this place of safety they ravaged the land of the Veintines and kept them in check for two years, so that they could not think of carrying the war across the Tiber. But when, on the anniversary of a solemn festival of their family, the Fabii proceeded to offer up a sacrifice on the Quiranal Hill, the Veintines disregarding the truce of the gods, laid in ambush on the road to Rome, fell upon the Fabii unawares and killed them to a man. Thus the whole Fabian house would have been extirpated, had not one boy been left behind at Rome on account of his tender age when the men of his house marched out to fight the Veintines. This child became the ancestor of the Fabii, who served the state for many years as men eminent in council and in the field. The disasters of the Fabii almost proved fatal to Rome. The Veintines followed up their success, defeated a Roman army under the Council Meneneus, and actually affected a lodgement on the hill Geniculus opposite Rome. They crossed the Tiber and cut off Rome from Latium. But the size and natural strength of the capital proved the safety of the Republic. The Veintines, unable to carry on a regular siege, were beaten off in a series of engagements driven from the Geniculus and compelled to seek a refuge in their own country. The war ended in an armistice for forty years, and Rome was thus unable to direct all her strength against her inveterate enemies on the east and south. There is no reason to doubt that the legend of the Fabii on the Chrimera has a foundation in fact. It was recorded, probably in the Pontifical Annals, that on their march to that fatal expedition the three hundred and six men went through the right-hand arch of the Porta Carmentalis, and this passage was forever after held to be unlucky and was avoided by soldiers leaving the city for the field. We must of course expect to find the story decked out with fictitious ornaments and disfigured as as usual in the early annals of Rome by exaggerations and inconsistencies. We can discover in it we think the spirit of a Fabian family chronicler, who drew his information from funeral orations of the Fabian House. It all redounds to the glory of this great family. The Fabii wage war for the Republic on their own account. They number three hundred and six fighting men, a figure palpably and foolishly exaggerated, and to make the story more telling the narrator informs us that in this large house there was just one child of an age so tender that he could not join the expedition and thus was left behind. It is not necessary to point out the physical impossibility of a proportion of one boy to three hundred and six men. Vagaries of fancy such as this we must take into the bargain and rest thankful if the story is not altogether devoid of all elements of historical truth. The peace or truce concluded between Rome and Veii in 474 B.C. seems to have been observed faithfully on both sides. We hear of no hostilities between the two nations till 438 B.C. when the wars began which finally led to the destruction of the Etruscan city in 396 B.C. End of Section 22 Section 23 of early Rome by Wilhelm Ena. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 18 The Decomvirs and the Laws of the Twelve Tables 451-442 B.C. By the establishment of the office of tribunes in 493 B.C. the plebeian assembly of tribes acquired the rank and weight of a national assembly in as much as the officers elected by it were invested with public authority and were recognized and submitted to by the patricians no less than the plebeians. It seems that in consequence of the extended rights thus gained by the Commedia of Tribes the patricians claimed to have votes in them. If they had succeeded in this claim the tribunes would have ceased to be magistrates of the plebs alone. They would have become what the consuls were, namely magistrates not of a class or fraction of the Roman people but of the whole community, patricians would have become eligible to the office, and the great contrast between patricians and plebeians would have gradually disappeared. Perhaps this would have been salutary in the end, but the patricians vehemently opposed the admission of patricians into their own Commedia. They would not allow their patrons the tribunes to be elected by anybody but themselves, and they insisted upon the rigid exclusion of patricians from the plebeian assembly. A law was passed in 471 B.C. called after its author, Wolarow Poblilius the Poblilian Law, to secure the election of the plebeian tribunes exclusively to the plebs. This law passed only twenty-two years after the secession did not introduce a new principle, but was only declaratory of an established right. By it moreover, according to some writers, the number of tribunes was raised from two to five. The tribunes of the people did not long confine themselves to the duties for which they were primarily elected. Not satisfied with protecting plebeians from unjust treatment of patrician magistrates, they aimed at raising the inferior citizens to an equality with the ruling class in all private and public rights. The times were passed when the patricians could claim to represent the people of Rome and to wield exclusively all political power. It had become clear on the occasion of the secession that the patricians were helpless without the plebeians. The frequent wars could not be carried on without the men who by that time undoubtedly formed the greater part of the army. The privileges of birth, of presumed sanctity, of exclusive political and legal experience, and above all of prescriptive possession of power, could not outweigh the claim which the plebeians now put forth as the great bulk of the people and especially of the fighting men. The first object of the plebeians, however, was not a share of political power, but a more effective legal protection than even the new office of tribunes had secured for them. They asked for two things. First, the removal of all inequalities between themselves and the patricians as far as private rights were concerned, and secondly, a codification of the laws thus reformed. This was the object of an agitation set on foot by Terentilius Arsa, a Tribune of the People, in 462 B.C. The motion of Terentilius met with a violent opposition from those conservative politicians who felt enacted as if human institutions ought to be unchangeable like the laws of nature. The contest lasted for ten years. The tribunes had as yet no seats in the Senate and were therefore unable to advocate their projected reform in that assembly. They could only harangue their fellow plebeians in public meetings called Contiones, but these Contiones had not like the Comitia the power of passing laws. The agitation of the tribunes therefore resembled that which is exercised in modern times by the press or by public meetings. To obtain the force of law like an act of parliament, the proposals of the tribunes had to be sanctioned by a majority of the senators, and this was exceedingly difficult to affect at a time when the Senate consisted as yet entirely of patricians and did not admit the tribunes of the plebs to a seat or a vote. There would have been no prospect of final success if the senators had to a man resisted the reform. But fortunately for Rome the ruling class did not consist exclusively of men opposed to all progress. Like the English nobility it seems to have included at all times a number of men enlightened enough to see that reforms are sometimes demanded by the necessities of national life if not by generosity or justice. Such were the Valerii, Spurius Cassius, Marcus Manlius, and above all the members of the Claudian family. Men of a haughty and overbearing spirit, yet ready to encounter the hostility of the ruling class for the benefit of the greater number and of the state. These men had the wisdom to see that Rome had no chance of making head against her numerous enemies all around if she was paralyzed by discord and civil strife at home. They counsel conciliation which had been found effective on the occasion of the secession thirty years before, and it was owing to their exertions no doubt that several concessions were made to the plebeians, such as the increase of the number of tribunes from five to ten, the limitation of the fines which magistrates should be allowed to inflict, and a change in the tenure of land on the Aventine hill in favor of the plebs, the law of Achilles de Auentino publicando, the exact nature of which we are unfortunately unable to understand. Yet these concessions, if they were intended to make the plebeians forego the desire of the reform of Terentilius, proved of no effect. Year after year the demand for law reform was repeated, and at last, after a struggle protracted through ten years, the government, that is the senate, in the name of the patrician body, consented. It was agreed that the existing forms of government should be suspended, that in the place of the patrician consuls and the plebeian tribunes, ten men, decomvirs, should be elected indiscriminately from the two orders of citizens, empowered to carry on the regular government, and at the same time to reform the existing law, and to equalize the private rights of plebeians and patricians. Finally, in order to prevent any ambiguity and to put an end to the uncertainty inseparable from unwritten laws, it was resolved that the laws should be written down and made known to the public. The laws of the twelve tables, drawn up in consequence of this resolution, continued in force for many ages, and even in Cicero's time formed part of the elementary school teaching of Roman boys. Unfortunately, only fragments of them have come down to us. Yet these fragments are of invaluable service in the study of Roman life and manners. The documentary, History of Rome, may be said to begin with these laws. The time of legendary stories and of mere tradition is past. Nevertheless, when we read the account given by Livy of the transactions which led to the legislation of the decomvirs and especially of those which caused their overthrow, we feel the greatest disappointment and irritation. For instead of a plain, unvarnished tale we find statements so contradictory, unintelligible, and incredible, that we cannot possibly accept them as they are, although we have not sufficient external evidence to sift and to correct them. We can only hope to test them by general arguments and by applying to them the laws of historical probability, availing ourselves at the same time of some features of the story which we have a right to look upon as remnants of a trustworthy tradition. Before the decomvirs entered on their office it was determined, as Livy informs us, to send an embassy to Athens for the purpose of studying the celebrated laws of Solon, that the Roman legislators might be unable to form their laws after that great model. The names of the three ambassadors are given by Livy, as well as that of a Greek philosopher who accompanied them and assisted them in their task. Upon their return, they made their report, and the services of the Greek philosopher were rated so high that a statue was erected in his honor in the Roman Forum. In spite of the apparent evidence which may seem to be contained in the erection of this statue, we can have no hesitation in declaring the whole story of the Greek Embassy of Fiction for the following reasons. No nation of antiquity ever dreamt of forming its civil law after a foreign model. Least of all would the Romans have done so, who, if they were original in anything, were original in their system of civil law and distinguished by their contempt for foreign institutions. If this were not so, we should be able to discover some such resemblance between the Solonian and Roman laws as would be evidence of the derivation of the latter from the former. No such resemblance exists. Nor is it possible to conceive that Roman ambassadors could have gone to Athens to study the laws of Solon, for at the time of the decomvirs these laws were no longer in force, but had been supplanted by the democratic institutions of Cleisthenes. Apart from the reasons just urged, the Romans at the period of the decomvirs in the middle of the fifth century before Christ, if they had ever heard the name of Solon or of Athens, were probably very far from such a general acquaintance with Greece as is implied by a resolution to take Greek models for their national legislation. We cannot do better than sum up these doubts in the words of Gibbon. From a motive of national pride, both Livy and Dionysius are willing to believe that the deputies of Rome visited Athens under the wise and splendid administration of Pericles, and the laws of Solon were transfused into the twelve tables. If such an embassy had indeed been received from the barbarians of Hesperia, the Roman name would have been familiar to the Greeks before the reign of Alexander, and the faintest evidence would have been explored and celebrated by the curiosity of succeeding times. But the Athenian monuments are silent, nor will it seem credible that the patricians should undertake a long and perilous navigation to copy the purest model of a democracy. In the comparison of the tables of Solon with those of the decomvirs, some casual resemblance may be found, some rules which nature and reason have revealed to every society. But in all the great lines of public and private jurisprudence, the legislators of Roman Athens appeared to be strangers or adverse to each other. Like disposed of the story of the Athenian embassy, we proceed to examine the narrative of the decomviral legislation. In 451 B.C. the elections of decomvirs took place and resulted in the return of ten patricians. The plebeians being left without their tribunes had to submit to this violation of the recent agreement which stipulated for a mixed commission. However, the patrician decomvirs discharged their duties honestly and almost completed their task, so that before the end of the year ten tables of the laws were drawn up and approved by the people. As some laws were still wanting to complete the code, it was resolved that decomvirs should again be elected for the following year. Then Appius Claudius, who had been the leading man in the first year's commission and was looked upon as the champion of the aristocratic party, suddenly assumed, it is said, the character of a friend of the people, and secured not only his own re-election, but also the election of several plebeians upon the new commission. However, when he and his colleagues were installed in office, they showed that they were the friends neither of the patricians nor of the plebeians, for they treated both with equal violence. They appeared in public preceded by a body of 120 lictors, and these lictors carried not only the rods, but also the axes, the emblems of dictatorial power. All freedom was suppressed, no class of citizens was spared. Not only were the plebeians trampled underfoot, but the most eminent of the patricians were put to death or driven into banishment. Rome was like a city taken by storm and sacked by a victorious enemy. Thus the year of the second decomvirate passed by, and yet the two tables which were wanted to complete the legislation were not submitted to the people for approbation.  The senate in vain urged them to retire. The people became discontented, the army mutinous, yet the decomvirs clung to their office, thus violating the fundamental law of the republic, which required every magistrate to resign at the expiration of the period for which he was elected. The general disaffection was brought to a crisis by an outrage committed on female chastity by Appius Claudius himself. In the blindness of his passion for a beautiful girl, the daughter of Virginia, a brave plebeian centurion, he instigated one of his clients to claim her as his slave, under the pretext that she was the daughter of a slave woman belonging to him. The girl was brought before the judgment seat of Appius, and he, contrary to a clear provision of the law sanctioned by himself, decided that pending the investigation she should be considered not as a free woman, but as a slave and handed over to the keeping of the claimant, with difficulty the friends of Virginia obtained a respite for her until her father should appear to produce the evidence in favor of his daughter's legitimate birth. On the following day the case was proceeded with, and when Virginia saw that all his arguments and entreaties were of no avail to save his child from shame, he stabbed her to death with his own hand. This deed was the signal for a general insurrection. The people, a second time an arm seceded to the sacred mount, threatening to abandon Rome and to form a separate community. The senate and the patricians left behind in Rome, at last compelled the decomvirs to resign, and then restored the consular government. Thus they induced the commons to return after the re-enactment of the sacred laws, and the re-establishment of the tribute ship. The decomvirs were punished with exile, Appius Claudius, reserved in prison for a severe punishment, put an end to his own life. Thus runs the wonderful story of the downfall of the decomvirs. It is hardly necessary to say that it cannot be true. The sudden change in the character of Appius Claudius, however strange, is perhaps possible. But what shall we think of the policy ascribed to the decomvirs, which was hostile to both parties in the state at once, and seems to have rested on no support, save that of one hundred and twenty lictors? Surely the Roman plebs, united in common interests with the patricians, were not obliged to have recourse to such a violent measure as a secession in order to get rid of a few magistrates. That secession of the plebs, which is undoubtedly historical, can have been directed only against the patricians as a body, and its object must have been to protect plebeian rights endangered by the patricians. Now as we are informed, that after the secession the office of tribunes was restored along with all the rights granted at the first secession, it seems a natural conclusion that the patricians had intended altogether to suppress the tribuneship, which had been only suspended during the decomvirate. Perhaps the patricians argued that now, after the decomviral legislation, the plebeian tribunes were no longer wanted, as the law itself would henceforth protect the plebeians. But the plebeians insisted on the restoration of the sacred laws and they obtained it. A strong argument for the view we have taken of the second secession lies in the character of the laws contained in the last two tables. These laws are universally described as unjust to the plebeians, and they contain the prohibition of marriages between the two orders of citizens, a prohibition which was really a badge of servitude and a remnant of the old inequality of patricians and plebeians. It ought not to have been received into the new code and could not have been sanctioned as is alleged by men who like Appius Claudius and the second decomvirs favored the plebeians. On the other hand, the patricians who made peace with the plebeians did not repeal this obnoxious law. If they had been the real friends of the people, they could not have shown this in a more signal manner than by condemning a law so unpopular. As they did not do so, we may infer that they intentionally appell that law, and we are only going one step further if we surmised that they introduced it into the code in opposition to the policy of Appius Claudius. This conclusion is confirmed by a statement of Deodorus, who says that the last two tables of laws were added by the councils valerious and voracious who succeeded the decomvirs. The result of these considerations is that in all probability the second decomvirs were opposed to the policy of the extreme patrician party, that they intended to carry out that equalization of the laws which was the object of the Terentilian Rogation, that in this endeavour they were thwarted by the senate, which compelled them to resign before the last two tables were sanctioned, that the senate then embodied in the last two tables those old prohibitions of intermarriage between patricians and plebeians which were so offensive to the latter, and tried to restore the old consular government without the tribunship of the people, that thereupon the plebeians had recourse to a secession, and did not return until the sacred laws and the tribunship had been restored to them. All the stories of violence and cruelty ascribed to the decomvirs must be regarded as fictitious, and as invented from the same motive of blackening the character of popular leaders to which are to be ascribed similar charges brought against Spurrius Cassius, Marcus Manlius, and even Gaius Grocus. End of section 23